Than the String Quartet you had with the cellos. I am glad you let our viewers now know you are one of the most accomplished celloists. People dont know i have a stand up base that i play and move over to play the cello. Whatever it takes to drama ties the moment, i the moment, im here. Yesterday was a fascinating day as well. These days seem to drag on and on with news. But yesterday, of course, while we were still on the air the whistleblower report came out and there were hearings, a lot of recriminations going back and forth. Interesting enough, i dont know if you know this enough, i was justry mind just reminded i was in congress once, we went for impeachment and everybody ran to their corners. I didnt quite see that happening yesterday. No. You saw it from reliable sources, people in the media, couple senators. But you see republicans either keeping their powder dry or saying yeah, this is important. You had the acting dni that the complaint is unprecedented. He believes, the dni does, that the whistleblowers acting in good faith. You have Rudy Giuliani scrambling, publishing texts saying did i all of this at the direction of the state department. Hes covering his rear end on that saying i wasnt freelancing, it was the state department. And the president of the United States saying that the people inside the white house who provided the whistleblower information were, quote, almost a spy and usithen musing and wag the days we used spy in this country. Here we are on capitol hill and we have a Pulitzer Prize winner eugene robinson. Sam stein is with us. Also historian, author of solo america. And jon meacham, hes an nbc news and msnbc contributor. With all of that, we showed you happening in just a weeks time the political ground beneath the president is rapidly shifting. A new poll that shows a 13point swing in favor of impeachment. Coming just days after House Speaker nancy pelosi announced a formal inquiry. The new Politico Morning Consult online poll shows a 7 point jump over the weekend while opposition dropped leaving voters 43 to 43. They said President Trump committed an impeachable offense, a record high. Half of americans say they back impeachment, up three points since over two weeks ago. And an npr pbs news hour poll conducted on wednesday also shows support among voters of the house impeachment inquiry 49 to 48 . Gene, we always look back either at the clinton impeachment. Yeah. Or Richard Nixons tree treveils and how long it took people to support impeachment. This is just a snapshot of the last two days. Theres been a lot of revelations, things may cool off by monday or tuesday, but we never saw a shift like this back in 70 two, 73, and 74. The past two days have caused an earthquake and you look at the impeachment polls, a dramatic shift with americans pretty much even on whether they support impeachment or not. Exactly. As you recall during the nixon impeachment, it was very slow. The way the numbers eventually got to where they are now on President Trump. And i think its because this is some easy to understand. This is so clear cut. You know, people believe some would say its so wrong. Its so wrong and theres nothing that complicated about it, you know. The president should not use United States foreign and National Security policy as an instrument to try to gather dirt on an opponent in the election. Its just wrong. You have a 4something page Mueller Report verses a seven page actually verses a memo from the white house that really spelled it out in very basic terms. And its not in dispute, its all there. From the white house. From the white house. Its not in dispute. You actually had of course the whistleblowers complaint lining up very neatly with what the white house themselves released. Right. And, sam, i want to go against the grain here a bit this morning where all people are talking about musing about the conventional wisdom is that the risk is with democrats. Right. Theyre going too quickly in the is what donald trump is trying to spread and trumpists on tv. Actually, the real risk seems to me to be with republicans who have seen donald trump lie for the past three years and theyve gotten away with it. So jody ernst and others believe that they can say with a straight face, i havent read a seven, eightpage report. Ask me about ethanol and ill speak to that. With redactions. Shes in a swing state. Here is the against communiinte saying we are deeply troubled where the president of the United States held up military aid to a democracy under attack from russia until he got dirt that was dug up right. As was fwlin Bloomberg Opinion yesterday, no person in good faith could look at that and not say theres a quid pro quo. People are not as stupid as a lot of these republican senators are acting they are. Well, to mikas point, theres a simplicity to this that is easy to understand. And to your point you can tell its not a good thing by republicans because of the way theyre reacting to it. They havent read a ninepage complaint that takes 15 minutes to read. You have some senators saying i cant possibly comment on this because im going to be a potential juror in the impeachment process which which is patently absurd. I will say this. I was talking to people the other day about Public Opinion and if they were worried about it. They made the point unlike watergate the facts already out there. Watergate you waited for the tapes to be produced and the public went ba nan as. In this case we have the memorandum of the call. Its not like watergate. So these poll numbers, i suspect, eventually they will basically rest where the country is on trump. Youll see Something Like 