same time have killed 6 people in iraq's capital baghdad in the 1st ordinated attack since anti-government protests began almost 2 months ago as believe the attackers used to explosives field motorbikes and a roadside bomb meanwhile protesters have again clash with security forces demonstrations continue they say the government is too corrupt and broken to deal with poor public services and high unemployment. israel has bombarded empty training camps belonging to the military wing of hamas in the gaza strip israel's army says it was responding to rockets fired from gaza into its territory there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack and no injuries have been reported in the exchange of fire you're up to date with the headlines on al-jazeera coming up next year it's the bottom line stay with us.

hi i'm steve clemons and i have a question has congress convince the american people that impeaching president donald trump is justified let's get to the bottom line. the impeachment inquiry is officially 2 months old and it seems that the only thing that it is really proved is that americans live side by side in 2 parallel universes in one donald trump tried to bribe a foreign country into investigating a political rival to win the elections next year and then the other democrats are conspiring to destroy the president at any cost and their partners are an evil media spewing fake news diplomats and bureaucrats from the quote deep state plus some ukrainians who many believe are the real meddlers in the last election rather than the russians so what universe are we in fortunately we have 3 people in the

room who have the answer to that question rena shaw a republican strategist who founded relax strategies a political consulting firm here in washington jay newton small contributor to time magazine and author of broad influence how women are changing the way america works and peter off contributing editor for newsweek magazine and commentator for one america news network thank you so much for joining us peter let me just start out with you what is the dashboard of this look like you know your i know that you have written about the republican party and you've written in your own opinion pieces in support of president trump but i think at the dashboard of what you think you are seeing and that maybe are others that americans aren't seeing about what you think the dash board clearly is that the truck parts of america are getting trump here and the parts that don't like president are getting more intense in their dislike of the president you know how that all adds up in 2020 is something we're going to have to wait and see because i think we've i think we've reached the point where

peter hart the democratic pollster was telling me this that we're at 980 where the country's just sort of decided we don't like what's going on we blame the guy in the white house we need to see why. the alternative is and if we can live with the alternative for 4 years then we go there but we can't live with the alternative for 4 years then we stay where we are but that's politics peter i'm just interested in what we've seen the house to do is put together information and a case in front of the american people about a phone call about the intention of that phone call about those who listen to it and those that basically thought the president may have engaged in inappropriate behavior and so there's been a discussion of facts why have those facts not percolated through i don't think there's been a discussion of facts i think there's been a discussion of what people presumed there's been a discussion of feelings there's been a discussion of what people overheard the facts standard as applies in a court of law and admittedly a congressional committee is not

a court of law but the facts standard in the you know court of law has not been reached and even if you wanted to argue that it was everybody has said really no quid pro quo at least not as defined by adam schiff nancy pelosi and the people that want to let's take a look for a moment at how the american public today looks at impeachment what we see is that 46.3 percent of the nation supports impeachment right now 45.4 percent doesn't support impeachment what's fascinating about this these are this is a snapshot now we saw just 2 weeks ago those numbers were actually over 50 percent so we've had a little bit of drop off maybe the democrats were you know lost their audience a little bit we know how do you see this right now because we've gone back the nation has gone back to those numbers of a real just complete divide that's what these were in october how do you see it well you know the nation's always been divided and that's been my problem with

speaker pelosi bringing impeachment so late because it was damned if she did and damned if she did it and i think what we've really lost here is the understanding that we operate in a sort of a new normal anyway. because of technology having such a role in all of our lives where we're regarded with news of this impeachment all the time but are americans outside the beltway tuning in and i think the answer is no there's a political fatigue here the factor that really affects all of this and i think that's what's led to the numbers going back down is that there seems to be that people really are talking about their feelings in this moment much to your point and it feels like there's something sort of nefarious at play here from both sides so people are not really sure what to say me play devil's advocate because i've been trying to understand this myself this is the 4th time in american history that an impeachment process was conducted against an american president there's like no bigger show than this show and we have incredible debates about who did what to whom and what is liable we've going where we're seeing i'm seeing judges and

