about his conversation with the president, their goals in ukraine, he could be the ultimate and direct evidence. we started this hour by saying congressman on the republican side of the house were adminis silence on a critical portion of the impeachment inquiry as we are hours away from a veteran former ambassador who says she felt threatened by her own government while working for the u.s. overseas. plus, what were they talking about? cameras capture the conversation between the president and his

attorney general despite a waiting helicopter in the backyard. the speaker compares the president to nixon and spells out the crimes she believes he's guilty of. the democrats have received a brutal lesson in the consequences of elections. all of it as "the 11th hour" gets underway on a thursday night. good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. day 1,029 of the trump administration. a day between this week's public impeachment hearings. the president flew to louisiana tonight for a trump rally while back in washington, a new witness who's ready to break ranks and go against the white house order to remain silence in this impeachment inquiry. "the washington post" reports that mark sandy, a career employee over at the office of management and budget will appear in a closed door session with lawmakers on saturday if subpoenaed.

this has been confirmed by nbc news. "the post" writes he would be the first omb employee to testify in the inquiry after omb acting director russell t. vought and two other political appointees at the agency defied. some $400 million in military and security aid to ukraine was held up. they go onto add he was among the career staffers who raised questions about the hold-up on the aid. this comes ahead of the public hearing of this investigation of course which begins in less than 12 hours now. tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. the former ambassador to ukraine marie yovanovitch will appear before the house intel committee. she was abruptly removed from her post earlier this year. while it is not unusual in that line of work for ambassadors to be recalled, in her closed door

testimony, she told investigation investigators there was quote "a certain campaign against me and that the department had been under pressure from the president to remove me since the summer of 2018." she receive a senior ukrainian official said i needed to watch my back and she testified having powerful adversaries working against her in ukraine, trump lawyer rudy giuliani and his now indicted associates lev and igor. george kept and william taylor who replaced yovanovitch by the way described the effort to oust her. >> over the course of 2018 and 2019, i became increasingly aware of an effort by rudy giuliani including his associates including lev parnas and igor fruman to run the campaign to smear ambassador yovanovitch and other officials at the u.s. embassy and kiev. >> the former ambassador yovanovitch had been treated poorly. caught in machine nations in kiev and washington.

>> tonight bloomberg news reports that giuliani is now under scrutiny from federal prosecutors in manhattan for finance violations and failure to register as a foreign agent. tomorrow house investigators will hear from another witness, david holmes. we just learned his name yesterday. he's the guy who apparently overheard trump on a cell phone call with the eu ambassador in a restaurant in kiev. he's scheduled to testify in close sessions tomorrow. the associated press reports that a second u.s. official was also able to hear the president on that cell phone call. nbc news has not spoken anyone who has confirmed that particular bit of reporting. next week witnesses with firsthand knowledge of trump's conduct will testify publicly including lieutenant colonel alexander vindman who was on that july 25th call, the aforementioned

ambassador gordon sondland and fiona hill who took part in several parts of this investigation. house speaker nancy pelosi is being cautious about steps beyond these hearings and we'll see or whether we'll see actual articles of impeachment drawn up. today she did use the word bribery to describe the evidence against the president and she took no prisoners when it came to the defense spread by trump and his republican allies. >> and if the president had something that is ex-pull -- exculpatory, that means you have anything that shows you are innocent, then he should make it known. >> >> that's part of the inquiry. >> republicans argued that yesterday's witnesses heard things secondhand, i am wondering if you think it is worth waiting for those who heard things firsthand like john bolton and mick mulvaney to testify. >> well, don't fall into the secondhand stuff really. that's such a fraudulent

proposition put forward by the republicans. they know it and that's why they are talking about process rather than the substance of what we have heard. i won't even dignify what they're saying. >> while there is also this. this is substance but the visual kind. just before the president left the white house, cameras and reporters observed and animated conversation with his attorney general barr in the oval office. shortly after that, a photographer caught barr talking with white house counsel pat cipollone. here for our lead off discussion, phillip rucker is here with us in new york. pulitzer prize winner journalist and in washington tamara keith, white house correspondent for npr and peter baker, correspondent for "the new york times" and co-author of

