address the role that race plays in law enforcement. >> marq claxton gets the last word tonight. marq, thank you very much for joining us tonight. really appreciate it. >> thank you, lawrence. >> that is tonight's last word. "the 11th hour" with brian williams starts now. tonight, new reporting that says some of this nation's most powerful prosecutors are collecting documents on a man who was once among the nation's most powerful prosecutors. now he happens to be rudy giuliani. plus another witness, another former insider tells congress over another marathon session what she knows and what she saw from inside the west wing regarding giuliani's shadow foreign policy in ukraine. also tonight, there's a new attempt to fix the brutal turkish military campaign, an attempt to cover the american forces who have been ordered to retreat. all of it of course the result of one trump phone call and the green light it conveyed as "the 11th hour" gets under way on a monday night.

well, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. day 998 now of the trump administration. there is new reporting tonight from "the wall street journal," and it indicates that the federal investigation into rudy giuliani and just what he's been up to in ukraine appears to be more consequential and deeper than first thought. the journal writes that prosecutors in the southern district of new york, the manhattan office of the justice department, in effect, are, quote, examining rudy giuliani's business dealings in ukraine, including his finances, meetings, and work for a city mayor there as well as giuliani's bank records. witnesses have been questioned about mr. giuliani since at least august, and prosecutors want to know more about mr. giuliani's role in an alleged conspiracy involving two of his business associates. last week, giuliani's associates lev parnas and igor fruman were

arrested on campaign finance and conspiracy charges including trying to get the u.s. ambassador to ukraine fired. "the new york times" first reported that federal prosecutors were looking at giuliani. this weekend, trump made a show of standing by his man, first by meeting giuliani for lunch at his virginia golf club, then following that up with a full-throated live via telephone defense of rudy with jeanine pirro on fox. >> he was a great mayor, one of the greatest -- maybe the greatest mayor in the history of new york. he was a fantastic prosecutor. i know nothing about him being under investigation. i stand behind rudy giuliani, absolutely. >> so this week brings brand-new testimony from key witnesses in the house impeachment inquiry. several state department officials are scheduled to appear. every day this week, it's someone new for closed-door depositions.

career foreign policy expert fiona hill, who last worked on trump policy in the west wing, wrapped up her closed-door interview earlier this evening after ten long hours with lawmakers. she's the first person from inside the white house to testify about trump's dealings with ukraine. tonight democratic congressman jamie raskin gave some clues as to what he heard during that testimony. >> what was your takeaway about rudy giuliani's role in pushing ukraine policy for the trump administration? >> rudy giuliani has clearly been a leading force for the administration in defining a shadow foreign policy in ukraine. there was an official foreign policy which was attempting to counter corruption in ukraine, and then there was rudy giuliani and, you know, the gang that couldn't shoot straight who worked for him, who were involved precisely in connecting with corruption in ukraine and promoting corruption in ukraine.

>> that was just tonight. this week's other star witness will be the u.s. ambassador to the european union. his name is gordon sondland. he's a political appointee and a trump donor. he appears on thursday on the hill. he was the guy who responded to concerns about trump's scheme in ukraine with that text message, quote, the president has been crystal clear. no quid pro quos of any kind. trump even pointed to that text as evidence of his exoneration. >> the text message that i saw from ambassador sondland, who is highly respected, was there's no quid pro quo. he said that. he said, by the way, it almost sounded like in general. he said, by the way, there's no quid pro quo, and there isn't. there is no pro quo. that was the text message that i saw, and that nullified everything. >> it almost sounded like a general.

