tonight on a special edition of "all in" -- >> the president must be held accountable. no one is above the law. >> donald trump gets his trial date. >> she doesn't want to put in the articles. it's so weak. >> new signs there may be impeachment witnesses. >> we need witnesses, ladies and gentlemen. >> tonight what we know about the looming trial of donald trump and new reporting that the president's escalation with iran was connected to his impeachment fears. >> i believe that he will attack iran sometime prior to the election because he thinks that's the only way he can get elected. plus juror/senator cory booker, and what it means for 2020. and why facebook's new decision to allow lies in political ads is putting a thumb on the scale for donald trump. >> i'm a very honest guy. >> live from studio 6a in rockefeller plaza, "all in" starts right now. hello, everybody.

[ [ cheers and applause ] hey there. hi. good evening. thank you for being here. it's great to be back here at 30 rock. this is our first live audience show of the new year, of 2020. the year's been great so far. i think we all agree. the big news today sort of came over in my phone alert early this morning. sort of knew what the a block would be today, which is it looks like we're going to have an impeachment trial, maybe next week. that's essentially set now. and in a letter to her colleagues today, speaker of the house nancy pelosi announced she plans to send those two articles of impeachment of donald trump over to the senate next week. so it seems like for just the third time in the history of the american republic, we are going to be watching an impeachment trial very soon. it's finally happening. in the wake of and amidst all this, the first ten days of the year have been filled with just an incredible sense, i think, of unease and anxiety that's been hanging over everyone who follows american news. i mean 2020 kicked off with

america and iran appearing to be moving, and especially for about an hour or two one night this week, towards a cataclysmic, disastrous war in which the u.s. was going to militarily engage with a confrontation of a nation with 80 million people, the 14th most powerful military in the world. and you probably thought to yourself and you'd see people remarking online or in facebook or over coffee, like how awful is the first ten days of this year? how dystopic. impeachment of a president and a military confrontation with iran all happening at once in a kind of head-spinning fashion. and you kind of wonder to yourself how is all this happening at the same time? but as many people have pointed out, it's probably the case or certainly possibly the case that these two are not unrelated, right? today we've got some new reporting on that. i want to get to that in a second. before we do, bear with me as we go back to 1997. there's a big hollywood movie

that year. yes, legendary film. it was called "wag the dog." you've probably heard of it. the whole premise of the movie, the president is caught in a scandal just like 11 days before the election, a sex scandal. and he starts a fake war in order to distract voters from the real scandal so he can get elected. that comes in 1997. one year later, president bill clinton was about to be impeached and he came before the nation to announce a bombing campaign against iraq. iraq. been doing this for a long time. "the new york times" wrote at the time, quote, the first wave of bombs fell on iraq just minutes before the republicans began their own closed-door strategy session. that was a closed-door session on impeachment. here's how nbc news' tom brokaw described the feeling at the time. >> none of us can remember, at least in recent memory, the confluence of these kinds of events in which you have a major military action ordered by the president of the united states, who is on the eve of being put

in effect in the dock in the united states house of representatives and subjected to articles of impeachment just 15 hours later. >> now, at the time, many of the president's critics, particularly republican critics, yelled "wag the dog." they accused the president of trying to distract from his impeachment. here's what republican congressman gerald solomon of new york said, it's obvious they're trying to do everything they can to postpone the vote in order to get as much leverage as they can. so this was the line on clinton on this bombing strike he ordered. that this was an attempted distraction ripped right out of a screen play from hollywood. here we are two or more decades later. president trump is impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of congress for his corrupt scheme to extort the ukrainian government and manufacturing dirt on his political opponent. his senate trial is looming over him. he is clearly very agitated with the situation. i don't think that's really in dispute. like he doesn't -- he lets us know how he feels about that.

and amidst this, while he's at his florida palace, he orders this massively escalatory strike. kills an iranian general, qassem soleimani, as well as an iraqi militia head. soleimani is arguably the number two official in the whole country, and he kills him while he is traveling in iraq, which is a sovereign nation where we have troops at their invitation. now, the president does not notify congress ahead of time. he does not notify iraq, the country the strike was in, an ostensible ally of the u.s. government. and the strike is, i think, the most drastic and reckless military operation this president has ordered so far. in the wake of the strike, remember this. there's no white house announcement. you remember that? we get the news reports, and the president tweets out the image of an american flag. and then since then, this administration has been all over the place on the justification

for the strike. it was to establish deterrence. it was to de-escalate tensions. we bombed them to avoid war. secretary of state mike pompeo tried to say there was an imminent threat. this is another line they've used. there was an imminent threat but we do not know where or when, which stretches the meaning of imminent a little bit. and then -- so after a week of this, you sort of internally contradictory and conflicting accounts, the president yesterday just blurts out an entirely new justification. >> we caught a total monster, and we took him out, and that should have happened a long time ago. we did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy. we also did it for other reasons that were very obvious. >> other reasons that were very obvious, should have done a long time ago, and, oh, by the way, they were plotting to attack the embassy. do you really think they held on to that for seven days? do you think they knew they were planning to attack the u.s. embassy and they didn't say anything about it until