"impeachment." what does mark sandy bring to the conversation? remind us of the omb. >> he is a career official. he's not a political appointee of president trump's and, therefore, he's decided to defy the order or the wishes, rather, from the white house counsel and the president himself trying to prevent all of these executive branch employees from testifying. he could provide important information to congress because it was the omb that was involved in stopping that aid that $400 million in aid from flowing into ukraine. the aid eventually went to ukraine but there was a delay. it was ordered according to reporting by the president set forth by mick mulvaney, the acting white house chief of staff and the omb director and mr. sandy, the omb employee

could shed light on what concerns were raised by himself and other career employees. and what the system was for documenting that. >> tamara, we should repeat these witnesses are about to appear in these hearings are people would have given their depositions in closed door sessions attended by both matters. they are not limited in their testimony to what's on the deposition indeed, mr. taylor, gave us new details we did not know. what is yovanovitch likely able to add to the story tomorrow? >> well, what she does not know a lot about is what happened after she left. so she does not have a lot of visibility on that july 5th phone call. she knows a lot about what happened leading up to her firing and the campaign led by rudy giuliani to have her ousted. at one point even the

president's son was tweeting she should be fired. the president has the right to fire any ambassador he wants. but she is somebody who was working with civil society groups. she was working to push back against corruption in ukraine and so she is a figure who has some insight into what was going on in ukraine and this sort of alternate channel, this side channel of foreign policy that was being led by rudy giuliani. >> peter baker, meanwhile, this was thursday in ukraine, a nation involved in a military effort against russia and it really wasn't until the two veteran diplomats yesterday spoke with empathy and passion about ukraine and the ukrainian people that we had our attention focused back on that conflict and their ongoing trouble. you tweeted out a photograph yesterday that i'd love you to

describe along with the verbiage that came with it. >> yeah, right, well, look one thing that president trump can rightly say and his defenders made that point yesterday he did something that president obama didn't do something, authorized legal assistance, not just night goggles and blankets and food and rations and so forth but actual, you know, basically guns and the biggest symbol of that are these involve gin anti-tank weapons that he has been very proud of supplying but what often gets missed in the conversation is my colleague andrea kremer out there is that javelins are not allowed to be used in the war. they're stored at a safe location and not on the front line. instead what the ukrainian soldiers have been doing is creating fake javelins with empty ammunition boxes to give the silhouette of what a javelin would look like to

scare off potential russian tanks. even when we talk about what president has had, it comes with limits and loopholes and conditions on it that have not been as useful to the ukrainians as they would like. >> it is a useful reminder of the struggle that goes on there. phil rucker, i never have been successful in getting you to speculate wildly. i'd love to hit one tonight. what do you think was going on in the oval office late today? marine one is idling. and it's not quiet when it is. it's very clear your ride has arrived if you're the president but he stayed behind in the oval office and, again, all we saw was gesticulation and both men with his ag talking in the oval office. >> yeah, brian, to be a fly on that curved wall, right? >> yeah, exactly, the wall with no corners. >> we don't know what was being discussed in that moment but there are a couple of things to keep in mind about attorney general barr. he's in the middle of personally overseeing this investigation

into the investigation that the probe that the justice department has launched into the origins of the russia investigation, something that president trump cares very deeply about. perhaps that came up in the discussion, something that barr himself has traveled to several foreign countries to try to get to the bottom of. there is a desire on the president's conservative allies for the conclusion of that investigation to be reached sometime this fall as a way to detract attention away from the impeachment proceedings. as if that would be possible. one thing to remember from a couple of years earlier in the trump administration, this happened before, the moment where the president was late to get on marine one and was in the oval office yelling at don mcgahn the white house count sen and reince priebus and steve bannon all document the in the mueller report but it was one of those rages that the president had about comey, about the russian investigation.