"the washington post" reports that when sondland testifies before the house committees thursday, he plans to say the content of that text message was relayed to him directly by president trump, and he doesn't know if it was true. the post also reports, quote, sondland contends he didn't know about the biden connection until a whistle-blower complaint and transcript surfaced in late september. now, to trust sondland's testimony here, members of congress are going to have to believe that sondland had not seen televised appearances by giuliani over the spring and summer or numerous newspaper and magazine articles. and amid all this, trump is also facing growing chaos in the middle east. just over a week ago, he essentially signed off on turkey's invasion of northern syria, allowing turkish forces to attack kurdish fighters who had been allied with the u.s. in the war on isis. since then the region has been plunged into violence. turkey has expanded its assault. today trump sent vice president pence and treasury secretary

mnuchin out to the microphones outside the west wing lobby to announce that he's imposing sanctions on turkey for their actions in syria. and try to tamp down the blowback that trump has received from members of his own party. and a heads-up here. as you listen to vice president pence, please remember this is his boss's own doing. >> the united states of america did not give a green light to turkey to invade syria. the president has been very clear on that point and reiterated that to president erdogan today. president trump pressed him very strongly in a telephone call today to immediately embrace a cease-fire. >> well, that guy is now going to the rescue. mike pence says he's going to travel to the region to work out a cease-fire. meanwhile, the kurdish troops who were u.s. allies have now turned to the government of syrian president bashar al assad

and to russian leader -- wait for it -- vladimir putin for help in battling turkish forces. richard engel said from syria tonight that the combat on the ground is redrawing the map of the middle east as we watch, on the fly. it may not be a coincidence that vladimir putin was in the region today visiting saudi arabia. there is also mounting concern for the safety of our own u.s. troops in syria. their positions have come under attack from turkey. about 1,000 or so americans are now preparing to retreat from those positions, but as "the new york times" reports, quote, those troops are trapped for now since turkey has cut off the ro roads. removing them may require an airlift, and that's the situation we're in on a monday night. let's bring in our leadoff discussion. philip rucker, pulitzer prize-winning bureau chief for "the washington post." a.b. stoddard, columnist and associate editor at real clear

politics. and michael steele, former chairman of the republican national committee. he is the host of the michael steele podcast. good evening, and welcome to you all. mr. rucker, i'd like to begin with you. i have to begin with your cross-town competition over at the "times." they just in the last few minutes have moved this story. the headline is "bolton objected to ukraine pressure campaign, calling giuliani a hand grenade." this is by our friends peter baker and nick fan dose, and it reads in part, the effort to pressure ukraine for political help provoked a heated confrontation inside the white house last summer that so alarmed john bolton, then-national security adviser, that he told an aide to alert white house lawyers, house investigators were told on monday. quote, i am not part of whatever drug deal rudy and mulvaney are cooking up, mr. bolton told

fiona hill to tell white house lawyers according to the testimony. phil, you have reported on the frenzy that followed the first word of the whistle-blower. it seems to me it has nowhere to go now but to continue as this is all ukraine all the time. >> yeah. i think that's right, brian. this is incredible reporting tonight by "the new york times," and congratulations to them because it takes you right to the belly of the beast. we're not talking about intelligence officials or national security councilmembers whose names we do not know. we're talking about giuliani, bolton, mulvaney. these are the key figures in president trump's orbit. there have been a lot of questions of late about john bolton, the national security adviser who departed only a month or so ago very abruptly and on bad terms with president trump. there have been questions about what he might know, what he might have witnessed, what he might have been aware of regarding the conduct and the relationship with ukraine, both president trump's, but also his attorney, rudy giuliani.

and now we're starting to get a clearer picture of all of that. this revelation, this testimony from fiona hill today, has to be troubling for the white house. it also points directly to the white house chief of staff, the acting chief of staff, mick mulvaney. we know from our reporting a month or so ago that it was mulvaney who withheld the military aid for ukraine at the direction of president trump. so he was involved in this scenario in that moment with the decision about the military aid. but now we're learning that he was a part of what bolton characterized as a drug deal. >> a.b., you kind of know what question is coming. i ask it to you with regularity. does this have the power, this ukraine matter writ large -- does it have the power to do what other stories have not, and that is make distance between republicans and their president? >> well, it's interesting, brian. the catastrophic decision over

syria to permit the turkish government to invade at the border has so taken up all the oxygen, and you know that members of congress are back from a two-week recess and really spent the day lambasting the administration for its response. now they're in sort of a wagon-circling cleanup mode where lindsey graham is leading the effort, the senator from south carolina. it's all hands on deck. he is not the chairman of the armed services committee. he is not the chairman of the foreign relations committee, but is telling everyone that they should come around to support whatever trump is doing, that president erdogan is underestimated. both the senator and the president -- and you know pence as you mentioned is leaving to also go and clean this up overseas. so they continue to talk about that and hope that that continues to sort of be the headline and, you know, they're rushing to the less cue, and they're going to try to keep trump on one position. he often changes his mind.

