Line. He is worried about disloyal senators, something hes already started tweeting about in recent days. He said that some senators are not being loyal enough and they should be holding the line. Now, this is something that mcconnell is going to have to be dealing with for the long term obviously. He wants to make sure senators who are going to be the jurors should nancy pelosi and the democrats impeach the president , hes going to need those people to hold the line. And the president is increasingly lashing out, telling the majority leader that he believes that some of these senators need to hold the line on what the white house is telling them to do. Evan, stay with us because i want to bring in snan legal analyst laura coates, david gergen and joe lockhart. He served as press skecretary i the Clinton White house. David, first of all, what do you make of evans reporting because the whole notion that the president is conducting business as usual and isnt solely focused and consumed by the impeachment inquiry if hes calling mcconnell three times a day, that seems to suggest otherwise. It does. Hes been aptly compared to king lear, you know, fighting off the darkness. And hes obviously preoccupied, and you can understand why. But i must tell you in none of the reporting about what hes preoccupied with is there any mention of whats good for the country, the principles we ought to have as a people, what it is hes trying to uphold. It is all about personal survival and personally, you know, beating the other side. Well, its also, david, about revealing who the whistleblower is, which, again yes. I understand why he wants that for his own reasons, but in terms of for the good of the country, i mean if he reveals if the whistleblower is blown on this and revealed, i mean thats a chilling message for anyone else who may ever want to even consider being one. I think that if he were to blow the cover of the whistleblower by whatever nefarious means, they could potentially add that to another charge on the impeachment. That would, in effect, be an obstruction because he really is trying to put a chill on anyone else coming forward. And by the way, hes obviously subjecting the person who is the whistleblower to enormous personal risk. Yeah. Joe, i mean even by, you know, saying publicly this person is not a real whistleblower, this person is a liar, im not even sure this person exists, tant amount to being a spy. We dont want spies in the white house. He is sending a message to other whistleblowers and trying to intimidate them. What do you make, though, of calling mcconnell up to three times a day, telling him hes going to amplify attacks on republicans who criticize him . Well, hes worried about the right problem, which his problem is not with democrats. Democrats, hes lost. His firewall is the republicans and the republican senators in particular. A strategy of going after them and trying to intimidate them works when youre in a position of strength. His position is weakening day by day. So i dont know that that will work. You know, in 1998 with president clinton, we focused almost all of our efforts on Democratic Senators because thats you know, thats what protected us. But i completely agree with what davids saying. You know, the big difference between then and now is this president is consumed with it, and hes letting the public know hes consumed with it. Hes not worried about the people. Hes not worried about his job. He spends all day long and increasingly all night long tweeting about this, whining about it, showing how afraid he is. And hes revealing, i think, it very much weakens his case. And if youre a republican senator, youre looking, and you dont like the trend. Laura, just from a legal standpoint, has he already set himself up for perhaps more obstruction charges or at least compounding the things hes already said . He is compounding it. What hes doing essentially is giving more ammunition to say that he is going to engage in obstruction of congress essentially. The president saying im the law and order president , and one of the roles of the president of the United States is to faithfully execute the laws. If hes taking a position and saying, look, im not even going to comply with a subpoena at this juncture, where we are right now, anderson is saying this is before even one article of impeachment has been drafted. Hes saying hes not going to cooperate. He wants to be a part of the investigation. He wants to know as if it was a grand jury witness. He wants to know who that person is and sit in on the proceedings. That is not done. Its really a premature request and a premature anxiety. But on the other hand, doesnt this help his court of Public Opinion argument that says, look what happens when you have an impeachment. Your president is being consumed. Your president is being consumed by things other than what you care about in terms of Kitchen Table issues. Health care is not in my wheelhouse right now. Gun control is not an issue. Its this. In that vein, that has an impact on the larger issue of abuse of power, thats still going to be there. The more he abuses it, the more ammunition they get. Im not sure gun control or health care has ever been in his wheelhouse. Evan, what more are you learning about the president s overall view of this impeachment fight . He looks at this as a purely political thing. That is why in his phone