so this is not the first time we've seen a moment like that. >> the bulletproof glass is so thick it gives everything a green cast and yet we can still see often especially given the lighting of what's going on inside the oval office. tamara, we are under way. these hearings are a given and they continue tomorrow. we have been led to believe there is no war room, per se, in this white house but has anything about the reaction machine changed in these intervening 24 hours? >> they have several amped up their communication, the white house has, has amped them up to their surrogate, both sort of in the broader conservative community and also on capitol hill. so, although they are not sending talking points to the press particularly, there have been a few little bit, but there has been a steady stream of information sent to the president's surrogates an it was interesting during the hearing, president trump was not doing his usual play-by-play and

television criticism. he was busy with president erdogan, so it will be interesting to see in a day with a less heavy schedule tomorrow whether the president is watching the hearing and commenting on it or if he's going to continue the tact of retweeting allies who are saying things that he like. >> peter baker, the coverage on the right-hand side of the ledger has already gotten personal. tonight mr. hannity said that apparently during the yovanovitch deposition, she was moved to tears. he wondered if the same thing would happen perhaps even on cue at tomorrow's hearing. your news analysis piece tonight has an incredible drive-by takedown of ambassador taylor by the president's former lawyer. >> yes, it does. most republicans yesterday tried not to go after ambassador taylor in a personal way. he obviously came across with a great deal of gravitas and credible. there wasn't any effort to tear

him down in the way that the president has torn down other witnesses, but i did get in touch with john dowd just to see what he had to say, the president's former lawyer. he's never one to be shy and he referred to ambassador taylor as -- i forget the exact words but basically, you know -- >> i'm being told in my ear, pitiful, insubordinate with no trustworthy information. >> yeah, exactly. you know, that's what i'm sure president trump and some others around him think but they were carefully trying not to go there. john dowd gave voice to what they were thinking. this is somebody who is part of the deep state in their view, part of the conspiracy to take down the president who doesn't actually have any firsthand knowledge. it's hard to make that case in public so they tried instead to focus on the issue of the secondhand quality of his testimony and it was my colleague who showed asking speaker pelosi about it. she may want to brush off that question but it's a legitimate

question. if ambassador taylor didn't actually hear the president say these things then does factor into how much weight to give his testimony? it would obviously be more useful to the democrats to hear it from somebody like john bolton or mick mulvaney who actually are in the oval office or was in the case of john bolton before he was pushed out. or left of his own accord depending on who you believe but think haven't been able to get them there refusing to testify. doesn't look like the democrats are waiting for any court action to compel them and think they have enough to go with what they've got and may be right for a party line vote but probably won't change any republicans' minds. >> the corollary, peter, the argument for hearsay probably has a time limit, a timer on it before that runs out. our thanks to our big three returning veterans for starting us off, phippen rucker, tamara keith, peter baker, greatly appreciated. gang, coming up for us, speaker pelosi uses that word bribery against the president. we'll ask a former prosecutor

her take on the democrats' case thus far against trump. later with a stroke of a pen, another candidate has entered the 2020 race. let's be honest here, it wasn't suffering from a shortage of democrats, now they have two baseball teams' worth. "the 11th hour" just getting started on this thursday evening in sight of the washington monument.

is your business still settling for slow internet? well time is money. switch to comcast business now and get a great deal when you get fast, reliable internet. with a 30-day money-back guarantee, installation when it works for you, and 24/7 customer support. so what are you waiting for? get this great deal when you

sign up for fast, reliable internet. call 1-800-501-6000 today. comcast business. beyond fast. when the president does it, that means it is not illegal. >> what president trump has done on the record in terms of acting to advantage his foreign power to help him and his own election and of the obstruction of information about that, the cover-up, makes what nixon did looks almost small, almost small.

