it is 12:00 in new york. we're following what has already been a dramatic day of testimony on capitol hill from two key witnesses, former nsc senior adviser fiona hill and current u.s. diplomat david holmes, both witnesses raising alarms today about the conduct they witnessed between the trump administration and ukraine, namely the conditioning of both military aid and a white house meeting on a commitment from the ukrainians into those investigations designed to hurt the bidens, a smear campaign against ukraine ambassador marie yovanovitch who was apparently standing in the way. the conduct of both of today's witness witnesses, they believed lives could be jeopardized in ukraine. here is some of the dramatic testimony of fiona hill and david holmes. >> the barrage of allegations directed against ambassador yovanovitch, a career ambassador, is unlike anything i have seen in my professional career. i heard ambassador sondland say to the president, yes, he was in ukraine, and went on to say that president zelensky, quote, loves your ass. i then heard president trump ask, so he's going to do the investigation? ambassador sondland replied that he's going to do it. i asked ambassador sondland that it was true that the president did not give an expletive about ukraine. ambassador sondland agreed that the president did not an expletive about ukraine. i asked why not. ambassador sondland stated that the president only cares about big stuff. i noted there was big stuff going on in ukraine, like a war with russia. and ambassador sondland replied that he meant big stuff that benefits the president, like the biden investigation that giuliani was pushing. we advised our ukrainian counterparts to follow the rule of law. this was a demand that president zelensky personally commit on a cable news channel to a political investigation of president trump's political rival. >> some of you on this committee appear to believe that russia did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps somehow, for some reason, ukraine did. this is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the russia security services themselves. it is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified. >> joining us, nbc's chief foreign affairs correspondent, host of msnbc's "andrea mitchell reports," andrea mitchell. msnbc chief legal correspondent and host of "the beat," ari melber. andrew weissmann, former head of the fraud section at the department of justice, now an msnbc legal analyst. and former democratic senator from missouri and current msnbc political analyst claire mccaskill. we're also still joined by former u.s. ambassador to russia, ambassador michael mcfaul, who, lucky for us, is also an msnbc international affairs analyst. i will start with you. reset what we have seen today, for anyone who missed this dramatic opening statement, a complete indictment from fiona hill of the conspiracy theories and those who spread them. >> to me, right, nicolle? >> yes. >> it's very clear, we've been talking now for days and days about whether there was linkage, a quid pro quo, an "if you do this, i'll do that" kind of relationship between an oval office visit and the investigations of burisma slash biden and this cockamamie, crazy conspiracy theory about the ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election. and fiona hill, just sticking to the facts that she knows well, especially fiona hill but also david holmes, made it crystal clear that there was, especially with respect to the oval office visit that was put on offer in return for investigating these two alleged activities. in other words, using the public office of the president of the united states, an oval office visit to help president trump's reelection chances in 2020. it was clear for a long time, it became even clearer today. >> andrea, ambassador mcfaul, this is a sign of how long ambassador mcfaul and i have been on television. at first they were debunked theories, now their cockamamie, and that's right. >> sorry about that word. >> but that's right, they're whack-a-doo. i'm sure there are even people at fox news who are uncomfortable spreading debunked theories. i think in the cloud somewhere, there isn't a piece of hardware floating around, for those still looking for it. the idea that she is so faithful to the rule of law, to american national security ideals, and to the truth, that she used her open statement to chastise those who are spreading blatant lies that benefit putin. >> it is the president of the united states, in person, on television, on twitter, who is spreading that cockamamie theory. which he seems just absolutely gripped by, according to all the prior testimony, going back to early last spring, certainly by may, certainly by the recall of ambassador yovanovitch. and for the president to be used by russian military intelligence, by vladimir putin this way, is so appalling, there should be a counterintelligence investigation as to how this got spread, if there isn't already, because -- >> that's interesting. i mean, andrea, and we've been revisiting the intersections between what the mueller investigation looked at, there was some of the collateral damage from the president's efforts to obstruct these investigations into russian meddling, especially when they sought to examine his campaign. there was one into whether or not the president might be working to benefit russia. >> and whether or not, you know, there was a lot in that report which never reached any conclusion for the obvious reason of the way that the president is immune from prosecution. but certainly there was indictment of those russian gru and military intelligence officials, 13 officials. those indictments are still standing, outstanding, they'll never arrest those people, presumably. but the fact is this even preceded 2016 in terms of russia's operations. there were counterintelligence investigations here into what russia was doing, not even knowing who the candidates would be in 2016. so this was just part of their disruption