50 plus percent for impeachment and low 40s against it, thats just the society we live in. This is where we are now, willie, with information from the white house where even people who maybe dont follow the news all the time and totally study history look at that and go, no, you dont do thats wrong. You dont do that. No, its patently and plainly wrong. And the polling that you guys just walked through may explain in part why nbc is reporting this morning that white house officials are scrambling to figure out their next teps fste countering the push for impeachment. There is rising anxiety, unease and concern inside white house that the whistleblowers allegations will seriously wound the president. They described a sense of, quote, total panic over the past week at the lack of a plan to address this new reality. Another person familiar with the discussions described the mood inside the white house as shellshocked with increasing wariness that as the impeachment inquiry drags out, the likelihood increases President Trump could respond erratically and become, quote return manageable. As if that hasnt already happened. According to the Washington Post, trumps adviser are looking at a split screen. Hes stepping up his Fall Schedule of Campaign Rallies to galvanize his supporters outside of washington and to portray House Democrats as liberal insiders who are focused on impeachment instead of governing. Theres a piece here that cites white house insiders and officials and that is that this isnt a story we can tweet away. Theres a line if there saying this isnt something we can move on quickly. Whenever theres been something bad for the president hes been able to change the conversation. That wont be the case here. It wont. And one of the things thats fascinating about the polling in particular is if you get to about half and half in this particular moment, thats the old 60 40, right . 50 50 i never can remember that part, but you understand. 60 40 in the old days would now manifest itself as a pretty evenly split country. And thats for all the reasons we know the enhanced tribalism, the constant partisan media that has returned, the 18th, 19th century model, thats kind of back where we are. The thing im looking for, and joe would appreciate this, is the Charles Wiggins moment. So, willie, try to control yourself with your excitement and mika about Charles Wiggins being mentioned. But Charles Wiggins, as my friend has written, was a California Republican congressman who was all in for nixon until august 2nd, 1974 when he was given a transcript of the smoking gun tape where nixon tries to use the cia to stop the fbi. And at that point, reading the words on the page, not even hearing it, but reading the words on the page a guy who had been totally for nixon, totally, this is august 2nd, 74, 25 months, 26 months after the watergate breakin he decides at this point his duty to his constitutional role is to vote for impeachment. This was a pro, pro nixon guy if the was the words on the page. My question is, will the words on the page have a couple of Charles Wiggins particularly in the senate . I was thinking the same thing. Ive told the story, mika and my father many times before, all in for nixon through woodward and bernstein. And when my dad saw the words on the page, i remember it like it was yesterday. I was i think i was maybe 9, 10. And my dads sitting there reading and he was all in for nixon. And it was all Eastern Liberal conspiracy. And i remember my dad looking at the newspaper and just saying, if this guy did half of this, he is unworthy to be president of the United States. And just is its a sad moment. It turned like that. Yeah. And what is so interesting here is we have some of the words on the page now. Right. The white house, though, have their version of, quote, the tapes. Yeah. They moved them. To secret service. Not for classified reasons, not for National Security reasons, but to protect donald trump from either politically damaging consequences or from impeachment. And so we actually know where the trump tapes are. Yeah. And the question now is, mika, how does congress get them . Are they going to have to go through the courts to get them to get the verbate of that conversation where he lays it all out . Top democrats are accusing the president of witness intimidation after he attacked the whistleblowers sources. It happened yesterday morning at a private event at the u. S. Mission to the United Nations. Here is the video obtained by bloomberg. I want know whos the person that gave the whistleblower, whos the person that be gave the whistleblower the information . Because thats close to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart, right . Spies and treason, right . We used to handle them a little differently than we do now. So, gene, the president of the United States, we cant underline this enough, the president of the United States. Yeah. While at the United Nations at our mission. Its just incredible. Talking talking to civil servants, people that actually work for the taxpayers. Exactly. Said of a whistleblower and those who gave the whistleblower information in effect that they were spies and if it were the good old days we could kill them. Yes. Is basically what he said. Thats what he said. It was a death threat. Isnt it amazing how it parallels what he said in the campaign where he said in the gold o good old days we could beat them up and take them out on a stretcher . Now donald trump is saying, in effect, we should be able to kill whistleblowers. I havent read the whistleblowers statute. Im thinking its probably a violation to threaten to do that. Death. To