>> the first impeachment inquiry hearing in a generation is history. the second comes up tomorrow. today the speaker gives trump's crime a name. as she sees it -- >> the devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery uncovered in the inquiry and that the president abused power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid in a white house meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival. bribery and that is in the constitution attached to the impeach proceeding. >> nick vandos says the speaker's explicit allegation of bribery, a middeed identified in the constitution as an impeachable offense was significant. even as ms. pelosi said no final decision was made whether to impeach mr. trump, it suggested that democrats are creasingly

looking to put a name to it and moving toward a more specific set of charges that could be codified in articles of impeachment in the coming weeks. back with us tonight is berit berger with the eastern district of new york and the southern district of new york. berit, please expand on why it is significant and why is it important to label this bribery? >> i think nancy pelosi was very specific in calling this bribery for two reasons. the first is that unlike quid pro quo, bribery is something that most people understand. especially people -- we have a general understanding. the second reason is this is one of those delineated things in the constitution that is a basis for impeachment. along with treason, along with high crimes and misdemeanors, bribery is specifically identified. so much like other prosecutors, what she's doing here is marrying up the facts and the law.

she's saying these are the facts and this is the law that we would think they would go with. this is the specific basis for which these could lead to impeachment. >> and remind us what subset of the case ambassador -- former ambassador yovanovitch can speak to and fit into. >> yes, so, she really expands the time line. as you discussed earlier in the program she doesn't have much knowledge about what happened in the call. but what she can talk about is sort of what happened before that. she can show this was part of a broader picture, that she was really the target of this smear campaign by giuliani and others that were part of this irregular foreign policy chain that we are heard about. >> that's a euphemism if i ever heard one. >> not outlandish but irregular but she can talk about what she thought was the issue and why she felt she was being removed. >> i'm glad you mentioned rudy giuliani. i have something for you from the guardian. if a telephone interview with the guardian in response to a question about whether he was nervous that trump might throw

him under a bus in the impeachment crisis, giuliani said, well with a slight laugh, i'm not, but i do have a very, very good insurance, so if he does, all my hospital bills will be paid. giuliani's lawyer, robert costello, who was on the call then interjected, he's joking. i know because i've talked to your fellow former prosecutors at the southern district of new york, rudy's picture remains on the wall there prominently so. they are the investigating arm in this case. how much jeopardy does he face as of right now tonight? >> i think if the southern district of new york is looking into you, you're facing a lot of jeopardy. it's never a good day if the prosecutors from the southern district start digging through a case to see if there's evidence against you. now we heard reporting earlier that at least one of giuliani's

former associates, lev parnas may be cooperating. if he's cooperating that could be devastating for giuliani because, again, to get a cooperation agreement in the southern district of new york, you have to testify about aim the misdeeds of people that you know and if lev parnas is cooperating that would probably include everything he knows about giuliani, everything he knows about this entire ukraine scandal. >> dan goelman a fellow graduate of the southern district of new york was the civilian attorney doing the questioning yesterday. we have every reason to believe he'll be there tomorrow. i'm assuming you believe that the insertion of civilian lawyers is good for pacing and fact gathering and to get it away from filibustering potentially members of congress. >> absolutely. and dan really led a master class the other day in how to do an effective examination. i thought he handled it just perfectly. i mean, look, they had the benefit of having deposition transcripts so it was a friendly

witness. it's obviously a little bit more difficult if it's a hostile witness but he did a great job of not only eliciting the facts but showing why they were important and showing how this was not just a bad phone call but a national security threat. i think if they keep that up, driving home why not only the senate but the house should care about it and the public should care about it and how this is a threat to the united states, i think that will be continuing in the right direction. >> always a pleasure to have you. berit berger, thank you. nikki haley has made a lot of glowing statements of late about president trump and now her kindness seems in fact to extend to rudy giuliani when we come back. it takes a village to raise a child.

to build a bridge. to throw a baseball... to throw yourself into the unknown. to lose fear, to create hope.