operation. there were two people arrested who came into the united states, according to chuck rosenberg who has said this publicly, there were two russians arrested because they were trying to interfere with u.s. elections. this testimony is so powerful because of its specificity. if they are going to try to -- they obviously are, the republicans are going to try to go after her, she's going to come back strong with how damaging this is. her warning is we have to protect that 2020 election. she's a former intelligence official on russia. and that is her oath to the united states, that is her career. she wants to protect the u.s. election in 2020, that it does not happen again. she says it's already under way. that could not have been a more clear and present warning of imminent danger to national security. >> i'm sure you have it in front of you, i imagine you're prepared like you always prepare for trial. i would like to look again at what is the transcript. there is evidence, and it's been reported that donald trump's mind had been poisoned. and it seemed her testimony today in indicting the conspiracy theories was harkening break to what she was hearing in communications from the president, where it says "she's going to go through some things" but marie yovanovitch. those were conspiracy theories about yovanovitch being on the wrong side. she was on the right sigde on corruption if you are against it. if you are following u.s. stated policy and the policy of the new president, zelensky, you're against corruption, as was yovanovitch. there is so much evidence that the white house has put into the public record. >> right. >> the white house, by putting giuliani in charge of what became the regular channel of u.s./ukrainian regulations, was basically co-signing onto rudy -- what was your word, ambassador -- cockamamie theories. it was a window this morning into what the professionals had to deal with, a president whose mind had been poisoned on ukraine and his right hand guy was more of a court jester of conspiracy theories than a serious policy or legal person in rudy giuliani. >> that's exactly right. as you mentioned, i have my investigation binder which is swelling with evidence and testimony, what mr. weissman and mr. rosenberg and others keep in their mind, i have to write it down. they have more experience than i do. but yeah, we keep the call notes handy because remember the question of, oh, will there be tapes. lordy, i hope there are tapes. when you deal with the foreign policy process, there are, as andrew was explaining earlier, very careful notes done through the normal process. and this now declassified by order of the president, september 24th, includes all of that, with the president, as you say, saying, i want you to talk to rudy and my attorney general. wow. if you could speak to them, that would be great. the former ambassador, the woman, quote, was bad news, the people she was dealing with, bad news. the other thing, much talk about bide en's son, biden stopped the prosecution, quote, a lot of people want to find out about that, whatever you can do with the attorney general of the united states would be great. biden wednesday around bragging, it goes on. he comes back to it later in the same call notes, mr. giuliani will give you a call, i'll also have attorney general barr call, we will get to the bottom of it. added to this very incriminating information, as you say, is the testimony of the people who were involved, at the top, in the middle, and even now in kiev, the people who happen to be in a restaurant, not the number one official, and they all say the same thing. the condition of money that was so desperately needed, that's how extortion works, to get the bribe, the campaign help. when they got busted, they ran around and said things that have now been basically blown up by their own aides who are still, some of them, employed by the trump administration. the other thing that hangs over all this, i'll say briefly, some people ask, how did someone like donald trump get this far? if you look at the way he's been in business, the bankruptcbankr the troubles he's had in his campaign. is he getting this far by cheating? does he habitually cheat, is he cheating in ways that are illegal or impeachable? >> this is the disorder of my mind, we had a guy on who wrote a book about how he cheats at golf. cheating is cheating. the behavior of cheating doesn't really pick and choose between cheating in business. >> cheating at golf, not impeachable. >> yes. >> going out on a limb. >> briefly, david holmes' testimony today about that phone call, overheard phone call, the republicans presumably this afternoon will try to undermine that but that links the president directly to sondland and to the orders to go after biden. >> it also, in terms of the other sort of court, in terms of court of public opinion, you can hear sondland and trump having that conversation. it makes us cringe, it makes the prudish side of me cringe, "he loves your" bleep, ew. who would make that up? >> it's very bleepable. if you remember the complaints about hillary clinton using an email server, i'm certainly not justifying that, but here you have a call on a cellphone, lots of discussions about sending emails and texts, but this is one where you've heard from everyone who is in ukraine, you worry about everything being tapped. so one of the interesting things going through my mind is, why isn't the president and ambassador sondland worried about the fact that -- you know that call is going to be monitored by the russians. >> right. >> why would you -- i mean, you're there asking for an investigation into the bidens. do you care about the russians having it? normally what you would worry about is, as sally yates said when she was dealing with the flynn situation, you worry about kompromat, which is that the russians now have leverage over you because they know something that's not true. why weren't the president and ambassador sondland worried about the fact that the russians