we'll see what this explosive testimony does, though, to their opinions about this. they've done their level best to stay quiet, but as phil points out, the idea that obviously john bolton has known all along about the way these decisions were made, who was involved from mike pompeo to mike pence, from mick mulvaney to rick perry, people at the highest level of the government, if not conspiring, knowing exactly what was going on. and it's making republicans incredibly nervous because they have no idea from day to day what revelations will come next. >> wow. michael steele, what she just said. >> exactly. a.b. just laid it out. she laid out the indictment of the situation as it stands right now in such a way that, yeah, there are a lot of nervous republicans coming back to washington this week. lindsey graham can be on point all day long. it doesn't matter. the vice president can go to turkey. he can go to the moon at this point. it doesn't matter because the

revelations that are coming and that are coming out now and will come out the rest of this week, they don't know, and they don't know how it's going to land. and so a lot of republicans have taken the position just keep our mouth shut and keep our head low, and then maybe we'll get through the next few days or the next week with small implosions around us, not big ones. >> here's the difference, mr. chairman. people from the inside are now coming forward and talking. >> yeah, and that's something they never expected. and certainly, you know, the white house throwing around executive privilege on everything has used that completely up. it has no value certainly with the congress at this point, and it has, i think, less and less value with the american people because we want to know exactly what they know and what they knew at the time, what they did, what the president did. the president dictated that text, all right? he put the words out on the street that there was no quid

pro quo. so this is now becoming more and more revealed, and folks sit back and go, maybe there is a "there" there. >> phil rucker, how do you reckon it is mike pence can stand in the driveway and say that there was no green light? this takes a heap of denial from top to bottom that this didn't entirely change when donald trump hung up the phone with erdogan. >> i mean, brian, it all changed when donald trump hung up the phone with erdogan. part of what was going on there was president trump wasn't following a script. he was kind of riffing in that call with president erdogan, which is frankly what he does in a lot of his conversations with foreign leaders. he was not following the direction of his advisers for months now. the national security team around a president has been warning him about the dangers, about the risks of pulling troops back out of syria, about this sort of series of dominoes

that would fall from that decision, and trump has largely ignored their advice and wanted to follow his own impulses. he did that with the phone call, and in the span of really only a week, we've now seen calamity. this is a human story of what is happening there in story, but it's also a geopolitical one because it's a huge win for russia. it's a win for assad. it could be a win or at least giving new life to isis, and president trump is trying to defend the decision in tweets, but he has not sort of come forward and fully explained what happened and why he did what he did and when to the american people. there's been no address or sort of formal communication from him to explain what's happening. all we're seeing is the images coming over of death and destruction. >> a.b., you've been at the intersection of journalism and mostly republican politics all your life, and mostly i want to just listen to you some more because among the names you just name-checked were pence and

pompeo, and if the way you lay it out it anything approaching end game here, this means the entire management structure of this administration has dirt on its hands here. >> this is the problem. we've known for months that mick mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, froze the aid and was building his own -- i mean we didn't know that. we've known that for a few weeks. for months we've known he had marginalized john bolton, so had secretary pompeo, and mulvaney had built his own version of the nsc, and they were, like i said, stuffing bolton somewhere in the basement. mike pence, the vice president, was supposed to be at president zelensky's inaugural celebration, and in a snub, the president did not let him go. instead, rick perry was sent. mike pence has known that rudy giuliani has been running around doing this since at least january. mick mulvaney is in on it. mike pompeo obviously knows a lot, and rick perry has decided to leave the administration after being involved in some of

these meetings where gordon sondland was told by the president, any meeting with me and the president of ukraine has to be approved by rudy giuliani. i mean if you're a republican on capitol hill, how can you take any more? >> michael steele? >> well put, a.b. >> you are laughing. let's take a minute and talk about america's mayor. >> yeah. it is -- it is disappointing and frustrating on so many levels, particularly for a lot of us who have worked with rudy and known him and his brand, if you will, in republican politics. and to watch him, like lindsey graham, just sort of throw it all away at the service and pleasure of donald trump is something astonishing. you know, i'm going to weigh these two men at any given point in time before right now, giuliani was the guy with the