yesterday? then yesterday morning when he said it was one embassy bombing, by night the president said it was four embassies that they were going to attack. here's the thing, when they actually had to go to congress and brief congress in a classified setting about why they carried out this strike, and in that setting they can't hide behind, well, it's classified. i can't tell you. they're in a scif, a classified setting with members of congress. the briefing was such a disaster, members of both parties left saying it was an embarrassment. here's republican senator mike lee of utah. >> probably the worst briefing i've seen, at least on a military issue, in the nine years i've served in the united states senate. they had to leave after 75 minutes while they were in the process of telling that we need to be good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public. i find that absolutely insane. >> secretary pompeo came back out today and said that they did tell the senators that the embassies were targeted in some

way, but not one senator will tell you that actually happened inside the briefing. so they appear to just be straight-up lying about that. and the most cynical interpretation of all this is this is "wag the dog" right in front of our faces, right? that the president wanted to distract from his impending impeachment with a military strike taking out a, quote, unquote, bad guy in the middle east. the thing about that theory is it would only really work if it were the case that donald trump himself thought that a war in iran would be politically beneficial to a leader who is attempting to resuscitate his political image. is there any evidence at all to support that? imagine if we had a video placed in a time capsule of donald trump talking about what a future president might do. >> our president will start a war with iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. he's weak, and he's ineffective. so the only way he figures that he's going to get re-elected and

as sure as you're sitting there is to start a war with iran. now, i'm more militant and more militaristic than the president. i believe in strength. but to start a war in order to get elected -- and i believe that's going to happen -- would be an outrage. >> okay. now, to be fair, 100% fair, donald trump had a lot of takes floating around before he got into the white house. >> they're remaking "indiana jon jones" without harrison ford. and now they're making ghostbusters with only women. what's going on? >> all of the takes at that time were offered in the exact same format. like ghostbusters takes, war with iran takes. then we made him president. but in 2011, the idea that president obama might start a war with iran, it was a constant theme in donald trump's comments and his tweets. so one thing that is definitively established whether

or not this is the situation now is that it is the case that donald trump thought that one way an american president could turn things around politically would be to start a war with iran. that is his own words. essentially that is what he thought. that's what he said on the record. now, three days ago "the new york times" reported this, quote, mr. trump pointed out to one person who spoke to him on the phone last week that he had been pressured to take a harder line on iran by some republican senators whose support he needs now more than ever amid an impeachment battle. and then last night, "wall street journal" reported this, quoting again. mr. trump, after the strike, told associates he was -- that's plural -- he was under pressure to deal with general soleimani from republican senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the senate. think about that for a second. two different news sources reporting that in a matter of days, the president is literally telling people he almost started a war with iran to shore up republican votes in the senate for his impeachment trial.

what a damning admission by the man himself. i mean even if he is b.s.-ing to these people, right? even if it's not the rationale, he is telling people that he takes war so lightly, he is so appallingly glib about his own duty that he will order up an air strike that might lead to all out war in order to secure a few more votes for his impeachment trial. that's what he's saying about himself. so when you look at all the facts that led up to this strike and the moment we're in, there are two main possibilities. one is this, that this was a good faith action taken by the president with the national interest in mind. the other is that this was done for the president's political survival. and you get to decide which one it is. ask yourself what you believe. joining me now, former u.s. ambassador to the united nations and author of "the education of an idealist," samantha power. [ applause ] samantha, let me start on just this basic credibility question,

which is someone who has obviously received classified briefings, worked on the national security council, was ambassador to the u.n. your assessment of the credibility of the public case this white house has made about the soleimani strike? >> um, it's hard to know which case you have in mind, chris, because so many cases have been made. and so right there i think is your answer. it's still not clear what justification this administration is bringing forward for the strike. the trump administration actually submitted a letter to the united nations this week, which is an important show of recognition that international law exists notwithstanding the president's threats to iranian cultural sites earlier. but in the letter, another justification existed. you know, something that just talked about self-defense generally, almost a

retrospective self-defense after the storming of the embassy or the siege of the embassy that had occurred a couple days before. so i don't think if you surveyed heads of state around the world or if you surveyed really politically conscious americans and asked what the justification that president trump is putting forward, i don't think anybody would give you the same answer. it's all over the place. and, you know, we in the obama administration were in office in the wake of the iraq war, the invasion of iraq and all of the credibility challenges and the credibility deficit that existed in the wake of the flawed premises for that war. and it was a shadow even with the new president taking over when bashar al assad used chemical weapons in a massive attack in august of 2013, we went to the u.n. as you remember and described the attack. i brought u.s. intelligence experts up to the u.s. mission at the u.n. and got them to