we believe that it takes a village of over 200-thousand dedicated, passionate, driven medical and non-medical professionals to deliver on our belief in total health for all. we are kaiser permanente. thrive. in fairness, this is irregular channel of diplomacy is not as outlandish as it could be, is that correct? >> it is not as outlandish as it could be. >> it might be irregular but it's certainly not outlandish. >> there's a phrase that pays. that was one argument the republican counsel tried to make in that effort to defend the president from impeachment. you can judge its effectiveness for yourself. with us to talk about all things political, the veteran journalist jason johnson, politics editor at the root and

rick wilson with his new work "running against the devil" due out in 2020. gentlemen, welcome to you both. the president said tonight republicans have never been more united. is that what you saw watching the hearing yesterday? >> well, look, i think what i saw watching the hearing was republicans who were in a state of edgy panic and they were trying to talk faster and louder in hopes of trying to ally past the fact that those two witnesses sat there and laid out a time line, a calendar, additional fact, additional witnesses. this was not a good day for those folks and no matter how many times jimbo baggens gets up there and dances like a crazed leprechaun won't shake the fact the facts are against donald trump and the witnesses and time lynn are against donald trump and that was day one. they had a bad day day one.

i don't think it's going to get much better as we go forward. >> jason, the democrats -- with day one in the book, we have learned they can schedule witnesses and conduct questioning. >> yes. >> when will you have confirmation that they have, indeed, found the right messaging that with all we have lived through with mueller, 400 plus pages this is the story to tell, this is the story people can understand because at the heart of it is a phone call. >> so, this is -- we're going to find out over the next couple of days if nancy pelosi and adam schiff are joe torre, if they're good managers and can set up the lineup properly with the witnesses. i think they did a good job. the first day they had two people who set the time line, were very clear, weren't flustered. didn't allow jim jordan or anybody to ask them any questions that were out of line. they didn't have a coherent strategy other than do you follow all the conspiracy theories that we know about o on

reddit. they did a good job. this wasn't be a knockout punch. that's not what going to happen. they won't screw up and lay out the story. the american public seems to be in favor of impeachment. they don't want to blow that. >> let me follow up on that. do you think this hearsay line of argument is catching on and do you think it has a time limit on it? >> i don't think hearsay works because you've got too many people talking about the same story, right? it doesn't look -- look, everybody out there watching this, the people at home, my grandmother, grandparents, they've watched "law and order" and know the difference between hearsay and a credible witness and they all come across as credible. until someone blows up or has the sam waterson moment where they get angry, they seem credible and so far the republicans haven't given us an alternative story to think this impeachment doesn't make sense and that's really the weakness i saw on tuesday. >> rick, i have something for you. this is nikki haley tonight on cnn on the topic of rudy

giuliani. >> was it appropriate based on everything you experienced in the world of diplomacy for rudy giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, someone who had no security clearances to be engaged in what's being described as the shadow diplomacy? >> i have -- during my time at the united nations i never saw rudy engaged in that way. it is best practice if you have a special envoy to handle certain areas and we do that all the time. i think they should have named him the special envoy so everyone within the administration knew what his role was. >> instead of former mayor of new york, special envoy rudy giuliani. rick, is that the roseiest possible reading of the situation rudy is in, question too, what is going on with nikki haley, do you think? >> you know, i think nikki is missing a profound rule in life, the rats are supposed to jump off of the sinking ship rather than onto the sinking ship.

she gambled more of her credibility away by essentially, you know, by essentially putting her arms around rudy giuliani, a guy who is already being dragged out behind the barn because they're done with him. the trump people are trying to cut him loose. the republicans in congress are going to try to blame this whole thing on rudy when it comes down to it. that's their last-ditch scenario so now she's basically praising rudy at a moment where his stock has fallen so far with trump personally with the trump world that it's only a matter of time where he was just a coffee boy, a volunteer, we barely knew him, route di who? >> jason, yovanovitch tomorrow, give us a bit of a preview. we tried to point out the top of the broadcast we recall ambassadors all the time. >> right. >> rarely do they say they feel threatened in their personal lives. rarely does one of the locals say to them, watch your back. >> right. when she 'saying i felt threatened i don't know why the president was talking about me.