whatnot go back to the federalist papers and how much in which has it had a broadway play in a broadway revival coming out reminding americans what you know balance of power and checks and balances look like and you're right the american american public doesn't seem interested is this an indictment of our democracy well i'm not sure that it is that quite yet and i think it's going to be many months until we really know that because right now people in all parts of of america and i think we can talk even about the urban centers are feeling like is this it does is there enough evidence there to say he did it and when i talked to a sensible republican men and women who i believe they've always been on the fence about this president and haven't really quite liked his behavior but they the policies are what i like they say to me i think obama did this stuff too we just don't know about it and that's that's the what about is them that i think is really probably the most complex thing you just mentioned what evidence i want to get jay

in this but i want to play a very interesting clip from president trump who talks about what we're seeing just remember. what you're seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening and i'll tell you i have so many people that are so unfair because we have to make our country truly great again remember make america great again jay that was from last year but nonetheless it's sort of a constant theme from the president that the media are spewing out fake information that you can't trust the media and that a fact is not a fact now i remember actually in one of the 1st classes i took in high school in the 9th grade we had a course that was about the start of the revolutionary war and we had primary documents and every document had a different view of it as it taught me at the time to some degree truth is negotiated are we negotiating truth today i think absolutely stephen this is part of the problem with what's going on and i remember during the 2016 campaign the

wall street journal had this amazing op ed which called on facebook to have an opposite button right so that if whatever algorithms were delivering whatever news to you you should be able to flip that switch and see what the other side was and of course facebook hasn't done that but we are missing that opposite button right like all the idea of incidental news they used to get opening up a newspaper opening up a magazine and seeing opposing opinions or other sides of things we don't get that anymore because news is just so siloed and it's delivered into our inbox and into our twitter feeds and we solve select who's opinions we see we solve select who are reading and what we're seeing and that is created this silo ization of news and so people are convinced that this is the absolute truth that this one whole side is totally lying and the other side is just you know totally crazy and and they're out to get each other and that's why i think there was a poll out a few weeks ago that you had almost 30 percent of americans believing that we're on the cusp of civil war because there's just these 2 so polar opposite polar

polarized sides of the politics these days they're not talking to each other they're talking at each other and i think that that's the key is they're talking at each other you know twitter is actually the. perfect mechanism for communications in this era a lot of people standing up shouting and nobody listening you know it's impossible if you have even 3000 followers on twitter like i do to read everything that everybody else is posting and so people are just putting information out there not being good consumers but it but getting back to where we are in terms of the polarization polarization the country was polarized before trump was elected michael barone done the logic toodle studies. partisan voting has risen dramatic shoot at him i go to rome as the guy who's written the political office and the guy that all of us do for numbers and he absolutely brilliant but partisan voting has ridden since the bush years the number of people who split ticket who vote democrat

for governor and republican for congress and democrat again for city council and republican for the us senate is declined dramatically and so people are taking up sides whether they're being driven that way because of the information sources or be or the information sources are responding to what the net affiliate or nation is i don't know if barack obama. it said in a similar way to a foreign government venezuela or whatever let's go see what senator tom cotton has done or let's go take another political rival had done what would your party be doing right now i think there are a lot of people who'd be screaming bloody murder i am very concerned that the biden piece of this conversation though seems to seems to be off limits for an awful lot to go further tell me tell me more about the vice president was the point man on ukraine policy for the obama administration his son the hunter gets

a $50000.00 a month job as a member of the board of directors of a company that has been identified as a place where corruption is a problem the vice president then intervenes to get the prosecutor investigating that corruption fired by threatening to hold up military aid and he's seen bragging about it on tape and somehow that whole part of the conversation is off limits i think i don't know i thought i mean i just got to challenge him in one sense because i'm one of the writers when i was at the atlantic who interviewed vice president biden at that time actually went with him to kiev and he did brag about firing having that monitor fired. but i think as we saw in the hearings for those who did that depth he said the secretary can't told very clearly that it was a whole of government initiative to try and deal with ukrainian corruption and that president trump's effort was not a whole the government should i just not i'm not saying that's not it was just about a 100 i mean i am but you know i do think that there's