present all the evidence that we had, and it was overwhelming, extensive evidence. and yet you could just see in everybody's mind, yeah, we've heard this before. >> right. >> you know, we heard a very, very flawed premise for a much broader outright invasion of iraq, but how do we know exactly that what you're saying is true? so it really took extensive briefings to overcome those doubts that people carry with them. and now, you know, i mean we have a president who has lied -- what's the latest count -- 15,000 times on small issues, really small issues, and on the big issues. and there's a knowledge that his obsession is with just doing the opposite of whatever obama has done, and his obsession is with his own self-advancement rather than that of the country's security. so there would be a huge amount of suspicion. again, you wouldn't want to be reading the thought bubbles of fellow heads of state who are

receiving calls from him or fellow diplomats who the u.s. ambassador now at the u.n. is briefing. >> there was a story -- part of what made this week so dangerous is obviously the u.s. has no formal diplomatic relationship with iran. there was a diplomatic channel that was set up under the obama administration for the six-party joint agreement on the nuclear deal. it allowed for there to be actual face to face talks between american diplomats and iranian diplomats. that has gone away. the only thing we have now is essentially a back channel through the swiss. there was a story that broke about basically that was the back channel that messages were being passed in the wake of those strikes. hours after a u.s. strike killed soleimani, the trump administration sent an urgent back channel message to tehran, don't escalate. i just thought of you and your second book, which is about a diplomat, about just the primacy and importance of diplomacy even at this grave moment where there's no channel left, that it's possible the single back channel that existed is the thing that essentially saved us from what could have been

genuine catastrophe. >> these channels are essential, and of course both the existence of the channel and the trust and the credibility of the people using the channels, they go together. and it's extremely important that those channels exist but also that the people who are employing them can be taken seriously by the other side. i mean one of the problems with there being no process, no credible process really within the trump administration, you know, these decisions that are made so impetuously or decisions that are made through, you know, what some kind of feeble process and then that get overtaken by a tweet by president trump is that unless it's trump himself maintaining that channel, there's not a lot of trust in the rest of the world that what comes out of a u.s. diplomat's mouth, even that of secretary pompeo, who is known to be so close to the president and to channel the president's hardline

instincts and certainly his anti-iran animus -- but even someone like that, there would be a recognition that trump could just change his mind and that the whims of one man are going to dictate what comes out of this government. but i agree with your premise. it is just essential that people be talking to each other, that those red phones exist. but it's all the more essential that within the trump administration as a whole, that there be, you know, careful planning and a much more consequentialist approach to the decisions that are taken rather than just this chest-thumping and punishment for punishment's sake and thinking so much about the moment and not only about the morning after but the week and the year after. so that's where having people in the room who are willing to challenge the president becomes so important or even just having a room. i mean this was done at the dinner table in mar-a-lago, i guess. >> right. >> these guardrails are key. >> let me ask you about process.

i mean you were in an administration that inherited the legal architecture of the war on terror, the 2001 and 2002 authorization of use of military force under the obama administration, targeted killing by drone and by other means was sort of enshrined, both legal architecture and a technical capability that now means the american president can basically kill anyone anywhere in the world at any time. and i wonder what you think about handing that off to this individual who now wields that power. >> well, i think there's a huge vulnerability to the system that we have right now. i mean first of all, we don't have a domestic authorization and haven't had a domestic debate since 2002. you know, we had an authorization after 9/11, 2001, and then the congressional debate in 2002 over the iraq war. and so many of the operations that u.s. forces are involved in not only in a place like iraq, where, you know, at least it's

connected to the war in iraq or sort of an inheritance of that disastrous war, but in places like libya or somalia or yemen, never a debate. never the public engagement. never members of congress required, you know, to state their position on these wars. so you have the absence of domestic debate, and then -- and this was always a concern that president obama had as well, but inevitably when something is so in the hands of a small number of individuals within the executive branch, you have a situation where you're kind of judge, jury, and executioner all at once. and if you go back to the logic of the founding and the logic of checks and balances or even the logic of how our legal systems work domestically, you always want to have something more adversarial than that. so president obama tried to construct a system where you built in a kind of adversarial process within, where you heightened the standard, where there had to be a near certainty of no harm to civilians, where

you had to satisfy the test that there was no reasonable alternative and that capture, for example, was not available for so-called high-value targets. so you could build in those mechanisms, try to be as paraplegic as possib transparent as possible. but then trump doing away with that imperative as it related to civilian casualties and drastically expanding the number of strikes that are taken in theaters that most americans don't even know we're active in. so it's a very dangerous situation and not sustainable, and it also places the burden on one tiny slice of our society where all the moral hazards sort of lives in one very small community. >> samantha power, thank you so much. i appreciate it. >> thanks, chris. [ applause ] >> the next step in the impeachment process, nancy pelosi has to name the house

members who will act as the impeachment members in the senate trial. they're going to basically try the case. thaf they're the lawyers. my next guest could be one of them. we'll see. don't go anywhere. the nerves in your colon. miralax works with the water in your body to unblock your system naturally. and it doesn't cause bloating, cramping, gas, or sudden urgency. miralax. look for the pink cap.

and with the sxfinity stream app, screen is your big screen. which is free with your service, you can take a spin through on demand shows, or stream live tv. download your dvr'd shows and movies on the fly. even record from right where you are. whether you're travelling around the country or around the house, keep what you watch with you. download the xfinity stream app and watch all the shows you love.

