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Don Lemon Tonight
Mike Pompeo Versus The Democrats; Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) Is Interviewed About How They Can Protect The Whistleblower Against President Trump And His Allies; Hillary Clinton Says Yes To Impeaching Trump; Trump Tweets Misleading Map Of 2016 Election Results; Republican's Watergate Moment; Support For Impeachment Increasing. Aired 11p-12a ET
Aired October 01, 2019 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[23:00:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon.
There are major developments in the impeachment inquiry and these are the big five headlines we're going to cover in the hour ahead.
Sources telling CNN that the State Department inspector general requesting an urgent briefing with Congress tomorrow after the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo pushed back on demands by Democrats for documents about Ukraine and testimony by current and former department officials.
Rudy Giuliani lawyers up. The President Trump's lawyer his personal attorney hiring a former assistant Watergate prosecutor to represent him in the expanding investigation into his role in the Ukraine scandal.
The president ramping up his attacks on the whistleblower. Is that person safety in jeopardy? I'm going to talk to a member of the House intelligence committee.
Also, tonight, fact checking President Trump's tweet of a map reporting to show the result of the 2016 election along with the words "try to impeach this." It shows a lot of red but it's both misleading and inaccurate. We'll explain.
Plus, Hillary Clinton on a media tour promoting a new book and revealing what she calls the gutsiest things she's ever done. Well, but also weighing in on the impeachment inquiry saying House Democrats are doing the right thing and she's not worried they're over -- overreaching.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: We don't have concerns about that. Because I think the evidence concerning Ukraine is so dramatic and irrefutable because it came right out of the White House. So, let the impeachment inquiry proceed. I know that they will do a thoughtful thorough job. Nobody should jump to any conclusions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Well, let's start with tonight's news on the impeachment inquiry. Joining me now to talk about the big picture, Frank Bruni, Michael D'Antonio, the author of "The Truth About Trump," and Rick Wilson. Rick is the author of "Everything Trump Touches Dies." And they're all in house.
RICK WILSON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Hey, Don.
LEMON: How nice of you guys show up.
MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Hi, Don.
LEMON: Yes. It's good to be with you. Good to have you here. Let's start with Frank. Frank, the speed of this impeachment inquiry now is really left the House flat footed the White House flat footed at times.
We now know Mike Pompeo as I said refusing to cooperate. The State department inspector general is now requesting an urgent briefing with Congress. We don't know what that is all about. But it's yet another unexpected twist. And we have been saying there's more to come, there's more to come.
FRANK BRUNI, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes.
LEMON: This is --
BRUNI: I think this is going to be a daily thing. And you said a keyword which is speed. And the question for this White House is whether they are going to be able to cope with that speed.
They've been, you know, we've talked about them not having the kind of war room that the Clintons had during impeachment. Not having that sort of skill of coordination. But to give them credit they've been pretty together unanimous disciple on the talking points. You know, deep state as Stephen Miller said on the morning show. They talk about witch hunts and then they keep up the refrains in a very disciplined way.
But what they are less good at historically is as the story changes minute by minute, day by day pivoting on a time, and that's because the person at the center of this is President Trump. And he's completely erratic and undisciplined.
And so, you have an entire operation that ends up changing itself based on what he tweeted out without talking to anybody else. You can -- a football team needs a steady quarterback. And this one has a gimpy, erratic, distracted quarterback.
LEMON: Well, with -- what it would it be -- the - I don't know if it's the assistant quarterback or a linebacker or receiver. I have no idea. Meaning Rudy Giuliani out saying really crazy things. Not really helping. BRUNI: He's the --
WILSON: I think he's the guy in the rainbow wig.
BRUNI: That's right.
WILSON: The big foam hand.
LEMON: Or the body painter.
BRUNI: He's the mascot.
LEMON: Yes. So, the secretary of state, Michael, and his name is Mike Pompeo as well. He's accusing Democrats of bullying State Department employees to testify. But then you have, you know, what's going on tonight when you see what the I.G. is doing. And then Democrats are saying look, we're not going to deal with this anymore. They're playing hardball, right?
D'ANTONIO: They are.
LEMON: Finally.
D'ANTONIO: The only thing more severe they could do is start fining people and start putting people in hotel rooms with guard out front which would be their right to do under contempt provisions that the House is allowed to impose.
LEMON: Do you think they're right to say that he's a conflict of interest?
[23:04:57]
D'ANTONIO: Of course, they are. And the thing that I'm surprised about with Pompeo is you see that Giuliani has lawyered up. You know, I would hope that Pompeo is getting good advice and maybe it wouldn't be a lawyer that appears on Fox News. He might go for somebody a bit more qualified.
Because these officials are in deep trouble. You know, this is not the kind of thing that you can resist forever. It's not a joke. Trump may promote it as something worthy of Twitter but it is a constitutional crisis.