a bit of difference so going back to our original premise is why oh why are those republicans whom you know who are dismissive of impeachment not looking at the broader elements of that story i think they are i think lindsey graham has taken a i think a brave step forward in saying we are going to look at this there may be nothing there and it's entirely possible there's nothing there. the president may have believed there was something there may have been a legitimate belief i think it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure that our that our employees that are diplomats that our elected officials are not engaged in corrupt acts overseas just as they are not engaged in corrupt acts over here i think it is a legitimate area of inquiry and i think to argue that it goes to the personal political benefit of the president because biden this is likely opponent in 2020 is a dramatic overreach he really is pounding a square peg into a round hole and it doesn't reward him the need to say in order to meet the terms

of what they want to get rina no he used the word favor in black and white and to me it's a very elementary argument that the the president was clearly trying to eliminate a political rival of his before that person could become a real rival and he was trying to do that by asking a foreign adversary well i guess ukraine is not a foreign i was there but let's go deeper here and see what he was really asking for he thinks can you do this investigation and he knows that the results of that would produce likely information about biden bragging about certain things all this misinformation that's out there this is sort of created the sick chaos that president trump likes to create because like to draw on to things that are very questionable and that's exactly where we are that's where we've lost the american public because people are sort of doing a he said she said situation and who's looking best here the president and what we're forgetting as if that is completely unacceptable that is completely wrong in our society to ask a foreign government to do your political bidding essentially i want to play a segment from devon news commenting about exactly this and see things differently

with your for congressman devin news media of course are free to act as democrat puppets and they're free to lurch from the russian hoax to the ukraine hoax at the direction of their puppet masters. but they cannot reasonably expect to do so without alienating half the country who voted for the president they're trying to expel americans have learned to recognize fake news when they see it and if the mainstream press won't give it to them straight they'll go elsewhere to find it which is exactly what the american people are doing. really you are republican you don't support president obama you just shared your own perspective that for this this is very clear if you were if we had devon newness on the show today he would be seeing this very differently than you did and looking at this is somewhat of a scam how do you navigate through this what's your north star as

a republican in this in this interesting for the constitution frankly that that and republicans on capitol hill can talk about conspiracy theories all they want they can say well let's let's move the goalposts frankly on what is acceptable for a president to do or not to do and in broad daylight the one thing congressional republicans love to say about this is been happening for years but what president does trump does and what they love about him is a he does it all in broad daylight and therefore it can't be as nefarious the word i love using because both sides accuse each other of doing things that are so blatantly wrong i come back to this whole thing and say it's so simple it's so elementary what is acceptable for our president to do and not do and to me to just sort of almost sell us out the american people and put his own personal interests above ours i really think it goes back to are you willing to put country over party and this president time and time again as republican to say believe me everything i'm saying is right if i told you there was no quid pro quo there wasn't any and

that to me is wrong because that's what dictators do they tell us one thing and one is to believe another so so with all due respect i respect the independent thinking in your party you don't seem to be winning the case in the republican case so is impeachment ask you both by republicans on the jay is this helping the president right now are you seeing that in november next year this will have been a net plus for the president or a bigger help for the democrats i do believe this is this is wonderful for the trumpet ministration for him to win reelection of course in my study of the american presidency the incumbency is just so strong and you know what they're americans going to. do when they go to the polls next november they're just going to say is the economy all right if there's been a large scale terror of it or even if there's not been they're going to say what's another 4 years and that's what i worry this isn't about overturning the will of the people in the last election this is about the fabric of our democracy what keeps us together i worry about another thing to the other ring of each other what we do people look at me now they say you're a young woman who's a mother