heft. he was the guy that donald trump would go to and say, hey, rudy, can you help a brother out, you know? >> do you know a guy? >> yeah, do you know a guy? but to see this turnaround is just -- it speaks to the poison that comes from dealing with and being around this trumpification of our politics to the sense that you lose your common sense and you're willing to go off because donald trump wants you to go negotiate a side foreign policy deal to his own betterment, to his benefit. this doesn't benefit the united states. right now we're now, you know, sort of girding for when isis may strike again because you just released 800 of them because of this crazy policy. >> we just signed the isis renewal act of 2019. >> why did we go through all of this gathering and collecting and fighting and men and women dying to defeat isis, only to have this president, who made it his pledge coming in to defeat isis, actually give them the key

to get out of jail? >> can't imagine having three better guests to get our conversation started on another consequential night as we start what promises to be another consequential week. to philip rucker, a.b. stod ar, michael steele, our thanks. coming up for us, as the impeachment inquiry proceed,s neil cattial is here to talk with us. and later, it's under 24 hours away. 12 candidates on one debate stage. so much talking you won't believe it. our viewers' guide to what to look for as "the 11th hour" is just getting started on a monday night. here, it all starts with a simple...

hello! -hi! how can i help? a data plan for everyone. everyone? everyone. let's send to everyone! [ camera clicking ] wifi up there? -ahhh. sure, why not? how'd he get out?! a camera might figure it out.

that was easy! glad i could help. at xfinity, we're here to make life simple. easy. awesome. so come ask, shop, discover at your xfinity store today. aaddiction. how juuline hooked kids and ignited an public health crisis." other news outlets report- juul took $12.8 billion from big tobacco. markets e-cigarettes with kid friendly flavors and uses nicotine to addict them. 5 million kids use e-cigarettes. juul is "following big tobacco's playbook." and now, juul is pushing prop c to overturn e-cigarette protections. vote no on juul. no on big tobacco. no on prop c.

given that we already have the call record, we don't need the whistle-blower who wasn't on the call to tell us what took place during the call. we have the best evidence of that. we do want to make sure that we identify other evidence. it may not be necessary to take steps that might reveal the whistle-blower's identity to do that. >> so those comments brought this about from trump, and we quote. shifty schiff now seems to think we don't need the whistle-blower, who started the whole scam. the reason is that the whistle-blower has lost all credibility because the story is so far from the facts on the capital "t" transcript. also the second whistle-blower is no longer even mentioned. the house meantime is moving forward with the impeachment inquiry. tomorrow marks some key deadlines here. rudy giuliani, defense secretary mark esper, acting omb director russell vogt, and mike pence's office all have until tomorrow to hand over documents to congress. yesterday esper over at the

pentagon said his department will do everything it could to comply with the subpoena. but you'll recall just last week the white house straight-up refused to hand over documents to congress. in a letter, white house counsel pat cipollone told the democrats their impeachment inquiry was constitutionally invalid despite what it says in the constitution about the house having the sole power of impeachment. because we could all use a good lawyer right about now, we're so happy to be joined once again tonight by neal katyal, a veteran of the justice department and former acting solis for general during the obama administration. first of all, how is an impeachment constitutionally invalid? second of all, how does a white house straight-up say, we're not cooperating? >> i don't think they can do either, and let me say, brian, for the last two weeks i haven't

been doing much tv or anything because i've been trying to study the history of the three presidential impeachment proceedings and then compare it to all the evidence in ukraine that's come out over the last few weeks. and my ultimate conclusion -- and this will be part of a longer writing project -- is that i think that the president is going to be impeached. i don't think that he has any valid arguments to the contrary, and it's very, very serious. and it started with, of course, the transcript, which the president himself has released on july 25th. so when he goes and attacks the whistle-blower, i think schiff is absolutely right. the whistle-blower is not necessary at all. he started the chain of events, or she started the chain of events. but now we have the transcript itself, and then every day brings new evidence that's all damaging to the president, whether it's one of his former ambassadors saying something untoward happened. today john bolton, just a few hours ago, saying giuliani was a hand grenade.