LEMON: Well, to that, you know, to that effect, you remember during, Rick, during the election when he said I alone can fix this. Right.
WILSON: Yes.
LEMON: This isn't something that he can talk himself out of. This isn't a story where he can sort of twist it and change the narrative. It's bigger than that.
WILSON: Don, what we've got here is a legal process that is not amenable to disappearing into a haze of tweets or just, you know, coverage on the other network screaming that it's a lie by the deep state.
And Frank made a good point. There's no war room operating yet to any real degree. But when Clinton operated his war room it wasn't just about keeping the Democratic base fired up. It was about convincing voters in the middle that this process was unfair.
Donald Trump doesn't care about that. He's only trying to keep 30, 35 percent of the people in a state of absolute frenzy right now. And I think that is a great strategic weakness for their effort to push back on impeachment because they are not devoting anything to talk to folks in the middle or convincing folks that there's another case to be made here. It's like, we did it, so what.
LEMON: Yes.
BRUNI: And it's a very, very scary thing that he's doing --
LEMON: It is.
BRUNI: -- as he faces to that base. Because he's basically telling a huge chunk of America you cannot trust the institution of government any longer. You cannot trust your own eyes. Truth is not truth. You know what I mean? This is, he's inviting the estrangement of an enormous chunk of Americans for some time to come long after this is over.
LEMON: Well, this -- and you write in your columns today. You said if Trump goes down, he's taking everyone with him. Right? So, I mean, you can -- you can -- you say that the impeachment inquiry is partisan. But there's a -- or that the Clinton impeachment -- excuse me -- was ugly and partisan. But this is a whole new level.
BRUNI: Yes. So, I actually worked on Capitol Hill for "The New York Times" during Clinton's impeachment so I remember it well. And the Clintons fought hard and their defenders they fought hard and they fought nasty and it was a partisan battle. I mean, it was what happens in politics.
This is a whole different thing. I mean, Donald Trump and when he's using words like treason for Adam Schiff. You never heard Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton or anyone around them publicly utter the word treason about one of their detractors ever. This is an entirely different thing.
D'ANTONIO: And threatening Civil War. The president's base is a very well-armed population. This is terrifying. I think it's terrifying to members of Congress. I think it's terrifying to people in the media. I think it's terrifying to the general public. No president has ever sunk this low. And not recognized that he's doing something very dangerous.
LEMON: But we did hear during whitewater that it was a vast right- wing conspiracy. That's what --
(CROSSTALK)
BRUNI: Well, it was -- that was Hillary base.
LEMON: Right.
BRUNI: And now they're talking I guess about a left-wing conspiracy. But they're going much, much further than that.
LEMON: Yes.
BRUNI: I mean, they are literally telling you truth is not truth. What you see with your own eyes. Donald Trump is taking this reconstructed transcript and he's saying this is a perfect call. Anybody with a brain can read that and say that's not a perfect call. It is coercion.
LEMON: No. I wonder what transcript --
(CROSSTALK)
WILSON: It is coercion.
LEMON: -- are they reading?
WILSON: Right.
LEMON: What --
WILSON: When he put it out, you know, I immediately tweeted how did they think it was going to help them?
LEMON: Yes.
WILSON: Any rational person reading it knows there's extortion going on there. There's a man who is attempting to use to weaponize the government and the power of the presidency to extort a foreign leader to give him political aide and comfort.
LEMON: Rick, they don't say hey, this is a quid pro quo and I got to -- you know, it's not that obvious.
WILSON: When mob prosecutors -- when the guy used to say, hey, you need to go take care of that guy. And somebody ends up dead in a ditch. They didn't need to hear that on the FBI tape to know that they sent (Inaudible) to whack somebody.
This is clearly what he wanted. And I don't think it's going to hold up. You know, unlike whitewater and unlike the Clinton, you know, the Lewinsky investigation and the impeachment. Those things were all really internal to Bill Clinton and his personal behaviors. They weren't reflective of the president of the United States trying to shift government resources assets and policy --
LEMON: Right.
WILSON: -- to achieve a political victory.
BRUNI: It wasn't the same kind of corruption. LEMON: You guys --
WILSON: A different scale.
LEMON: You guys know Jon Sale is, right?
BRUNI: Yes.
LEMON: The former Whitewater prosecutor. He's been on the show. Has he ever been on the show? He's been on the show before. But this is what Rudy Giuliani -- Watergate prosecutor -- excuse me, not Whitewater. My W is right.
BRUNI: Right.
LEMON: Former Watergate prosecutor. Rudy Giuliani has now hired him as his lawyer.
BRUNI: Yes.