would undoubtedly in ukraine be able to hear this conversation? >> what are the scenarios, why wouldn't they be? >> if your thinking is i don't care because the russians will be siding with me in the 2020 election, then you're all on the same team. >> that's right. and that was one of the pieces of testimony reintroduced by these witnesses. and we heard it from george kent last wednesday. we heard the timeline was detailed again, between the first call to congratulate president zelensky, there are known conversations, just that we know about, between vladimir putin and his ally. is there any question in your mind about whether they were steering him against zelensky? >> i think they knew that russia was listening. i don't know if trump thinks about it, i don't give much credence to his thought process, but i'm sure that clearly anybody who is speaking on a cellphone, i think russia owns the mobile phone companies in the ukraine. so not only are they listening, they have the ability to listen and transcribe. it's probably recorded somewhere. this is a little far afield, but it's related. bob barr are running all over the world. >> absolutely. >> trying to dig up dirt on our own intelligence community, which is populated, as you all well know, with mostly veterans and active military. he is doing things, going to australia and going to european nations. >> italy. >> and this is the attorney general of the united states is doing this. what is your view about where this is right now with your knowledge of how justice works, i know he's got this special u.s. aide he's appointed to handle this. what is going on with that, what did they hope to prove here, that our intelligence community was on the take? >> so first, there is enormous damage to the intelligence community, to have -- there's such a trusted relationship between our intelligence community and what is called the five i's, which is britain, new zealand, canada, australia. people really operate together and view themselves as a collective mission, it can be about terrorism, it can be about a whole variety of issues. and there's enormous cooperation. the idea that the attorney general would be showing up in a five i's country to say what kind of dirt do you have on my own intelligence community is the kind of thing, having been at the fbi, is unthinkable and it's of such damage to the relationship, that there's such distrust of the intelligence community. and one thing that's just so wonderful for the american public to see in the last two weeks, and again, leaving aside the substance of the impeachment, is your seeing career people, and it's really useful, this is supposed to be the deep state, hallelujah. these are wonderful, wonderful public servants. >> let me bring in -- i'm sorry. >> i was just going to say to claire's point, when the president announced that investigation, he gave attorney general barr access to the deepest secrets, ordering the director of national intelligence to declassify sources, the most secret sources. that sent a shiver, and it was shortly after that that dan coats resigned. it is a very damaging process. >> let me bring into our conversation author and presidential historian, our friend jon meacham. you've been listening to some of this. if a theme runs through it, it's the wrecking ball that donald trump is, we knew to the rule of law and law enforcement agencies, but now it would appear in plain public testimony to sort of the heart and soul of the state department and our diplomatic efforts around the world. your thoughts, jon? >> i think this has been a good week or so for people to perhaps rethink their trust in the institutions of government, with the ambassador, with the lieutenant colonel, with dr. hill today. you see immigrant stories of people who have accepted the idea, embraced the idea of america, and have given their lives in service to that idea, without reference to partisanship. and i know that's one of the most vanishingly irrelevant phrases of the moment, "without reference to partisanship," but we only have 16, 17% of americans who trust the government to do the right thing some or most of the time, down from a high water mark of about 77% in 1964, '65. it's a critical number, it's a critical part of this crisis of faith. and i would hope that no matter where you stand on the spectrum, no matter what you think should happen, because i personally don't think there's any disputing the facts of this, i've been struck by the republicans even seem to have sort of given up trying to frontally attack the facts, they just throw a bunch of dust in the air. and then you can disagree about what you want to do about it, right? if you don't want to impeach or you don't want to remove, that's a different conversation. but it's good news for america that these witnesses have had the courage and the sense of duty to put the facts forward. and that has actually helped the american system work in a really interesting way. i was thinking this morning, because this is what i do, about woodrow wilson. try to contain your enthusiasm. i know andrea is going to get excited. so wilson described the american government as saying the founders had a sense that it was newtonian, that is, it was this balance of the spheres, these permanent forces in the solar system. in fact it turned out to be darwinian in the sense that it's a struggle, and hopefully there's progress, hopefully we evolve. one hope about what's unfolding now is that we will get stronger, we'll evolve from this moment because of the courage and the sense of duty we're seeing on vivid display. last point, and nicolle, i think you'll appreciate this, as the republicans begin to throw this dust in the air in a few minutes, first of all, it's not going to be a fair fight with dr. hill, i would be careful. but remember, this is the party that not that long ago was the party of eisenhower and reagan and george herbert walker bush. and do you really want to walk off the cliff with these people who don't seem to have the