[ applause ] so next week, next week america could begin its third ever impeachment trial of a president. house speaker nancy pelosi said today that she plans to send the articles of impeachment to the senate as soon as next week. democrats will discuss the matter at their caucus meeting next tuesday with the impeachment manager selected soon. those managers in turn will be the ones that lay out the case for impeachment in the senate. they'll be in the well of the senate every day of the trial. and a trial could start the day after the articles of impeachment are actually transmitted over to the senate. mitch mcconnell seems very gung ho on the whole thing. when asked by a reporter today, any reaction to speaker pelosi sending the articles over, he replied about time.

when that reporter followed up with you're looking forward to just getting on with it all, mitch mcconnell replied with silence. here to fill in the silence, democratic congressman jamie raskin of maryland [ applause ] congressman. i know you've been sort of intimately involved in thinking through this entire process from the beginning, and i guess i just have kind of a technical question about -- lay out for us what happens over the next, say, five to seven days. >> okay. thank you for having me, chris. i should say that no impeachment managers have been chosen, and i don't know anything about the process. so that's up to the speaker. let me just say where we are. the role of the house of representatives is to bring these indictments, and we brought two charges as you know. abuse of power and obstruction of the congress. so now it goes to a trial in the senate, and the speaker withheld sending the articles over precisely because mitch

mcconnell and lindsey graham, the chair of the senate judiciary committee, were essentially saying they were working with the defendant in the case, and lindsey graham was saying, i don't care about the facts. i don't care about the evidence. so for the last several weeks what we've had to do is focus national attention on the fact that the senate was prepared not to do its job. they were talking about a motion to dismiss before any evidence had even been introduced. and so i think at least the country now understands how wrong that is. this is the most important trial in the country, and so why would we dispense with having evidence and facts? you know, if you got up in a jury pool and a voir dire process in any courtroom in america and you said you were going to disregard the facts and disregard the evidence as lindsey graham said, you would be dismissed immediately. so we need 100 senators, republicans and democrats, who are going to take their oath of office and mean it. and they've got to swear to do impartial justice. that enemas the republicans have got to listen to ul aof the evidence of guilt, and the

democrats have got to listen to any alibi evidence that the president comes forward with, or if he says it's a case of mistaken identity or somebody else really perpetrated the scheme, the democratic senators also have to be open to voting not guilty if there's evidence of innocence that's brought forward. so far, at least as to the house process, we didn't see any. all the evidence that the 17 witnesses sworn under oath to tell the truth brought us pointed to the guilt of one man, president donald trump, for committing an abuse of power by trying to drag a foreign government into our election in order to sabotage his opponent. and then blockading a whole series of witnesses and refusing to turn over a single subpoenaed document. so at this point, the house case is completely unrefuted and uncontradicted, and that's why we need to see a real trial in the senate, which is what the constitution calls for. >> right. okay. let me sort of repeat back to you one of the things i heard there, maybe in blunter terms, which is that, look, the speaker

upheld the articles knowing there was no actual leverage over what mitch mcconnell was going to do. he's going to run the senate, and he's probably going to be able to get 51 votes for what he wants to do. but what that pause did was highlight the fact that the senate majority leader and republicans are essentially trying to block witnesses from coming forward, including john bolton, who comes forward in that period to say i will come to the senate if i'm subpoenaed, and you count that essentially as a win. >> that's right. well, it's a huge win because, look, they were prepared to deal with this on a motion to dismiss as they kept saying in two hours before the christmas recess. and so speaker pelosi basically saved the integrity of the impeachment process and really the integrity of the senate. they've got the opportunity now -- it remains to be seen whether they will seize it. but they've got the opportunity now to live up to their constitutional oath. in the meantime, only more

evidence implicating the president has come out, including very specific documentary and testimonial evidence, or at least spoken evidence of the fact that 90 minutes after the infamous phone call with president zelensky, the orders were given to omb to hold up the money, the payment of the several hundred million dollars that we had voted to send to ukraine to defend themselves against russia and, you know, russia's continuing attack on their country. >> there's a small item in the bangor daily news today that caught a lot of people's attention. right now my understanding is the trial will start with what's called the clinton rules, which means there's no commitment ahead of time to call witnesses. there will be opening arguments and then the democrats can force votes on witnesses. and there's a question about can they get three republican senators to join them to force witnesses. susan collins in maine says she is working with a small group of gop senators to allow impeachment witnesses. i'm not quite sure how seriously