LEMON: This is what he told me, Jon Sale was on back in May and he said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JON SALE, FORMER ASSISTANT SPECIAL WATERGATE PROSECUTOR: Up until October 20, 1973, there was no serious talk about impeachment. But the Saturday night massacre. I mean, I was fired at the Saturday night massacre along with my bosses.
[23:10:00]
That's what changed public opinion and that's what's it's all about.
If the Trump White House continues to maintain public opinion on this, no matter how they do it, there're going to be no threat to the president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Public opinion though, appears to be changing. Let's put this up. CNN poll yesterday showing support for impeachment at 47 percent. That's up significantly from the past few months.
Michael, do you think the threat to the White House now more, does it feel more real to them than ever?
D'ANTONIO: It must. I think if the president is ever going to come out of denial it would be now. He's very attuned to public opinion, very attuned to the polls. He likes the ones that favor him. But he pays attention to all of them.
So, this is also a case where he's lost momentum. And I think it's the first time that he's actually been back pedaling. And he's not very good back pedaling. He's really clumsy at it to go back to the football analogy. BRUNI: He's not so good at forward pedaling.
D'ANTONIO: No, no, no. But he's very aggressive. He likes -- he's comfortable with aggression. Thanks a lot, Frank.
BRUNI: No, no. No. But I think these polls, I think if anything, we've underplayed these polls.
D'ANTONIO: Yes.
BRUNI: Because that change came in a course of a week.
LEMON: Yes.
BRUNI: We have had more revelations since then. This is going to be a cascade.
(CROSSTALK)
WILSON: It all (Inaudible) on independent voters.
BRUNI: Yes. And I think there's only one direction this trend line goes.
LEMON: I want to get this New York Times reporting in since you work for the New York Times.
Tonight, President Trump mindset over the border last March, the article is titled "Shoot them in the legs. Trump suggested inside his border war." Shoot them in the legs to slow them down. And then he said this.
"Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border with a water filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators. Promoting -- or prompting aides -- excuse me -- to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh."
So, we have snakes and alligators. It gives you an idea of what's going on inside the president's mind.
BRUNI: Federal bestiary.
WILSON: He left off lasers and robot Dobermans. I mean, --
(CROSSTALK)
BRUNI: I think he was just watching the "Hunger Games" or something and --
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Listen, it may sound, you know, fantastical, right? But remember when he tweeted out that wall with the spikes on top thing.
BRUNI: Sure. LEMON: That he wanted the wall to look like that.
D'ANTONIO: But who thinks this other than a sadist? I mean, let's get real about this. No one in their imagination says let's put alligators and snakes in a trench and then shoot people in the leg because they're seeking asylum. They're women and children.
This is insane. And this is where his mind goes. And this is the president of the United States.
WILSON: He is not a well man.
LEMON: Thank you, gentlemen.
BRUNI: Thank you, Don.
LEMON: I appreciate it.
The president attacking the whistleblower again today. Is he or she in danger? I'm going to ask a member of the House Intel Committee how they can protect that person.
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LEMON: The State Department inspector general requesting what's being called an urgent and highly unusual staff briefing with Congress tomorrow.
This as battle is raging between House Democrats and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The chairman of the House intel, foreign affairs and oversight telling Pompeo that any effort to prevent five State Department officials from speaking to them is -- and this is a quote -- " illegal and will constitute evidence of obstruction of the impeachment inquiry."
That's in response to Pompeo accusing Democrats of attempting to bully and intimidate those officials.
Lots to discuss now. Congressman Andre Carson is here. He's a Democrat, he's on the intel committee. Congressman, we appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
REP. ANDRE CARSON (D-IN): Thank you. Thank you, Don. Thank you for having me.
LEMON: Let's talk about what we're learning tonight that the State Department I.G. is requesting an urgent briefing tomorrow with senior congressional staff members concerning document requests about Ukraine. What is this about?
CARSON: Well hopefully, it's about the preservation of the democracy. And making sure that the founding fathers' vision of the having checks and balances in three separate but equal branches of government are doing their jobs. I mean, it's clear. When you talk about intimidation, when you talk
about tyrannical leadership, when you talk about unitary leadership, we can look at Donald Trump and his toxic leadership style. Not only he has been able to intimidate employees, but he attempts to intimidate members of the media, members of Congress, chairs of committees, and obviously, whistleblowers who want to speak truth to power. And to make sure that his presidency has a greater eye of scrutiny on him.
LEMON: Pompeo is stonewalling. He's refusing to comply. But two of the five officials Congress wants to depose, Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine and Maria Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. What do you want to ask them?
CARSON: Well, I think there are series of questions I'd like it ask them. And in terms of their -- in terms of what they know, I'd like for us to get to the bottom of what they know. And perhaps maybe even some complicity as it relates to covering up this administration's tactics, intimidation tactics, blackmail tactics.