truth and the future of the republic in their -- at the center of their concerns? >> jon, this is what i wanted to ask you about, as your george h.w. bush's biographer, you know that family and you know the last page of the last book of the republican party better than anybody. but are you surprised -- you know, i've talked about sitting in the back of an suv with john mccain, lindsey graham, and joe lieberman, where they passed a telephone back and forth, sha shakishvili would call, and john mccain said yes, and lindsey graham would say, no, you have a debate, you won't be on the call. the republican party a short while ago stood on the line with people like fiona hill against russia. just talk about how dramatically donald trump has reoriented u.s. policy toward russia. >> oh, my. that's one of the great stories, the death of facts, or the attack on fact, and this bizarre shift. i think in many ways american politics from 1933 until 2017 can be seen as a kind of figurative conversation between fdr and ronald reagan. even obama governed on that field. there were two central questions. one was the relative role of the state in the marketplace and the relative projection of force and influence against commonly agreed-upon foes and rivals, right? so you could argue about the extent of the cold war or our position in the cold war, but nobody doubted, no american president doubted that we were fighting a cold war, what kennedy called the long twilight struggle. and it took ronald reagan and president bush, who were on the more hawkish side of that, to end that war from the american side. reagan started his term, his first press conference, sam donaldson asked him a question in 1981 and reagan said, the soviet union reserves to itself the right to lie, to cheat, and to steal. then by may 1988, he's literally playing with babies in red square with gorbachev. dr. hill alluded to that moment, what reagan called the moscow spring, in this moscow spring we look forward. and so mccain of course came out of that tradition. and it was -- and i'm very careful about the narcissism of the president and the dangerous nostalgia we have for this mythic by partisan past. ask franklin roosevelt, ask joe mccarthy about how partisan the world was, our most ferocious fights were against isolationism, against nazi germany. so let's not be idealists here. these were our rivals. we could disagree on how to confront them and to what extent. president trump has scrambled this. this is a historically-based reading, i think, of a huge chunk of american history. and while trump in many ways is the manifestation, the symbol of a lot of perennial forces in american life, xenophobia, nativism, isolationism, the will to power, all those forces, raci racism, all those forces are perennial, they ebb and flow in american life. right now they're flowing, we need to get to a place where they're ebbing. what is new is this different conversation and this freelance diplomacy which has scrambled our essential vision of what matters in the world. and that's really what's at stake here. >> can i just say, i was in red square that day. nbc asked president reagan when he was standing with gorbachev, do you still think it's the evil empire. and he said no. remarkable. >> that was another day, another era. >> exactly. >> the coverage doesn't start until jon meacham and andrea mitchell -- guys, i was riveted, i could listen to you guys speak all day. >> he speaks in poetry. >> and it doesn't start until jon meacham talks about bipartisanship. andrea mitchell, you made all of us so proud last night. >> thank you so much, it was all of us at msnbc. >> we expect those hearings to get back 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(laughs nervously) of course i know your name. i just get you mixed up with the other guy. what's his name? what's your name? switch to geico®. you could save 15% or more on car insurance. could you just tell me? i want this to be over. wthat's why xfinity hasu made taking your internetself. and tv with you a breeze. really? yup. you can transfer your service online in about a minute. you can do that? yeah. and with two-hour service appointment windows, it's all on your schedule. awesome. so while moving may still come with its share of headaches... no kidding. we're doing all we can to make moving simple, easy, awesome. go to xfinity.com/moving to get started. we are back. we are minutes away, we think, from the resumption of questioning of today's witnesses, fiona hill and david homes. we're joined by nbc's garrett haake live for us on capitol hill. garrett, what is the plan for this afternoon and what do the democrats think they gained from these witnesses, and what if any cautions will the republicans take? >> reporter: nicolle, democrats feel like there's more to be gained from fiona hill and her expertise particularly on the questions of russian interference. i think they're going to want and use her as a proxy for john bolton in a number of ways about what his view was of this entire ukraine scandal. it's increasingly clear to me at least from my conversations with democrats on the committee, they have no interest in waiting on john bolton. here is my conversation with jackie speier from earlier. >> do you think this is the last public hearing, then? >> i'm not sure. we're going to meet as a committee after this. but at this point, we don't have any others scheduled. >> we have put together a body of work that can be now transferred to the judiciary committee for them to review. and as they determine whether or not to move forward with articles of impeachment. >> reporter: democrats are increasingly confident they've gotten what they need here. as for mr. holmes, i think they've given about what they expect today. i think dr. hill will be the focus of most of this afternoon's questioning. it will be very interesting to me to see how republicans, if republicans tries to discredit the two of them. i suspect they will go after mr. holmes' memory. i don't know whether or not