to take that honestly based on some of the record here. how seriously do you take it? >> well, we've got to take it seriously. we've got to hope that every republican will want to see every relevant witness who has material evidence. >> wait. congressman, let me cut you off there. they don't want to. i mean i understand you're articulating a principle, but just as a descriptive matter, you're not going to get the whole republican caucus voting for witnesses. >> i'd settle for five or six of them at this point, okay? >> right. >> but i mean here's why it's so essential because they're calling these the clinton rules, but in fact in clinton's impeachment, all of the relevant witnesses had already testified. >> right. >> now, of course, they came back and testified again on videotape and all the senators could go and view it. but remember what's taken place here. the witnesses who came forward, the 17 brave witnesses who came forward, you know, like fiona

hill and like ambassador yovanovich and so on, came forward over the protests and the attempts by the president to block them. and then he perpetrated a blockade of other witnesses including secretary pompeo and secretary perry and ambassador bolton and so on. those people did not come forward. so we still need to hear from those people. the president's running around saying this is a hoax, this is a fraud. great, mr. president. come forward and prove why it was a hoax and a fraud because we had 17 witnesses who are saying you did it. >> right. >> and that's what he's up against right now. >> it's particularly ironic the clinton rules because in the case of the clinton impeachment aside from this enormous record, the president himself in that case gave a sworn deposition. in fact that's why he was being impeached. it seems to me why don't we have the president give a sworn deposition, and then we don't have to call any witnesses? >> well, that's absolutely right, you know. the other thing that we need to see here is that they tried to stop the witnesses from testify. then they're saying we don't

need to see any evidence. america knows what a trial is. >> yes. >> a trial is the presentation of evidence and facts and fact witnesses. and so the president just has to let them come and testify. they just need to be subpoenaed, and they will all be able to testify. if not, essentially what we're going on is the house presentation, which was absolutely overwhelming and uncontradicted and unrefuted. and if they're somehow going to try to challenge that ask dismiss it, they're going to have to say that abuse of power is not a crime, is not a high crime and misdemeanor within the meaning of our constitution, which means it's going to be settled as a matter of law rather than as a matter of fact. and they can try to move to dismiss on that basis, and then they will have to argue to the american people why the president is entitled to abuse the powers of his office in this way by dragging foreign governments into our elections. >> all right. congressman jamie raskin, thank you so much for joining us. [ applause ] >> thank you for having me, chris. coming up, so we're talking about the impeachment trial. it is a trial of sorts, but it

is a trial. someone who's going to be a juror in the impeachment trial while also running for president, senator cory booker will be right here in studio right after this. ♪ limu emu & doug hour 36 in the stakeout. as soon as the homeowners arrive, we'll inform them that liberty mutual customizes home insurance, so they'll only pay for what they need. your turn to keep watch, limu. wake me up if you see anything. [ snoring ] [ loud squawking and siren blaring ] only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ this melting pot of impacted species.

everywhere is going to get touched by climate change. i was on the fence about changing from a manual to an electric toothbrush. but my hygienist said going electric could lead to way cleaner teeth. she said, get the one inspired by dentists, with a round brush head. go pro with oral-b. oral-b's gentle rounded brush head removes more plaque along the gum line. for cleaner teeth and healthier gums. and unlike sonicare, oral-b is the first electric toothbrush brand accepted by the ada for its effectiveness and safety. what an amazing clean! i'll only use an oral-b! oral-b. brush like a pro. the famous meat lover's pizza from pizza hut. over a pound of meat and cheese for just 10 bucks. it's more pepperoni for your penny, more beef for your buck, more... you get the idea. get yours delivered now at pizza hut.com. no one out pizzas the hut

the first votes of the democratic 2020 primary season are on february 3 and until then would normally be the most intense period of campaigning, particularly in the state of iowa. five of them, however, are sitting u.s. senators who will be in washington, maybe as much as six days aweek away from the campaign trail, frozen in place

by a historic impeachment trial. what does this mean for such a critical moment in the campaign? to help answer the question, please welcome senator cory booker, senator from new jersey and candidate for president of the united states. >> before we jump in, this is -- i love friday night you. you've got an amazing, very jersey influenced audience here. >> this is someone fresh off the campaign trail, who is just pandering to voters all the time. so it's just automatic. >> i'm happy chris hayes got me to be able to sleep in my own bed tonight in newark. this is awesome. >> given the stakes of the country and the trial, like your travel schedule is like low on the list of priorities. that said -- >> yes. >> -- it is a real question for the six of you or the five of you what this means. >> for me it's more of a blow to my campaign because we are winning on the ground in iowa. our whole strategy is we're not going to have tom steyer or bloomberg money. we're going to run this campaign in the grassroots.