threaten death. Retaliation and it probably is. Long for the days of hanging people. And he directly equates whistle blowing, which any president of the United States has to consider a good thing, right . Because thats supposed to help us make government honest, to make it run well. Wasnt there a whistleblower that started fast and furious . Just curious . Yeah. Did any republicans talk about any of the whistleblowers in the Obama Administration . About maybe that they should be hanged. They were great, they should get the medal of freedom. But whistleblowers against him should get the chair. It is witness intimidation is what it is. Its a very stark and dark warning to people around him who, frankly, lets be honest, who have leaked like sieves for his entire sometimes its worth stepping back and putting aside all of complaints and transcripts. Having a president who talks nostalgically about executing people is bizarre and scary. And it also equates a whistleblower its adding up. To treason. As a practical matter, it doesnt serve him well as all in this process, it makes it much more harder for him to fight fee impeachment and it makes it more difficult. Lets bring in former acting solicit it general, now an msnbc legal contributor neil. Also White House Reporter for the l. A. Times and nbc political analysts eli stokols. The Los Angeles Times was the first to obtain the audio of those comments by President Trump at that private event. So, neil, lets begin with you. Talk about the whistleblower complaint and your takeaways from yesterdays revelations. Yeah, i think legally the most significant thing is that the whistleblower complaint, which we got to all read yesterday, at least beyond the republican senators havent read it yet, all of us who read it i think we were struck by the fact that this is eerily similar, almost word for word in places, to the readout that the white house issued the day before of the call. So this massively bolsters the whistleblowers credibility. And then we learned two things yesterday. One, that the whistleblower said that there was a pattern of hiding these transcripts and communications with foreign leaders and putting them on classified servers which is a flat out violation of executive order 1. 7, the classification order. Then second we saw that remarkable tape that well talk about in a moment in which the president is essentially threatening the whistleblower. All of that is not just legally significant and potentially criminal, its atmospherically significant because i think the entire story, the reason why ukraine has caught on so much is because it feeds something that i think some of us had thought but we never had hard proof of or at least not as much hard proof of, the idea that the president is not acting as the president of the American People, hes acting as the president for donald trump and donald trump alone. Right. The president puts his own self interests above the country every day hes in the office. And certainly for people that have been saying that for three years, this ukraine story certainly underlines that fact. Neil, let me ask you about the procedure of getting you talk about the fact that it is a violation of an executive order. How do democrats, how do americans get transparency . How do they get these transcripts, these tapes of phone calls that the white house intentionally classified incorrectly in violation of that executive order . Well, i tell you what they shouldnt have to do, which is go to court. Theyll win in court just as in the nixon tape case, the prosecutors won there to get that. But that would be, i think, a grave perversion of our Justice System to force our members of congress go to court. The whole point here is that this stuff has been misclassified and hidden from not just the American People, but even people within the executive branch. And so i think that its the executive branchs obligation to turn that information over to the Intelligence Committees. And if they dont, i think congress would be well within its right to selectively defund anyone behind this and go after these people. This would be an outage us thing to do to hide this from the American People. Lets move to the whistleblower comments the president made yesterday talking longingly about the days of people that committed treason were executed and suggesting that the same thing should happen to those that gave information to the whistleblower. Whats your reaection to thctiod what are the consequences to that . I was so disgusted by that. I had the privilege of defending the last whistleblower in a National Security case at the Supreme Court, and republicans came to his defense. Of course this was during the Obama Administration. So, you know, it was a different thing. People like senator Chuck Grassley and others saying this is the most proud american tradition, it goes all the way back to the continental congress. We heard none of that yesterday. Instead we heard the president effectively threatening a witness. Theres a criminal statute that makes it a crime to threat en witness before congress. Its despicable and impeachable behavior and its the last thing we should expect from the president of the United States. Neil, we know you have to go. Thank you very much for joining us on this big day. Okay, so eli stoke he wiols are that we need more, but if you could give us some are actireac the room, but also i think were at the point where the president says something and its even flip. Sure, i would take help from a Foreign Government if they give me the information, why not . That we might need to take it seriously. We know to take hi