this is going to be the emotional punch. we got the story first. now we're hearing people felt threatened. people felt concerned. people in the country, in the ukraine were like, we don't even know what's going on. what's dangerous here. this is where something like rudy giuliani and all these other individuals come into play. look, it doesn't matter if he was named special envoy. you don't put your ankle breaker on staff so everyone knew that trump had a lot of people operating in these irregular channels and she speaks to how those channels made regular long-term service people feel uncomfortable and that's going to be the story that americans take with them over the weekend. >> both of these gentlemen have agreed to stay with us over the break. coming up, however, a new england democrat born in chicago who works at mitt romney's old company, yes, it's complicated and this man just made the democratic race more complicated. his story, the rest of the day in politics when we come back. if you have medicare, listen up.

the medicare enrollment deadline is only days away.

with so many changes, do you know if your plan is still the right fit? having the wrong plan may cost you thousands of dollars out of pocket, and that's why i love healthmarkets, your insurance marketplace. with their new fitscore, they compare thousands of plans from national insurance companies to find the right medicare plan that fits you. call or visit healthmarkets to find your fitscore today. in minutes, you can find out if your current plan is the right fit or if there's another one that can get you extra coverage or help save you money. best of all, their service is completely free. does your plan have $0 copays, $0 deductibles, and $0 premiums? if not, maybe it's not the right fit. does it include dental and vision coverage? well, if not, maybe it's not the right fit. how about hearing aid, glasses and gym memberships at no additional cost? maybe there is a better fit for you. call healthmarkets now or visit healthmarkets.com for your free fitscore. we can instantly compare thousands of medicare

plans with all of these benefits and more, including plans that may let you keep your doctor and save money. with the annual medicare enrollment deadline coming, don't waste another minute not knowing if you have the right medicare fit. for this free service go to healthmarkets.com or call right now. having helped enroll people in millions of policies with an a+ customer satisfaction rating, you can trust healthmarkets. don't assume that your plan is still the right fit. the healthmarkets fitscore makes it easy to find the right medicare plan for you. healthmarkets doesn't just work for one insurance company, they work to help you and they do it all for free. your insurance marketplace. healthmarkets. there may be medicare benefits and savings you're missing out on. only healthmarkets has the free fitscore. call before the deadline.

i love that the party has moved to the left. i love that we are the party of the woke. i believe that we also have to be the party of the still waking. >> former two-term massachusetts governor deval patrick made a last-minute entry in the 2020 race today. he announced his campaign in a video this morning before heading over to new hampshire to file the paperwork for the first in the nation primary. this brings for those playing our home game the democratic field back up to 18 on your bingo card while we wait to see if former new york city mayor michael bloomberg ultimately gets on board. still with us tonight are jason johnson and rick wilson. jason, deval patrick, born in south chicago, mostly raised by a single mom, scholarship kid to an east coast prep school,

harvard, harvard law. some corporate law, justice department civil rights division, two-term governor of massachusetts, now, however, he is at a company we associate with one mitt romney called bain capital. before you answer, he was asked about bain capital. let's run his answer and we'll talk about best campaign practices with our friend jason. >> there is a place for private equity in the private economy. there is a place for business in our lives. but it is also true that capitalism generally has a lot to answer for. that is so. and we need to be able to confront that and that's exactly the work i've been doing at bain capital. >> handicap his entry just hours old so far, if you will. >> this is the worst barack obama/mitt romney release he could ever release on his debut day. the bain capital but the south side of chicago. you can't say there is a party

of the woke and then start talking about how you worked in this private equity firm. these things don't make sense. those aren't the only mistakes he made. he doesn't have a message. he doesn't have a lane appears to be coming in at the same time that a lot of the activists in the democratic party believe billionaires and millionaires are worried about elizabeth warren and bernie sanders. he didn't even buy the proper domain flame for his campaign website and got bought by one of his boston colleagues and scandals about his foreclosure and behavioral with his brother-in-law. i don't know what he's thinking or don't know he'll make that much of a difference let alone get though a debate by december. >> wow, rick wilson, a lot to react to there. first of all, the question to you is does his entry into the race presuppose a biden collapse? >> i think what it actually does is probably helps biden a bit in new hampshire, because he's the