there was a skecret deal being cooked up between the white house chief of staff and giuliani over pressuring ukraine over biden. all of this stuff is tremendously -- i mean, i don't know another word for it, but evil. and the idea that the president's going to win by attacking the impeachment investigation, you know, we had a president in our lifetimes who tried it. it was president nixon. it didn't turn out too well for him. >> neal, do you have reason to believe that the evidence this time around will be so compelling and this story will be so plainly obvious and easy to follow that lawmakers who so far have not been turned will ultimately be turned against the president? >> yes. so the evidence is all already there. so this isn't a case like mueller where you've got to have 22 months of investigation. these are the president's own words, his own documents. indeed he even just said on the

white house lawn, he said he would do it again and seek information from china. so we now know this is a president who has admitted to it. you can go back to the founder. you can look at james madison, alexander hamilton. all these folks say the primary evil, the thing they are so worried about a president doing, is going and seeking foreign influence over an election and trying to get himself re-elected. it is literally like what the textbook definition of an impeachment is. so he can run. he can try and hide. but he's actually admitted it and, you know, i do believe that in this country, that it is a country that is ultimately one of country over party. and, yes, i know that that's been tested over the last three years, but here the evidence is simple. it's clear, and it's overwhelming. >> have you any reservations over the ability of justices kavanaugh and gorsuch to fairly rule on cases involving the president who appointed them? >> well, i don't think that --

with respect to impeachment, the supreme court has said in a case called nixon v. united states, not president nixon, but walter nixon, a judge, that the supreme court has no role whatsoever in impeachment. i know the president keeps tweeting i'll see you in my supreme court over this fake impeachment and stuff like that. he can try and bring it to the supreme court. he will lose because the supreme court has been clear. now, there could be any number of documentary issues or something like that, that are brought in the context of criminal proceedings. but even there, i don't have reservations. people had reservations when the nixon tapes case went to the u.s. supreme court, which is part of the criminal investigation against him. and the supreme court had four justices appointed by president nixon himself. one of them, justice rehnquist, recused. the other three sat on the case. all three ruled against president nixon, and that will happen here because the president has made ridiculous, absurd executive privilege claims, and he's cried wolf too many times.

and i can't imagine that this supreme court would countenance that kind of lawlessness from our chief executive. >> neal ckatyal. as always, a great pleasure to have you on our broadcast tonight. >> thank you. coming up, our next guest, who oversaw syria policy in the last white house, will talk about just what it is the president has unleashed overseas. when you take align, you have the support of a probiotic and the gastroenterologists who developed it. align naturally helps to soothe your occasional digestive upsets, 24/7. so, where you go, the pro goes. go with align, the pros in digestive health. they have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to they use stamps.com print discounted postage for any letter any package any time right from your computer all the amazing services of the post office only cheaper

get our special tv offer a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again!

he is the founder of isis. he's the founder of isis, okay? he's the founder. >> you mentioned president obama being the founder of isis. what did you mean by that? and hillary clinton, the co-founder. >> exactly that. he's the founder of isis. he's the founder. he's a founding father. so i said "the founder of isis." obviously i'm being sarcastic. then -- but not that sarcastic to be honest with you. >> president trump frequently blamed president obama for the rise and formation of isis. nbc news now being told by an intel official in this country that this new turkish military campaign will serve to, quote, vastly increase the threat to americans from the islamic state militant group which remains intent on attacking the west. with us tonight to talk about all of it, ben rhodes, former deputy national security adviser

for president obama. ben, thank you very much for coming on. why do we have those concentric layers of hallways at the pentagon full of people walking briskly with stars on their shoulders? why all the hallways at the state department, the horn-rimmed glasses crowd walking just as briskly with their briefcases? the nsc in the west wing. if all of that rigor and expertise can be cast aside by one guy over the phone that has now done this to a u.s. ally and, as richard engel said tonight, the map of the middle east is being redrawn on the fly? >> that's precisely the question, brian. i think it's important to note that this is kind of unprecedented in the history of american foreign policy. president trump has had an impulse to do this, to withdraw support for the kurds, but he's been stopped in the past because none of his advisers would go along with that plan. so what he did here is he short circuited any process. having been in the white house for eight years, any decision