calls with Mitch Mcconnell hes pressing him to keep these republican senators in line. He believes the strategy here is simply to make sure this is a partisan issue. This is about his reelection after all. By the way, i should note i failed to mention that we reached out for comment from Mitch Mcconnells office, and we did get a comment from doug andres, and ill read you a part of it. It says that theyre disputing that Mitch Mcconnell ever related some of this to some of his fellow republicans. And he said, we where is it here . Okay. This story, based on a single anonymous source, is categorically false. Leader mcconnell never said anything like this. Theyre disputing Mitch Mcconnell has told fellow republicans about some of his interactions with the president. And you can understand why. The president and Mitch Mcconnell have forged a very tight relationship in the past year. For so long the president was criticizing establishment figures like Mitch Mcconnell. He needs Mitch Mcconnell very, very much now, and Mitch Mcconnell frankly needs the president to stay focused in order to protect him. David, the president s also going after the person or persons who gave the information to the whistleblower, saying he doesnt want to have spies in the white house. Its interesting to me that hes so focused on the whistleblower because it seems like the whistleblower at this point isnt even really the question anymore. I mean everything the whistleblower has said has turned out to be true or mostly true, and theres the transcript and the president s own comments which prove that. Well, i think that conceivably the whistleblower has some details that havent been drawn out yet. So i wouldnt dismiss the whistleblowers account. I do think it could have some importance. But i also think, anderson, when the American People have a sense that the rage and the obsession and sort of the craziness thats coming out of the white house, thats going to make more and more people feel uncomfortable about having him serve as president for another term. I think this is the way he is acting is making it worse, not better in my judgment for his command and leadership of the country. Joe, its interesting, though, to hear evans reporting that the president is concerned that, you know, senators arent being loyal enough. Really the senators havent really most republican senators havent really said anything other than mitt romney. They have been critical of what the president has done to the kurds, the betrayal of the kurds. Im not sure if thats part of his calculus that he doesnt like what Lindsey Graham is going around saying, and thats part of this. Yeah. Listen, i its also true sorry. Go ahead, joe. I think theres been a little bit of a trickle and i think that worries the president and his team. Youve seen senator collins, senator portman, senator sasse say things like, you know, the president shouldnt be reaching out to china and, you know, making that while staying silent on ukraine. You know, listen, the president s relationship with both the house and the senate when anyone has crossed him is to try to crush them. You know, mark sanford is running for president right now because he crossed the president , and the president got hum defeated in a primary. He has a stranglehold on the Republican Party right now. The problem is these senators, many of whom are up for reelection in the cycle in 2020, have to face their voters, are sitting and waiting to see what else will come out. Thats what this big struggle is. Will the president be able to keep all of the details, you know, at the white house and Keep Congress from getting them because as this gets worse, republicans will make a calculation at some point, you know, whether its in their interest to continue supporting the president. Thats what the president is so fearful of. Yeah. Joe, david, stick around. Laura, thanks. I know you need to work on your live 11 00 show, white house in crisis, that we encourage everyone to watch tonight. Coming up, susan rice on the president s recent decisions and actions on the impeachment question as well as in northern syria. Later, Vice President pence, who as you know has spoken out several times against foreign interference in u. S. Elections, but that of course was a long time ago. Well ask him if he Still Believes it now. With advil liquigels, you have fastacting power over pain, so the whole world looks different. The unbeatable strength and speed of advil liquigels. What pain . 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Namely, are we now witnessing what people, including those who used to be close to President Trump, have long worried and frankly warned about . Are we seeing on several fronts the consequences of a president without guardrails, without what used to be called, fairly or not, the adults in the room, people who at the very least had experience and could steer him away from impulsive decisions and protect him against his own worst instincts, advisers to stop him if only in his own best interest from leveling a threat at the whistleblower whose complaint touched off the whole ukraine affair. The president saying the whistleblower, he or she, should be, quote, exposed and should not be protected. Are we witnessing the effects of their absence or lack of influence . Are we also seeing the lack of socalled adults in his surprise decision after a call with turkeys