local -- a local or regional candidate so ends up diluting bernie and wheren a little bit in new hampshire and maybe gives biden a chance to, you know -- so if biden loses new hampshire as most anticipate it won't be as bad. it will be sort of a diluted loss but i think jason is right on point. this rollout was -- did they just decide over the weekend? did they get lit up at a poker game and decide, hey, let's run for president for a prank? this was not well done and at this point you've got to have your business together if you're going to get in the race this late or you better have a lot of zeros in your bank account like mike bloomberg does. this was not a successful day for him. i don't think he survives very long in the contest. >> since bloomberg's name was just invoked, what lane -- we're talking about deval's lane, what lane does mike bloomberg see for himself since he's saying i'll see you after the first couple of primaries.

>> it's that same sort of coffee klatsch primary. i'm sitting around with my wealthy friends and they're all saying, i bet you i could do that. that's what happened with howard schultz. see how successful he's been. you can't be the former governor or the former champion of stop and frisk and then say the first primary you're going to get into is alabama where a large portion of the primary voters are going to be african-american. i don't know what he's thinking. he's probably wasting his money just like tom steyer but what it speaks to is this, the difference between what sometimes the democratic elites think and how the voters are behaving because satisfaction with the democratic field is actually very high amongst voters but it seems like the elite donors are dissatisfied with. >> rick wilson that, is true. i have heard some democrats who are not at all happy to see bloomberg's name in this race say imagine what his money could buy, imagine how his money could

change the fate and fortune of the democratic party because here's a guy who like it or not has changed life in america incrementally. public smoking bans, he is largely credited with starting that in new york. >> look, if michael bloomberg, you know, a guy worth roughly $60 billion is dedicated to removing donald trump from office, he will stop this foolish idea of running for president, he will put a billion dollars into voter registration in florida, ohio, wisconsin, pennsylvania, michigan, minnesota, he will go up on the air in the states hurt by the trade war with ads that talk about how donald trump's promises were broken to the folks, the farmers and manufacturers of those states and nuke him until he glows. he will go out there and he will do digital stuff, he will go out and do a data science program for the democratic candidate. he will go out there and raise money from other people. that's what he wants -- if you want to get rid of trump that's how to do it if you're a billionaire, not having a vanity project that's going to buy a

few guys extra ferraris or beach houses but rather something that actually has a meaningful political impact. >> jason, if you listen to the republicans, the democrats are coming for your guns, they're certainly coming for your money. bloomberg's coming for any large sugary drinks in your house. what is going on right now in your view inside the democratic party? >> what's happening in the democratic party is the sort of fear that they always have that maybe we've gone too far and they don't seem to want to listen to what the public is saying. look, even deval patrick when he says this is the party of the woke. 40% of the democratic primary voters obviously want progressive change because they want bernie sanders or elizabeth warren. that seems to be where the country is going. i don't think democrats understand that they actually won the popular vote last time. that any democrat, they could run a cheese sandwich. they have a 3-million vote lead. be a candidate of conviction but rather than trying to play the middle which is what is sometimes happening with biden or patrick or bloomberg, you have people who don't want to realize that the country wants

change. donald trump was change. the democrats need a change candidate, not someone who will run down the middle and make people feel comfortable. >> last question, when you and i have talked, you have a very kind of more roa mor a morose v much is baked in your view. >> there are 35 states in the country where god love them but the election is already decided. we know how alabama is going to vote in the general election. we know how california is going to vote in the general election. those 35 states are done. the swing states that we're going to fight this thing out in between 6 and 15 in the broadest sense, those states are much more complicated than, you know, most people give them credit for but they are not hard to the left. you know, minnesota is probably one of the most blue of all the swing states but they're not like oregon or massachusetts.