devin nunes will take the bait here with dr. hill or not. the two went back and forth in statements where they had significant time in between their commentary this morning, but i'm not exactly sure if that's a fight he wants to have here today or not. >> i wanted to ask you about sort of the mood, when she delivered in that opening statement a stinging, direct rebuke of conspiracy theories, specifically the conspiracy theory being spread by rudy giuliani, echoed by the president's allies, people like devin nunes, that ukraine had some role in election meddling. it's a conspiracy theory that was debunked and revealed by donald trump's own homeland security adviser tom bossert, who said he ran around the west wing waving his arms, trying to disavow the president of that because it was a lie. what did it feel like in the room when fiona hill brought all this up in her opening statement? >> reporter: most of the members were studiously following along on the statement. i was watching congressman nunes who has been, i think it's fair to say, contemptuous of this entire process. he makes no effort to hide his disdain for any of this. i've not seen he and adam schiff make eye tacontact the last thr days, he just has been leaning back in his chair glaring at the witnesses as this has been going on on, and you felt some of the same antipathy today. dr. hill's comments put republicans in a tough spot. republicans have been complaining that democrats haven't called any of their witnesses. i had a bizarre exchange where a republican said they haven't called any of them. i said, what about volker and morrison, those were witnesses republicans wanted. and he said, no, they're not the ones we really want. there's just not enough "there" there. the degree to which republicans are hanging on to that as defense of the president shows you the trouble they're in on defending on some of the merits. to me, one of the shocking things over the last two days has been that it's almost just completely accepted now, every witness has said that there was a quid pro quo for the white house meeting. everyone takes this as almost just an understood fact here, that the white house was willing to withhold this meeting until it got investigations. that makes a very short bridge to the white house wanting to withhold the military aid as well. there's been no serious effort to undermine that simple fact of the withholding of the white house meeting which still, as they state here today, never happened. >> i'm so glad you said that, garrett. it is our job, we're paid to stare at the trees and talk about the trees, but the forest that i think was crystallized yesterday by sondland's testimony is that the military aid and the meeting were conditioned on the investigations into 2016 and biden, and that was through the regular channel, the regular channel atop which sits donald trump, the vice president, the secretary of state, rudy giuliani is swirling around and contaminating some of it, but that was the policy. not a single witness, republican or democratic, has disputed that fact, ever. >> reporter: no. and i think the last couple of pillars of the republican defense that are still standing to some degree here, and i think we'll see them fall back on here, are the questions, does biden equal burisma. here you see career staffers, experts in ukraine, who are very quick to make that connection whereas some of the political appointees were slower to make that connection. does biden equal burisma in terms of investigations, to what degree is rudy giuliani speaking for the president when he's speaking for the president. i think those will be the key things here. and whether or not the withholding of aid was conditioned on the investigations or whether it speaks to the president's, you know, long held concerns about ukraine. those are the three things left i think we will hear republicans hit over and over and over again as the least weakened elements of their defense. >> it's so interesting, garrett, i know you have to go, but my last question for you is, the evolution of the republican defense. last week they seemed to hang their hat on what could have been effective, that was going after the proximity or lack of proximity to the conduct under scrutiny. they said, oh, you weren't a personal witness. fiona hill invoked executive privilege this morning in a moment that had to send a shiver down the spine of anyone thinking of make that argument anymore. >> reporter: yeah, i thought that was interesting, executive privilege about other white house phone calls she had listened in on. the question was was this like any other phone call and she didn't want to go there, which suggests to me that it's probably not unlike other white house phone calls, which is a whole other set of problems for those defending the president. i've thought about the republican defense as a fighting retreat, so much of the defenses you knew would get overwhelmed later. when republicans were saying in the beginning stages, these were only hearsay witnesses, folks who weren't on the call, we already had the schedule that there were witnesses who were listening to the call who would be coming to testify in the next few days. so you have seen -- and you could see it coming down the line, this evolution of talking points and evolution of the republican defense. that's why i mentioned the other pillars. the only one i didn't mention would be the throw rudy under the bus defense. gordon sondland made it very clear he wasn't going to go down alone. if republicans decide that the last defensible position here is that rudy was ordering this and the president didn't know, maybe that will be the final defensive talking point here. but we haven't reached that barricade yet. >> all right, garrett haake, we're so lucky to have you up there for us, come back out whenever you can, we'll always break in and want to hear what you are learning. thank you, my friend. >> reporter: thanks, nicolle. >> go ahead, claire. >> i was going to say, the