like this would be subject to a lot of scrutiny, a lot of meetings. what happened here is you had one phone call from the president of turkey to president trump. the same day an announcement is made that we are withdrawing the support from the kurds, that the turks can go forward with their military operation, basically green-lighted by the white house in that phone call, but also in a statement we all read. and now within just a matter of days, we see a humanitarian catastrophe with 150,000 people displaces. the kurds, our allies, being killed. we see a geopolitical controversy as russia, iran, and others are moving into that space and bashar al assad. and we see a national security crisis with those isis fighters being released. >> i want to play for you the secretary of defense on fox news sunday. we'll talk about it on the other side. >> it gets worse by the hour, chris. these are all the exact things that we have communicated to president erdogan and his ministers. i warned them that if they do this incursion, which we oppose, we will see everything from the

release of isis prisoners to a humanitarian catastrophe. it will damage u.s. relations with turkey. all this is playing out exactly as we predicted. we again urge president erdogan to stop and go back to the status quo. >> ben, this is secretary of defense. he happens to be a substantial guy. but listen to the tone. we've warned them they better not do this. they were given a tacit green light by any definition. >> yeah. brian, here's what's important. other leaders have figured out that one person makes the decision in this administration. it's president trump. and so they can just completely shut out and ignore anything that is said by anybody else because erdogan could go to trump himself and get the answer he wanted to hear, which is, go ahead. come on into syria. we'll pull back. we'll pull out. so it's kind of extraordinary to see these officials now talking about sanctions on turkey for the very operation that trump green-lighted to erdogan. and i think putin, erdogan, and others have sized up trump and

realize they can roll right over him and get what they want. >> i bet you've had cause to think back on your eight years in the west wing, especially tonight with "the new york times" reporting on john bolton. so shocked was he about what he witnessed and overheard, he told colleagues to approach lawyers. this quote is, i'm not part of whatever drug deal rudy and mulvaney are cooking up. that's the national security adviser, former, to the president of the united states, ben. >> yeah. and if the most senior national security official in the entire government thought that he had to go to lawyers, that means that he had an indication that this was potentially criminal behavior. you know, and so this story becomes clearer and clearer to us. i think the other thing that's clear, brian, too, is that president trump has treated a lot of people around him very poorly. he's treated john bolton poorly, fiona hill, who testified today. he treated the ambassador who he fired poorly. he's treated the entire national intelligence community and foreign service poorly.

the reason he's in trouble is the white house can try to block them from cooperating. they can try to block documents going from the white house to the hill. but what they cannot do is silence these people who have already left the administration or people who are in the foreign service. so what we're learning here is with every revelation, it gets worse for trump because it fills in this picture of donald trump essentially leading a criminal conspiracy from the white house. it's hard to imagine any information coming out that could possibly help him based on what we know already. so the way in which trump has treated people is catching up to him. the presidency, brian, has a tail. there are consequences to your foreign policy decisions that take time to become clear. those are becoming clear right now. there are consequences to your behavior in terms of how you treat others, in terms of how you approach the rule of law that also catch up to you. that's clearly happening here to trump. none of these things ever happened like this with the obama white house, and most normal white houses, but we are in a different world now with donald trump. but what he may be finding out now is that the laws of gravity actually do apply to him. it's all catching him to him at the same time. >> ben rhodes, who is now a safe

distance from the west wing, as far west as he can get in los angeles, joining us tonight live. ben, our thanks. appreciate it very much. >> thanks, brian. coming up for us, what rick wilson has to say about the republicans speaking out against trump's syria decision when we come back.

close trump ally lindsey graham has been uncharacteristically critical of the president's decision to withdraw u.s. troops from syria. he told axios last week, quote, if i hear the president say one more time, i made a campaign promise to get out of syria, i'm going to throw up, which somehow gets us to rick wilson, longtime republican strategist who is soon following up on his first book "everything trump touches dies," with a new work "running against the devil." it is due out in early 2020. rick, good evening to you. how do you think lindsey graham is doing tonight?