wisconsin and michigan, they have a lot of blue areas but they are not super woke. florida, god know, i mean, everything north of i-4 is basically we look at alabama as being too liberal and so these states are complicated. these guys cannot go in here with this, you know, national message that works great in california and hope to win in these swing states. i mean, georgia is on the line for the democrats. think could pick georgia up this year but they're not going to pick it up by saying things like we're taking away your private health insurance which i know republican pollsters are dancing in the streets because that message scares the hell out of people who would otherwise probably vote democrat in this election psych. >> two friends of this broadcast named jason johnson and rick wilson, gentlemen, thank you, both. coming up for us. we don't know what it says about our country, that it has happened again today.

in our country, two students with killed, three others wounded after a teenage gunman opened fire at saga's high school in santa clarita, california. first around 7:30 a.m. the whole thing took 16 seconds. from the first gun till turning the gun on himself. images of him pulling a sandgun from his backpack and opening fire. the first officer to respond a detective who had just dropped off his own child at that school. it was the gunman's 16th birthday taken to the hospital in grave condition. when asked about stalled gun legislation passed by the house lindsey graham of south carolina blamed impeachment just as the attorney general did yesterday. there's another school shooting. >> we're stuck. impeachment has taken all the

energy out of this place and that's too bad. but, yeah, i can't tell you the latest. >> is there any ban within the senate and white house. >> i'm dying to do something about this and about a bunch of other things. >> during the clinton presidency in the '90s and his own impeachment inquiry, congress found a way to pass a bill requiring background checks and an assault weapons ban. today on cnn the former president was ask what had president trump should do. >> you got hired to do a job. you don't get the days back you blow off. every day is an opportunity to make something good happen. and i would say i've got lawyers and staff people handling this impeachment inquiry and they should just have at it. meanwhile, i'm going to work for the american people. that's what i would do. >> "the washington post" says this is at least the seventh shooting at a u.s. school this year according to "the post"

analysis. more than 233,000 schoolchildren have been exposed to gun violence in their schools since the shooting at columbine high school in colorado in '99. another break coming up. we will meet america's newest federal judge. he's never tried a case in court. he could now be on the bench for the next half century. i'm 52. but in my mind i'm still 25. that's why i take osteo bi-flex, to keep me moving the way i was made to. it nourishes and strengthens my joints for the long term. osteo bi-flex - now in triple strength plus magnesium.

last thing before we go the latest installment in our occasional series of reports called elections have consequences. short of sending u.s. troops into battle the most awesome power of the presidency is the ability to reshape the judiciary. the supreme court. federal judges, that's how presidents get to change american society for generations after they've come and gone. and this much trump understands, perhaps in part because his sister was a federal judge. here is the president from last week. >> we have confirmed 157 judges to follow the constitution as written. >> mitch mcconnell has made federal judges his priority and so just today the u.s. senate voted to confirm steven the vote, 51-41, party line all the way for susan collins from maine who is trying to hang on to her

seat who voted no. menoshi never conducted a deposition. he now takes a seat on the second court of appeals previously held by thurgood marshall. at his hearing menoshi was slammed with everything from education to lgbtq and women's rights and choice and his own lack of transparency. >> counselor, you're really a smart guy but i wish you'd be more forthcoming. this is not supposed to be a game. >> i've worked on immigration matters but can't speak further about it. >> you can't tell us about anything you did so we cannot learn anything about what your positions are. >> but it would be inappropriate to start -- >> inappropriate for you to seek this nomination. >> democrats are fuming but powerless. chuck schumer called menashi one of the most contemptible

nominees to come before the senate in all time. this he know to prevent it in the future they had need to elect a new president or flip the senate. steven menashi is 406789 he has now been appointed to the federal bench for the rest of his adult life. that is our broadcast for this thursday night. thank you so much for being here with us. good night from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. >> quid pro quo, bribery. >> as still more evidence of that bribery is reported. >> i know-nothing about that. first time i've heard it. >> plus ahead of tomorrow's hearing, new reporting that the president discussed ukraine policy with rudy's indicted friend. then as impeachment proceeds over ukraine, new alarms about