we've done it. "the des moines registe we're now in the top two or three. our net favorabilities have popped to the top as well by converting people on the ground. but the challenge we have is that our persuasion depends upon me being in iowa, and we have high -- up to a third of the people coming to our town halls will sign commitment to caucus cards. being off the field for a week, two weeks is literally thousands of people that i won't be able to get to. >> world's smallest violin, right? you're a u.s. senator -- >> hold on. let me retract what i said before, that i like friday night you. you've never been that confrontational with me before. >> no. what i'm saying -- >> i'm feeling some kind of way about this. >> what i'm saying is i take that and if i were in your position i would feel the same way. >> thank you very much. >> but it's also like you're a u.s. senator and you signed up to do both these things, right? >> literally i have said from the very beginning of all this,

i am going to do my job. i swore an oath to do my job. i hear some of my colleagues saying that they're not going to do their job. those are the ones that are saying i'm not going to abide by the oath that i will swear to be an independent juror. i'm going to do my job. i'm just saying that this is a time where as a campaign, where some of the flaws we're seeing in a democratic process are -- hold on. i want you to jump on me. i want friday night you. if i come on your show on a monday night, i want friday night you. >> i'm going to follow up. >> follow up. jump in. >> i want to ask you this question, which i think -- this, i think, other people have pointed as a flaw and you just mentioned tom steyer and mike bloomberg money. here's the spending that's happening on the air right now. this is a wild graphic. whatever your politics are, whoever you favor, wherever you are on the ideological spectrum, where is our senator from new jersey? that's you over there. >> wow. >> and that up there, that's

$153 million from michael bloomberg and 116. they have lapped the entire field, you know, 20 times, i think, something like that. you know, there was a poll that steyer as at 15%, 16% in south carolina. what kind of way do you feel about that? >> i feel, again, some kind of way. this is the ridiculousness of it because i started this campaign saying, you know, i was the fifth senator to take the anti-citizens united pledge. no super pac money, no corporate finance, no corporate pac money. no pharmaceutical money. we cleaned our campaign and said we're going to run it. then we're seeing folks come in with ungodly amounts of money that have helped them to buy their way onto debate stages. i am confident if i was spending that kind of money, that i would be on these debate stages. so it's frustrating to my team that we set out to win an election how i've won most of my elections. we beat a machine in newark.

no polling showed we were going to win that, but we beat them on the ground in the grassroots. so this is frustrating to us that now at midnight tonight, i will not make the debate stage. >> right. >> and this is very -- i love the groan from your crowd tonight. this is what i need for solace. the next debate will be in iowa. >> yeah. >> and that wasn't decided by the people of iowa. literally the local media there has said that this is an outrage, this is wrong. the democratic party of iowa, democratic party of new hampshire, unanimous resolution saying this is one of the most competitive elections in the campaign. why shouldn't he be on the debate stage? so this has been a lot of blows to our campaign, but we are not deterred. we know that iowa -- remember, the last -- 2003 there were two people one month before the iowa caucuses polling at 4% and 2%, sixth and seventh, and they went on to finish one and two in the iowa caucuses. look, no matter what it is, i'm going to do my job as a united states senator. we are, as i said, one of the top campaigns and endorsed by local leaders.

we're going to have a lot of surrogates out there for us and we're going to do everything we can to win. >> in terms of the impeachment trial, obviously there's been this back and forth. it's probably going to start next week it looks like. >> yes. >> i want to get your read on the susan collins statement because i've heard a lot -- there was like audible groans in here. susan collins is thinking about -- how seriously do you take the idea that there are colleagues of yours who are republicans that would buck donald trump and mitch mcconnell to vote with democrats for witnesses and testimony? >> i had hope before that has been dashed. i think one of the best examples of this was the kavanaugh hearing. you know, i mean his behavior in that -- you know, when he turns to -- i think he yelled at our side, and he's pretty close. i went to yale! and thinking to myself, you privileged, entitled person. but that's not behavior. person. person. >> going to make some real news here.

>> yes. your behavior -- now, lisa murkowski said, i'm not voting for him for supreme court justice because one of the things we want for jurors is justices demeanor. but susan collins voted for kavanaugh. so what i'm saying is i'm not pinning my hopes on that. whatever is going to happen is going to happen. i'm not one of these people. i may have skepticism, sometimes cynicism, but one of my colleagues who -- look, you had jamie harrison was on "hardball" before this. i went to college. one of the greatest people i ever met in my life is jamie harrison. i hope people will go online tonight and make contributions to cory booker.com and jamie harrison's website. >> that is a first. double url. >> double url. but lindsey graham, i'm battling with him in the kavanaugh hearings. the next day we're working together to get criminal justice reform passepassed. i'm not going to sit here and judge susan collins who has