a daughter of immigrants and i'm none of those things i'm just an american above all of that let's just look at each other with what do we want from our country would we want from our leaders peter however i don't know how it plays out frankly i suspect. in everybody's operating on the presumption that the senate doesn't convict that the senate doesn't remove him from office or that he chooses not to resign. i think all those possibilities have to be on the table i think it's too early to say i suspect if we get an impeachment without any action by the senate other than a trial in which he survives it depends on how he what the vote is put probably helps him in trump areas and the right oblique hurts him in areas that are not trump areas it also depends a lot frankly on who the democrats nominate as as is their candidate a lot of moving the see if they can nominate joe biden that's one thing if they nominate elizabeth warren tiredly different story. i'm not convinced actually that the house is going to impeach i know that's not

a popular opinion in washington right now but i do think they have an off ramp probably why do you think they have an off ramp and i think what's the offer is censure so you and you saw this even with shift this morning saying his report is going to come after after things giving but that a large part of the report will focus on the fact that the courts and the administration have obstructed them from interviewing key witnesses and so i think they could easily say we didn't get the full story we didn't get to hear from mick mulvaney from john bolton from these key witnesses in the white house and right now we have this latest do you think this is a ways then we said we don't have to censure with reserving the right to impeach on the road which also then prevents the. senator having a trial and saves joe biden from that trial having been around when my friends were full bore down the road to impeach bill clinton i guarantee you there are a number of republicans who who who when we got to the point said hey guys what what are we doing here i mean this this is really thin i mean yes perjury serious

crime but this is really thin easily or in a way we know that it's bad we're not excited about oh yeah they could not they could not make the 183 all due respect out against it because we've all seen as playing with all the research. you think would take the center track i think i think lizzie did not you know you know this i mean if you bring it up it's i mean i just made us think of something that i had already in my face like i want to your point because you mentioned it. federal judge u.s. district court judge brown jackson had this wonderful. statement in which i found very interesting work respective and he said the u.s. government united states of america as a government of laws and not of men state is simply the primary take away the from the past 250 years of recorded american history is that presidents are not kings i don't know how you end up with the center off ramp because this decision of the judge was was basically saying that dawn mccann dawn again former white house counsel would have to testify before the house which then creates an interesting

path for the acting chief of staff makes me but i don't course the 900 pound gorilla in this john bolton national security adviser who has a $2000000.00 book deal you know you may or may not write about that will get appealed to the supreme court they'll likely stay and kind of witness testimony until they've actually come to sessions it could be june by the time you get that decision from the supreme court and that isn't there's no way they're going to then in june impeach the president and they can be said to that this this judge's decision is a bit of them outlier in terms of what the precedent has historically been the congress subpoenaed attorney general eric holder to come and testify and fast and furious he refused he was cited for contempt of congress. actually department for justice department could forget that dominated congresses and democrats i have never seen more people just ignore subpoenas i used to think we were all trained you can't ignore a subpoena i worked as a staff member for a u.s. senator and was nearly subpoenaed to appear before

a house committee didn't happen but i was shaking in my boots thinking this could be the worst thing ever in my life my career my financial situation as well why is it such a big deal and even more to do i think it's not a big deal because the idea that the democrats once they took control of the house of representatives had his item on their agenda impeaching the president and they have been searching for. reason since they started the moeller emoluments now the ukraine phone call they tried to turn quid pro quo into bribery because of focus groups and and they've now backed off on that was there maybe something that they know they. can really get it wrong they focus group did they found out that brought a real test is greater than anybody at all great american cannot think that i went there on my what if i'll tell you what i would like to tell you what to remove during our last trip for a complete i am telling you what the focus group is not about you said in girl you say this is about i imagine people seeing in broad daylight they knew the

impeachment was coming and so it's hard to take this whole thing seriously and i think that this is been destructive to the institution of congress she has been introduced to the word in rising to the energy to the institution of the presidency not situation so it's new it's going to be the same moment for history lesson over thanksgiving weekend. as we look at what might move the needle in this and i'm very astute in your research and work that you've done on women who are leading politically in this nation both parties i know you interviewed people osi heard her talk about your interview in fact i think women are going to play a bigger role in this next election where are women tilting today and what is driving them on this impeachment impeachment do they have a particular spot in this that's different than everyone else or are they just blended in with both sides know that they actually are very distinct and unique in this and so non-college educated white women as a subset of a group of voters non-college educated white women a women they support