whistle-blower distraction is just as hollow. >> yeah. >> as these other defenses. because once everything started coming out, and all the corroboration, i mean, we just have mountains of corroboration. who cares who the tipster was? it's so irrelevant. and, you know, i'm supposed to be a political analyst so let me just inject some politics here, just some raw politics. trump has a problem in the suburbs. he has a problem with a lot of women in the suburbs who have traditionally voted for republicans. what we're seeing in these elections around the country, we're seeing the suburbs switch from pinkish-red to purple-ish blue, light blue. and when you look at what's going on in these hearing rooms, for those women and men that live in the suburbs that are college-educated, that are watching these hearings, compare and contrast dr. hill with what the president has done today. dr. hill has been measured, smart, dedicated. and what did the president do this morning? he tweeted that one of the members of congress was human scum. >> did he really? he missed that. >> yeah, no, he said that adam schiff was human scum. >> staking out his claim on the low road. >> yes. and it's got to drive his political people crazy, because rather than him realizing he's got this incredible disconnect with people who want him to behave well, they just want him to have good manners. i mean, they would probably put up with him more if he would just have better manners. so this is really a day, if noon he is and stefanik and jordan go after this woman, you know, then they are playing right into the hands of all these congressional candidates that have eyes on republican-held suburban congressional seats. >> and the senator's point, you said politics, but the politics also doubles back to the substance. how many people have made the mistake of trying to predict events? it didn't work well for the press to try to predict the outcome of 2016. it didn't work well to predict six months ago, it looks like pelosi isn't doing impeachment. that was dead wrong, opposite of what happened. and right now people are trying to predict what the senate will do. i don't know what the senate will do and i don't think our core expertise is predicting that. but to the senator's political and substantive point, it matters, if a fact-finding process of a branch of the u.s. government determines that foreign policy is either on sale or being used to extort election cheating. because not only is that bad for the obvious reasons, when you say it out loud, it also means our national security is being undercut. and as you, nicolle, and i think everyone on the panel has talked about, looking at ms. hill as a nonpartisan, career person who has served in both parties, or yesterday, ms. cooper who serves at the pentagon, these people are concerned chiefly with national security. so it matters if the investigation, and boy, has the evidence piled up, shows to the public, shows to the country that that has been -- that national security has been undermined. does it also matter in politics? the senator knows more about that than i do, but probably. >> it does. >> the things that matter in politics are things that cross-pressure your brand. and his brand, if nothing else, is big, strong strongman who has to lie about his weight, lie about how he wins elections, i think he said 13,456 lies, but who's counting, not me. there are things he's doing now that cross-pressure not the judgment that any of us -- not an examination of whether or not he's loyal to the rule of law, he's not. not an examination of whether or not he's credibly accused of sexual misconduct by 19 women, he dis. not an examination of whether he debases the office, in my opinion he does. his base doesn't care about any of that. but his base does care about his projection of strength. and when you say i can't win without cheating, that really begins to cross-pressure his brand. >> i think that's so right and it's another example also of how the political and to your point, nicolle, brand, comes together with ari's point about the legal, which is the primary thing that republicans can do right now, which is still fairly weak in my view, based on the evidence, is to say, all bad, just not impeachable, just doesn't rise to the level of removing a president before an election. and what counters that is this point, to your point on the politics and brand is, the best view of this evidence is that donald trump is completely manipulable by our attorneys and by his personal attorney who are corrupt. >> and it's weak. >> it's weak and it's impeachable, thanks, ari, for making my debate points in our impeachment debate, since i have abuse of authority. but this is a central tenet of what james madison, hamilton, mason, said about the importance of the impeachment provision and why you would remove a sitting president without an election, goes to the degree to which they're undermining the country. andrew johnson was the first impeachment process. it was for abuse of power. it was for, in this instance we would translate that to your point about brand, weakness that endangers the national security. >> and chuck, just to bring it back to sort of the conversation we were having about fiona hill, the contrast doesn't help donald trump either. strength is being embodied during this 12-week period, since the whistle-blower complaint came out by people he likes to attack. they now look stronger than him. the whistle-blower is stronger than donald trump with his chest thumping big baby bully act, he couldn't beat the whistle-blower whose identity is still being protected, barely, by adam schiff. the whistle-blower's complaint went to a trump appointee, the watchdog for the intelligence community. that trump appointee investigated it, corroborated it, and even going through the justice department, managed to somehow transmit it to congress where the impeachment investigation commenced. and now a dozen witnesses are also proving themselves to be stronger, even than anonymous, someone