president to pull troops out of northern syria, which has now led to a turkish invasion aimed at this countrys staunchest ally in the fight against isis . A whistleblower who is entitled to protection from a bosss retaliation is now facing an open call for just that from the president of the United States. The president who is supposed to uphold the rights and protections that are enshrined in our laws even if theyre not in his personal best interests. This president cannot do that. It is all about him. It always has been and likely always will be. Tonight whatever else you might think about the larger american involvement in the middle east, the kurds, who fought and died alongside u. S. Troops, who did the bulk of the fighting, 10,000 dead, are now being bombed by turkey. Some will almost certainly die in the wake of the president s reportedly snap decision. So tonight the broadcast is dominated by that and the at happens when the guardrails go away . Youre going to hear in at from susan rice who served as National Security adviser in strong thoughts on the subject. But first, what President Trump said just this afternoon about the whistleblower. What the whistleblower said bore no relationship to what the call was. Then it turns out the whistleblower was in cahoots with schiff. Then it turns out that the whistleblower is a democrat, strong democrat, and is working with one of my opponents as a democrat that i might end up running against. When you see what the whistleblower said about the phone call and it was totally different. He made it up. And i dont know why a person that defrauds the American Public should be protected. Keeping them honest, in order, the whistleblower act specifically makes reprisals subject to urgent concern complaints that need to be passed on to congress. Theres no evidence the whistleblower was in cahoots with anyone and the president offered none. As for the claim that the account of the call is radically different from the transcript, thats not true either. The very first words on it after ukrainian president zelensky inquires about aid, is President Trump saying, id like you to do us a favor though, followed by pressure to investigate the bidens and a 2016 conspiracy theory. Faced with evidence in the president s own words, on the president s own transcript that contradict what the president himself keeps saying, wouldnt a socalled adult in the room try to stop the president from making such easily disprovable claims. Similarly, would he or she try to stop the president from saying this about the staunch u. S. Ally now under bombardment tonight . Now, the kurds are fighting for their land just so you understand. Theyre fighting for their land. And as somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today, they didnt help us in the second world war. They didnt help us with normandy as an example. They mentioned names of different battles. But theyre there to help us with their land, and thats a different thing. Its hard to know what that even means, but the president seems to be suggesting that the kurds have always been just been in it for themselves. Keep in mind more than 10,000 kurds have been killed in the fight against isis, a fight we asked them to undertake. We did not do most of the fighting. We had a lot of logistical support, a lot of on the ground support, but they lost 10,000 people. He also said this about isis fighters and our nato allies. Well, theyre going to be escaping to europe. Thats where they want to go. They want to go back to their homes, but europe didnt want it from us. Questi we could have given it to them. We could have had trials. As usual, its not reciprocal. My favorite word. Thats all i want. I dont want an edge. I just want reciprocal. Whatever you make of that, the president has taken steps that have now exposed them to what could become mass slaughter. Hes caused alarm among other allies in the region and hes triggered a rebellion among lawmakers. Whatever you think of the president s statements, decisions, or policies writ large, does any of this look like anything but a president determined to say and do what his gut and no one else tells him . To say and do anything to protect himself . I misspoke on what he said to zelensky. He said to do i would like you to do us a favor. Perspective now from former National Security adviser susan rice, who is also the author of tough love my story of the things worth fighting for. The book is just out this week. I want to talk to you about your book because theres a lot in it. I do want to start, though, with just the latest on President Trumps comments about the whistleblower. He tweeted today that the whistleblower should be exposed and questioned properly, and now is saying that the whistleblower has perpetrated a fraud and therefore shouldnt have any sort of protections at all. When you hear this from a sitting president of the United States, i mean i know on election day i read in your book, you said you kind of convinced yourself maybe it wont be as bad day after election. Day after. Maybe it wont be as bad. Can you imagine a president of the United States calling for the essentially whistleblower protections to be completely tossed out the window . Anderson, its appalling, and its so much worse than i imagined. Every day a lie, a disparagem t disparagement, and a trashing of the institutions and the norms that we all be