>> uncomfortable would be the word i would pick because lindsey has a filing deadline of march 31st coming up next year, and he lives now under the fear that donald trump is going to tweet out that somebody else should run in the primary against him, which is donald trump's jerky superpower against republicans, is that he can get somebody to primary them. so lindsey is feeling a very interesting feeling right now. it's a sort of weird pricking sensation. it's called his soul trying to get back into his body. he had sold it to donald trump pretty effectively. he's actually standing up and saying and doing the right thing in this case -- you know, mildly and meekly and passively at first but with a little more vigor in the last 24 hours because i think he sees the consequences starting to play out on the ground in syria, and they're going to be really consequential for us and very ugly on the ground. >> do you really see either in this -- the world's newest conflict in syria or in the

ukraine matter writ large, do you see one of the first opportunities for republicans to put distance between themselves and this president, which would require a lot of them to bust out of the most pliant relationship we've ever seen in the modern history of politics? >> strangely enough, i think that the issue in syria has caused more chatter and more disturbance and more dissension inside the republican ranks than any single issue i have seen the entire trump presidency. >> wow. >> it has really been something that ep wehe went over a red li >> i didn't mean to interrupt. i was surprised to hear you say that. what will it take to bring them out publicly? what's standing between us right now and susan collins saying, this is an outrage and must be reversed? >> well, it's a collection of calcium-based bone structures

along the back. it runs vertically. look, it will take a spine, and it will take courage. you know, the first mover advantage in these things, the first people to get out of the gate, they're going to take some heat from donald trump. but they're going to also reap the most benefit from the american people who see they're standing up for principle, standing up for our nation's security in the face of a president who is quite out of control when it comes to the foreign policy questions. and, you know, while you and i aren't part of whatever drug deal is being cooked up, as john bolton said, a lot of republicans have been very compliant with what trump has done so far, and this does seem to have shaken a lot of their confidence that this guy is -- this guy is working in america's best interests. >> rick, a lot of them have just come back from a hard-earned two-week break. tell us how it works. does the party do its own polling? we've watched obviously the

first wave of retirements. are more and more people with an "r" after their names on ballots coming up this next time going to get a kind of sick feeling that the bottom could fall out? >> a lot of them are thinking about spending more time with their families or the witness protection program. so the national committees, the republican congressional committee, the senate committee, the governor's association, they all do polling broadly for targeted races, and the individual candidates do their own polling as well. what they're seeing out there right now is that donald trump has the love of the republican base, that the rest of the country is exhausted by him. they also recognize that the way that they've been carrying his water for the last two years has cost them politically. i think that a lot of the low-hanging fruit in the house is already gone from 2018, but you've already seen about 17 or 18 retirements so far. you'll probably see another half

dozen, ten to a half a dozen additional retirements, and there are some seats that are competitive now that should not be on paper. but the democrats are seeing a big upsurge right now on the down-ballot races. so it is a grim year again for republicans. as i say this all the time, presidential re-elections are a referendum on the incumbent. all of these guys who have made themselves trump's pilot fish are now facing the same problem with that referendum for their own campaigns. >> rick wilson, you're welcome on this broadcast anytime. great pleasure to have you. thank you so much. >> thank you, sir. coming up for us, hours before joe biden takes the debate stage, all eyes will be on his son, hunter biden, because hunter biden asked them to be. more on that when we come back. they have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to they use stamps.com print discounted postage for any letter

any package any time right from your computer all the amazing services of the post office only cheaper our special tv offer a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again!