who works for trump but isn't strong enough to come out from under trump's bullying and put his or her name to the allegations of abuse of power. there has not been a greater display of strength than we've seen in the witnesses in the impeachment proceeding. and it makes trump's weakness all the more stark. >> sure. strength, dignity, principle, intelligence. it's not just fiona hill, although she's very impressive. it's everyone we've been hearing from. i'm looking for something this afternoon which might be a little different than what we've seen in the past. normally in a criminal trial, witnesses who are going to testify later are excluded from the courtroom, for very good reasons. you don't want them to see and hear what's going on. it's a rule. there are exceptions to it but it's a rule. and so this is not quite that, right? this is not a courtroom. this is television. this is a hearing. fiona hill, and i imagine mr. holmes, have seen exactly what has happened over the last several days. so have their attorneys. even if they didn't watch it themselves, people who are taking care of them and helping them prepare watched it. i imagine you're going to see fiona hill and david holmes stand up not just for their departments, not just for their profession, not just for their own personal dignity but for the facts. i don't imagine they're going to be pushed around very easily today. >> and we know that is donald trump's least -- that is the enemy against which donald trump does the worst. i mean, he can take on institutions because his base, to jon meacham's point, has a lot of skepticism about institutions. he can take on the media because his base has a lot of skepticism that right wing media has seeded. but facts are stubborn things. >> i wanted to follow one thing ari said, i completely agree we shouldn't try and predict what the senate might do, because we've had almost everything else turn on us, at least collectively, our predictions. but the senate actually has to take two votes. were they to impeach him and convict him and remove him, the senate has to have a second vote which is whether or not to further bar him from ever holding office again, right? and i think people sometimes forget. so you wouldn't just be removing a president in advance of an upcoming election. you would be removing him forever. and so, you know, what the senate ultimately does, we shall see. but i think that we have to keep in mind that that second vote may be every bit as important as the first one. >> and briefly, we don't know what the articles of impeachment are yet. >> right. >> so what are you even predicting, right, if you say convict this person of x versus y, nicolle, there are certainly people in the senate who care or say or have run on saying they care about their oath and looking at those articles. so the case that comes to follow the process that garrett was just telling us about, which is fast-moving, if they get through these hearings and don't have more and write a report out of intelligence over thanksgiving and it gets to judiciary, then it becomes what are those articles and what does that trial look like. we're a long way from the adjudication of that. >> i want to bring in david jolly, a former republican member of congress from the state of florida, he's since left the republican party. we're lucky to have his voice as part of conversations like this. david jolly, your thoughts. >> first, on the morning's testimony, i think we can't take a step back from what you were talking about earlier particularly with jon meacham. what fiona hill said to us as a nation is, we're in trouble. it reflected very much bob mueller's closing statement, what we heard from an impassioned elijah cummings, that we're a nation whose divisions have been exploited by an adverse foreign nation state. the reason that context is important is, first, what are we going to do about it, and secondly, it paints the republican line of questioning as not just maddening but sickening in many ways, heartbreaking, that in fact perhaps russia has achieved what it was striking out to achieve, that we have one of the two major parties who is willing to engage in overlooking the truth, overlooking facts. and i think ultimately the party, and i know maya and i have talked about this in the past, you could get to the point where you say the conduct was wrong but not impeachable. but the republicans aren't allowed to get to that point with donald trump. what we've seen is they're going to make the case that it's not proven, it's secondhand information, you weren't in the room, donald trump didn't explicitly ask you to do this, it was rudy doing this. the problem with that, nicolle, is it requires republicans to suggest that only donald trump speaks the truth. a man who said he was going to show us his taxes, a man who claimed he won the popular vote but illegal votes were counted, a man who said mexico was going to build the wall, a man who suggested a hurricane was going to hit alabama and used a sharpie to try to convince the nation he was telling the truth. that is the truth that republicans are having to claim to the nation as the only truth, and all of these corroborating witnesses somehow are lying. and if that is the position they take, they're affirming fiona hill's warning and bob mueller's warning and elijah cummings' warning to us. it's a bigger moment than just the impeachment of the president. >> fiona hill and her lawyer taking their seats alongside david holmes and his lawyer. looks like the questioning in the second session with these witnesses today is about to begin. >> we have no members. >> ari, we've talked about the weaknesses in the republican defenses. if they were to try to get themselves on offense with someone get himself on offense, might that look like. we have seen them try to big p diplomats so say there is nothing wrong, but i have a hard time imagining what this will look like from the nunes access of disinformation. >> that is a great question that we have not seen