a truck they support a tribe and they were the only group that actually vacillated enormously and this in the last election so you know post the sort of democratic national convention that has your congo old farm gold gold star family scandal that they swung hard against trump it going right that summer then they swung back you know towards the 1st debate then there's the whole sort of entertainment sort of video or. audio that comes out right about groping women they swing against him again and that is where they are now at the very end they ended up voting for him by an historic margin of $28.00 percentage points which was 8 percentage points better than mitt romney and in 2012 which is a huge huge margin. 28 seein they swung back hard against him right right so they only went republican by a margin of 6 percentage points which is a 22 points swing and now post you know sort of these hearings and impeachment there again swinging back against him so i would actually i mean it's hard to say

let's just give me the quick snapshot where are they going to be or with this thanksgiving recess and break for congress what are your women going to be doing when they come back i think again it depends on who the nominee is because i think if it's joe biden we are going to know that he will know that and then i think they probably would vote for joe biden frankly i think if it's elizabeth warren it's a lot more complicated they don't like women candidates they've been very clear about that with hillary clinton give me your snapshot of what happens this next week i think we've got a lot of intense conversations going around on tables. everywhere in america and in the in the red. zones in the blue america in the blue states there throwing out the from supporters from from from the table and making them go eat in all countries polarized and it comes down to the dinner table read i want to ask you the scene question and give you the final word on where we end up what you what you think is going to come down and then i want you to tell me is are we going to have a debate at the tables that peter just said about the constitution about the

founding fathers about what a fact is just give me your partner so i don't think we're going to have those debates i don't think we're going to have their current station and i don't know not to debbie not in this moment i'm having worked in politics the majority of my adult life i can say that i've always been an optimist but what i've seen over and over is that this president has succeeded it eroding our trust in our institutions and there's been nobody i think worse in modern history at any level of government that is worse for our democracy and republicans will do this thing where they say they've wanted to get him from day one what does it look like to get an american president republicans are painting that picture right now and democrats and democrats are frankly at almost a loss because every time we you know i'm not a democrat every time any of us who are working against president anyway or asking americans to at least question his actions and his behavior we are we are told that we just hate him and we have never wanted somebody like him in the post and that we ought to get used to it so i really do believe that americans are just as divided

as we see the polls and i will thank you for that peter and i have been around longer if i may say than the 2 of you we see a lot of cycles in swings in this town and it really raises the interesting question we'll have to do a show on it sunday what happens when the dems run everything are we going to be seeing it you know the same thing which i know some of us are talking about i want to thank you all for being with us today republican strategist rina shaw author jean newton small and commentator peter ruff what a great discussion thank you all very thank you. so what's the bottom line this week 435 house members and 100 senators are heading to their home districts to enjoy america's thanksgiving holiday what they're going to hear from their constituents will influence how the impeachment inquiry plays out over the next few weeks if the people want to pursue impeachment or they want to back off we're soon going to find out what we do know is that the level of distrust is very high political lenses influence what people see as fact and what they care about what lies ahead will be a brutal divisive and bare knuckle competition for the power to define truth and

america's leadership and that's the bottom line. is the mind play tricks a damn car is the woods is parked right there they really out that half of the family by like pull up a motor and dragons here at like they're not in the car the filmmaker takes the f.b.i. to court to find out the talks money 33120 pages of records and in the process mobilizes how community as long as people are free to talk and there is no check

against the feeling of being watched on al-jazeera. fully back to bill in doha with a look at our main stories here on our just 0 crowds have been targeting u.n. peacekeepers in the east of the democratic republic of congo say they won't stop until all of them leave they've been defying a curfew imposed after a 2nd day of violence accusing the peacekeepers are failing to protect them from rebels alexia ryan reports. around 18000 un peacekeepers are in the democratic republic of congo to protect civilians from attacks by rebel fighters. but some civilians went on the attack themselves at a u.n. compound in north kivu.