(danny) after a long day of hard work... ...you have to do more work? (vo) automatically sort your expenses and save over 40 hours a month. (danny) every day you're nearly fried to a crisp, professionally! (vo) you earned it, we're here to make sure you get it. quickbooks. backing you.

this time tomorrow night, we will at least be talking about

the biggest presidential primary debate stage in history. 12 democratic presidential candidates are taking part in the fourth debate so far this year. as joe biden and his rivals prepare for tomorrow night, biden's son hunter may be making headlines a matter of hours from now. he sat down for an interview with abc news today that airs tomorrow. nbc news reports the interview was not set up by the campaign but that there was some information shared between hunter and his father's campaign about the interview. as we like to ask around here, what could possibly go wrong? with us for more, natasha cor recchi, national political correspondent for politico. natasha, with a straight face, walk us through the pros and cons of joe biden's son, hunter, who admittedly has been trolled by our president for coming up

on two weeks, doing this interview, laying it down as a predicate tomorrow morning with his father going on the big stage tomorrow night. >> well, pro or con, good or bad, it's necessary. it's a necessary step. i think there's -- it was the smartest move. you know, the campaign can say what it wants about that it wasn't coordinated, but there's no coincidence that there was a series of steps that led to this interview tomorrow. i think it's going to be a really emotional interview. it's no secret that hunter biden has battled drug and alcohol issues and addictions. but i also expect that hunter biden will say things like, my father did not influence any of these business dealings overseas. i acted on my own. and it actually could set it up very nicely for the former vice president in the debate tomorrow night because without this, he would have faced tons of questions at the debate by the

moderators and, you know, if one of the other democratic candidates started grilling him on it or followed up. and this is -- it's a missing piece of the pudszzle and the narrative that it needed to be told, and it's going to dominate the news cycle. that's the other thing. all of these candidates have been struggling to get air time, and it's again going to be biden all day long tomorrow. >> natasha, let's be honest. when trump started telling the tale of the bidens and ukraine, we got millions of americans walking around thinking something dirty happened with the bidens in ukraine because the bidens went silent. and trump owned the narrative, owned the story. he still does. i guess what you're saying is tomorrow is attempt number one to take that away. >> well, you know, there could be a lot of argument over whether he owns that story. i mean the biden campaign fought back vigorously over the narrative that trump was trying to push initially. they fought back against that.

yeah, this is a missing piece of the puzzle that biden will have to, you know, explain tomorrow. but the other side of this is, you know, biden can just -- if he executes it well, this all could be very advantageous to him. if he just positions himself as "i am the person who donald trump is afraid of, i am the reason there's an impeachment inquiry right now," that could work well for him. but as we know with the former vice president, anything can happen. >> just think of what we'll know 24 hours from now that we don't know right now. natasha, it's always a pleasure having you on. thank you very much for joining us from chicago tonight. coming up for us, it's enough to make you wish you'd paid closer attention during u.s. history class when we continue.

last thing before we go tonight, there was a lot of sports on television this weekend. the yankees-astros game went so late a lot of people were walking around tired today. they would be forgiven to think they had missed an announcement we were thinking of becoming a theocracy. here is the web page as it looked today. all about being a christian leader. no instructions included for any non-christians who may wish to be leaders themselves. goes without saying this is paid for by our tax dollars.

then just two hours ago, it was changed to secretary pompeo at the american association of christian counselors world conference, where conveniently you can view his speech. >> we should all remember -- we should all remember that we're in perfect service, serving a perfect god who constantly forgives us each and every day. >> the whole being a christian leader thing reminded us of the constitution, specifically an amendment to it and specifically that first amendment, the one about not establishing a religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. that one. james madison wrote that, went on to become secretary of state and president. tom jefferson wrote about a wall separating church and state. he went on to become secretary of state and president. it's worth wondering, at least worth asking what they would make of a christian leadership message right there on the thoroughly modern electronic beacon of american statecraft around the world.

that's our broadcast for this monday night. as we begin a new week, we're on the air tomorrow night the minute the cnn debate is over. thank you for being here with us tonight, and good night from our nbc news headquarters in new york. tonight on "all in," the third witness of the impeachment era. >> arrows continue to point in one direction. >> tonight, what we learned from donald trump's former russia adviser with one of the democrats who was in the room. new reporting on a rudy investigation. >> i'm a pretty good lawyer. >> another impeachment witness suddenly changing his tune. plus senator chris murphy on why the new trump sanctions for turkey are nonsense. >> now i'm sort of an island of one again. >> polling suggests there may be a dark horse canned at a time in iowa not named warren, sanders or biden. "all in" starts right now.