answered and we're looking at this something of a ritual here on capitol hill which is an accommodation for the traditional still photographers that put out the dramatic pictures of people so to see these witnesses and it can appear to us and the viewers to be something of a head fake. then we'll see if any members come in the room on this busy day. but to answer the question, if you were looking at this from the perspective of what ask still a fairly empty set of committee tables there, the republican argument that would do best is the reasonable or mumble hypothetical. >> like will hurd, which would be to say that okay, maybe you're right and maybe you knew everything and maybe you worked on this 24/7, and she earned the compliment. so the witnesses came in, they reseeded at the tables from which they testified this morning, and we showed you that picture, none of the members files back into the room yet. maybe they got a miscue about the votes being taken place today being completed. clearly they not. it doesn't look like one side of the other was caucusing or gaming out a strategy because there are not members from either side in this room. as of yet, i'm sorry, go ahead. >> i agree, that is why this looks different and unusual. but i think that the humble hypothetical as i'm calling it is you live and breathe this, you know it, your colleagues may know it, but isn't it possible, even understandable, that your busysupervisors and other individuals, perhaps trying to help the president on the side, that they didn't understand everything that you know? so they went along and maybe they pursued things that didn't turn out to the be true. and you tease that out, and by the way, as we all have prosecutors -- >> here i am again, four attorneys and me, they are doing that and not antagonizing and bringing out a hostile witness. they would be something they are misinformed, and in the policy makes process, i'm surprised that no one ask asked. my job is to call it so i will say it, have you ever worked with an ambassador that is a novice and a donor? are there donors that get ambassadorships in both parties, and they have started to see it in the last several days, and they had no business, no credible argument to be there, and we're doing to quote mr. sondland, we're doing quid pro quo bribery. >> a source told me that they were working to not grab on to everything about russia's transgressions, sinister demise, and reclaim those republican issues. get themselves back in the sort of mold. someone very close to trump, i wonder if there is any source of last gasp of that in the republican party. if there is a single member. will herd is the only member that could possibly do that, but do you think any of them are try to lean into fiona hill's knowledge and get themselves on america's side? >> absolutely not. >> says clare at the end of like 80 hours on tv. >> here is her trap, you know i will borrow kamala's phrase from last night. she said that trump was pumped by kim jong un. these guys if they take up the case they have been pressing, that this is all about the ukraine and the dnc, and the server, and crowd strike. if they do that they're falling into fiona hill's trap that you're getting punked by putin. we can make the argument that the only person that pumped trump more than kim jong un is putin, and the entire defense they're putting out there, a big part of the defense is that ukraine was meddling in our election. she said this is clearly rub sh -- russian propaganda. you know who they will not make happy if they do that? the boss? >> it is stunning to imagine fiona hill with their clarity and strength, who left many of us awe struck. her story of growing up poor being a coal miners daughter. and coming and serving presidents because of her expertise, just imagining that functioning, the greg miller -- >> it absolutely does, i found her words today haunting, i wrote down what she said. this is what the russian government was hoping for. this is extraordinary for them. with very little money and in relatively short time they imagined to upset the greatest democracy that the planet has ever known. i don't think it is fatal. i think we have recovered from bad things in our history and we will recover again, but they did a heck of a job using relatively little resources. they also had, i think, a client. >> in donald trump? >> yeah, i think so. this is a hard thing to know for sure and i want to be careful here because the mueller team said very clearly in volume one there was no evidence that any americans conspired with the russians and intentionally broke u.s. law, but they were sure happy to receive it. that is abundantly clear even from volume one of the mueller report. so it may have been a situation that facts come together that really helps rub shssians. i would hope every other american politician would have rejected this saying this is in scene, we're not meeting in any tour to except information that may be harmful to our opponent. >> after we learned about that donald trump made the phone call to zelensky where they address some of these issues. so the day after robert mueller testified, if not in this room, if one that looked a whole lot like it, in front of this very committee and he said to the congressman, as we hit here right now, russia is still attacking our democracy. the next day he picked up the phone and made that call at the heart of his own impeachment. >> this is exactly what the russian government was hoping for. >> one quick point on this because chuck is the most fair minded, elegant, and balanced man i know, and i would say that is the most generous reading and we have evidence that donald trump understood quite well and that giuliani on may 9th saying i'm donald trump's defense attorney, and we're going and digging this up in ukraine. it played on fox news, we can't pretend he didn't hear it, but i think that while it is true that we don't have all of the direct evidence, we have plenty of evidence -- >> we know that even though he