stood up and done the right thing. i'm going to a prisoner of hope because the long arc of history will look back on this moment. we are speaking to future presidents. we're already seen, and i think you had an incredible great here on this talked about this drift of power. we now have presidents, plural, and obama was a part of this, where the power has drifted from the article 1 branch of government to the article 2 branch of government on war powers. we are seeing things happening right now that are eroding our constitutional principles. this is one of those moments. future presidents are going to look back on this and say what's the accountability going to be? as long as i have 50 votes in the senate when i do something that, god, some of my senate colleagues, can't you say the behavior was wrong, dead wrong? maybe you don't think it was impeachable, but really? come on. that's the frustrating thing for me. let's have an argument about whether it's impeachable or not, but these are things we do not want presidents to do. and what we saw the first ten days of this year was the

chinese curse. may you live in interesting times. it's probably the most interesting ten days to start a year that we've seen. and where people can't even say out front that this man has no strategy for the middle east. they're breaking out towards a nuclear weapon if they get to 20% enrichment. >> iran? >> iran. we are less stable in our ability to stop isis to try to resurge in iraq. the iraqis were less stable in our ability to get there. our allies from israel with hezbollah and hamas are in more of a vulnerable position. i can go through the entire region and show you how this president, by any objective measure, has made that region less stable, made our personnel there less safe, and undermined what i think is the most important thing that when i travel to afghanistan and to baghdad and i meet with our military leaders, they say to me, these problems will not be solved -- this is afghanistan now -- with military intervention. it must be diplomacy. and we have a president that has

turned his back on diplomacy and even our allies has a better relationship with putin than he does with merkel or macron. >> the state department sent a letter to iraq basically saying, not in so many words, but we know you want us to leave, but we're not going to. i mean it didn't dwigquite say but it looks like we're essentially now alienating the iraqis now as well. >> yes. >> cory booker, who will be splitting his time between iowa and washington, d.c. >> you want my frequent flier miles. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. [ applause ] here's a question. is facebook incapable or just plain unwilling to deal with a crisis of misinformation on their platform? >> incapable. i'm sorry. >> it's a tease, senator. >> don't go away. >> i'm sorry.

i am totally blind. and non-24 can throw my days and nights out of sync, keeping me from the things i love to do. talk to your doctor, and call 844-214-2424. man, i'm thinking tacos. hey hey! you guys look like foodies. would you like to try our trashy back ribs? oh, that sounds great... everything is locally harvested, farm to dumpster to table. uhhh, what do you... what else do you got?

(stammering) w-we have a melon rind stew. comes with a pork and bean reduction. yeah, we're going to just do a lap and we'll come back. okay. well, we'll be here. man! why isn't this working? my mouth is watering. i think that's just your rabies flaring up. with geico, the savings keep on going. just like this sequel. 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance. we got gristle pot pies! it was a big week for facebook this week, perhaps the biggest and most important media platform in the world and certainly in the 2020 campaign. they announced this week that they would not take down ads with lies put up by politicians. that follows an internal memo that suggested policing lies and political ads as the country prepares for an election would, quote, use the tools available to us to change the outcome. president trump and his

notorious penchant for constant falsehoods and the executive author of the memo saying it occurs to me that it very well may lead to the same result as in 2016, meaning trump gets as a committed liberal, the executive continues, i find myself desperately wanting to pull any lever at my disposal to avoid the sail result. and then plays out the argument for avoiding that urge. a reasoning behind this is simple. if facebook were in to rein in disinformation, that would unfairly disadvantage donald trump. that's the argument. and then, on top of that, in just the past 48 hours, we've seen a stunning saga involving facebook, disinformation and teen vogue. that story is wild. i want to bring in discuss it nbc news reporter ben collins who spends much of his time sifting through the world of online disinformation. good to see you, ben. so i want to talk about the ad policy. before we get to that a perfect microcosm of where facebook is at. an article appears on teen vogue

on january 8th and we'll put up the headline. it reads like propaganda. how facebook is helping to ensure the integrity of the 2020 election. and then subhead with the company's huge platform comes huge responsibility. and this is a sort of soft focus glossy interview. with people at their disinformation desk. it reads like propaganda. what happens next? >> so, what happens next is that people start to realize this might not be a real article. there's no byline on it. the questions are, like, how can you both be so beautiful and so great at your job? so, everyone has started to realize that this may not be a standard article at teenvogue.com. >> because it reads like a press release or propaganda. it's a very soft focused interview with a bunch of women on the disinformation team and there's no byline on it and everyone says, this doesn't read like an actual article. >> while this is happening, cheryl sandberg says, this is a great article, about how

facebook is doing a great job at combatting disinformation. this article's point is that facebook is combatting disinformation and yet they will not admit that they paid for this article. >> so, it turns out that it was a paid article by facebook. >> yep. >> later on, long after it was posted, a line appeared, editor's note, this is sponsored editorial content. they paid for this article. their ceo posts it on the facebook page and don't admit their posting propaganda on an article about how their combatting propaganda. >> that is exactly right. >> i mean, to me, there is -- i can't tell what is going on over there. it seems to me that there's two options. there's a bunch of incompetent people at the top. there's a bunch of venal people at the top with bad ideas about the world or, c, which seems most likely, this is a platform that's gotten too big and gotten too much power and being asked essentially play a role that is essentially impossible for

anyone to do. >> i think part of it is that people who make a good thing and they think they've made a good thing and for the first few years it is a good thing, they don't want to go talk to their psychiatrist or whatever and say actually, you know what, this might be a disaster. that psychiatrist is not going to tell you that and they're not going to learn from this. right? they have to come to grips with the fact they've unleashed a lot of harm on the world and it's a really hard personal thing for executives who make, by the way, i would say deke or the y'all decisions across the board. mark zuckerberg decided this and that's what it is. it's hard for them to make these decisions over time. >> the debate is about this question of policing political ads. should they essentially and this is something like local news stations -- if you took out -- if you tried to run an ad on a local station saying, my opponent killed this person, just, tote it will fabricated, the station just wouldn't run the ad. >> correct. >> and what my understanding now is, donald trump could take an ad out saying that joe biden murdered this person and that would be fine and they would run the ad, is that correct? >> yes.

by policy -- >> that's nuts. is it actually true? >> yes, it is. we're going to come up to a red line at some point -- >> right. >> where this is going to be tested. as you know, i think you probably have realized, the president doesn't mind testing things like this. >> of course. >> so, i think in the next nine months or so, we're going to see what happens. and we might not find out until it is too late. they say they have this ad archive, which is, you can view every ad donald trump has ever put out. it's absolutely unsearchable. every researcher, every academic is like, how do we use this thing? it's pretty much impossible. and these people spent their lives looking into data about this stuff. so it's intentionally hard to use. and everyone is trying to figure out, like, is this on purpose? why is everything such a struggle with only this company? we don't know. >> there was of course the news that donald trump hosted zuckerberg for an undisclosed dinner at the white house in october. you're one of the people who broke that story. the president then touting him to rush limbaugh.

what is that relationship like, what do we know? >> with mark zuckerberg? >> yes. >> very quiet and secret, that's what we know about it when we reported out that story, we had people go behind the scenes and ask, like, look, did this happen? and for a week, all of our reporters at nbc news were all told, like, i don't think so. and even people in the company did not know this took place or they were just not telling the truth. and we found at the very end this actually took place. this was a meeting, by the way, we don't know everybody who was there, but we know it was zuckerberg, melania trump, donald trump and peter teal. there's a lot more stuff going on with him. he runs one of the largest contractors in the united states. >> thanks for making some time tonight. >> thanks so much. don't go anywhere. rachel maddow is coming next. cut. liberty mu... line? cut.

liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. cut. liberty m... am i allowed to riff? what if i come out of the water? liberty biberty... cut. we'll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ (honk!) i hear you sister. that's why i'm partnering with cigna to remind you to go in for your annual check-up, and be open with your doctor about anything you feel - physically and emotionally. but now cigna has a plan that can help everyone see stress differently. just find a period of time to unwind. a location to de-stress. an activity to enjoy. or the name of someone to talk to. to create a plan that works for you, visit cigna.com/mystressplan. cigna. together, all the way.

visit cigna.com/mystressplan. ♪ do you recall, not long ago ♪ we would walk on the sidewalk ♪ ♪ all around the wind blows ♪ we would only hold on to let go ♪ ♪ blow a kiss into the sun ♪ we need someone to lean on ♪ blow a kiss into the sun ♪ we needed somebody to lean on ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ all we need is someone to lean on ♪

thank you all so much for joining us for our very first live audience show of 2020. we actually were just going through the calendar and we have a whole lot planned for the next few months as we head into 2020. we'll be doing more shows here. we'll be doing more shows like this on the road in some of the early states it looks like. so, as always, thanks to you at home, as well as the audience here at 6a. we'll be back here next week. that is "all in" for this evening. "the rachel mad doe show" starts right now. >> good evening, chris. amazing show as always. great week. >> thank you, you, too. >> thanks.

and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. happy to have you with us. happy friday. the impeachment trial of president donald trump is set to begin in the united states senate maybe as soon as next week, but if not very soon thereafter. it has happened. house speaker nancy pelosi announcing today she's asked the judiciary committee in the house to prepare a resolution for next week that the house will vote on on the floor, that resolution will name the impeachment managers, who essentially will be the prosecutors who make the case against the president in his senate trial. we expect that list of impeachment managers to include people like intelligence committee chairman adam schiff, who himself is a former federal prosecutor and who, of course, led the fact-finding part of the impeachment inquiry in the house. it'll be interesting to see who else makes the impeachment manager's list. and indeed whether the house decides to appoint any of its staff, its staff attorneys or