And so, what we want to do is make sure that the committee, a very capable committee, very disciplined committee led by Chairman Adam Schiff and the other committees of jurisdiction, oversight and foreign affairs and judiciary are involved in making sure that this process goes through smoothly.
Even though we're on recess we have trained and capable staffers. Many of whom come from the intelligence community. Others who are accomplished lawyers. And of course, those of us who serve on the committee will meet Friday. We can make sure that we're doing our due diligence by our constituents and by taxpayers dollars and making sure that we maintain the preservation of rule of law.
[23:20:05]
LEMON: Yes. Listen, I'm sure the folks at home and my ears perked up when you said blackmail tactics. What do you mean by that?
CARSON: Well, I think any time you have a president who after Congress approves dollars to go towards Ukraine and other countries who is using his executive authority to freeze those funds, unless a leader or newly elected leader does what he wants them to do, that's a form of blackmail.
I think those are mob tactics. I think the president styles himself as this unitary kind of mob figure. But those tactics won't work. I think those of us in Congress who are concerned about preserving our republic, if you will, won't let him get away with it.
LEMON: Listen, I want to you talk about Congresswoman Maxine Waters posted on Twitter this afternoon that she thinks President Trump -- and this is a quote -- she says "needs to be in prison and placed in solitary confinement."
She certainly received her fair share of abuse from the president over the years. But do you worry about rhetoric like that? That she's doing the same thing the president is doing when he is criticized for throwing, you know, terms like treason and Civil War and death penalty around?
CARSON: Not at all. Maxine Waters reminds me of my grandmother. I was raised by women like that. And in fact, after my mother passed, Congresswoman Waters became like a mother to me. So that kind of unbridled and passionate kind of speech encourages me.
I think that she's someone who like Shirley Chisholm is unbossed and unbossed. She's unafraid to speak truth to power and she knows what she's talking about. So stylistically we all have different styles. But I dearly love that woman and I'll follow her anywhere.
LEMON: Are you concerned when the president sends out saying, you know, we -- why aren't we entitled to interview and learn everything about the whistleblower and also the person who gave all the false information? Do you think he is putting the whistleblower in danger here? Is that concerning to you?
CARSON: Absolutely. I think that's his motivation. I think that's why it's up to us to protect this pipeline to ensure that the whistleblower is protected right now. His attorneys are going through the security process as approved by DNI Director Maguire.
But we want to make sure that he -- that this person he or she is protected and we want to make sure that they're able to tell their story and speak their truth without fear of losing their job or fear of losing their benefits or risking the livelihood of themselves or their family members.
LEMON: Representative Carson, thank you so much. I appreciate your time.
CARSON: What an honor. Thank you.
LEMON: President Trump tweeting out an inaccurate and misleading map about his 2016 victory and goading Democrats to impeach him. We're going to set the record straight next.
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LEMON: So, you know what we say around here. We say facts first. So, let's fact check some of what the president has been saying.
Just last week he told diplomats at the U.N. quite a story really. A story about the Carolina -- North Carolina ninth district special election last month. An unexpectedly close election in a ruby red state won by Republican Dan Bishop.
Well here's what the president said in a transcript from Bloomberg. OK? It says, quote, "In fact, the whole night, CNN, they had a studio. The studio was going to stay up for weeks and toward the end of the night they are taking it down. Their so-called stars were leaving. They had stars. There's not many stars. I'll tell you less than 10. But they were taking, the stars were leaving. And they didn't want to report it."
So, the president claiming that CNN build a beautiful studio in North Carolina maybe costing $2 million. A studio that is going to stay up for weeks if the Democrat won.
The fact is, CNN did not build a studio at all. There never was one. Everything the president said there is completely false. Also known as a lie.
And there's more. The president tweeting out a map today. Supposedly showing all the red counties he won in 2016 in that election top by words "try to impeach this."
There's a slight problem. It's misleading and it's inaccurate. And I want to bring in now Philip Bump. He's a national correspondent for the Washington Post who wrote about this today. Philip, thank you.
PHILIP BUMP, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, WASHINGTON POST: Of course.
LEMON: Good to see you. He's still obsessed with 2016. The president tweeting out this map today.
BUMP: Right.
LEMON: But this map doesn't really make sense. It doesn't show what the president thinks it does. Help us understand what's wrong with the president's logic here.
BUMP: OK. So, the brief version of this. We can go on for a while. The brief version is he's trying to say I've got such a big mandate. How could you possibly impeach me? Right?
There are at least four problems. The first problem obviously is that huge swath of red in the middle of the country is very, very few people live there. I looked at North Dakota and South Dakota, Montana and Idaho, has essentially half as many people as Los Angeles County. But it's 83 times the size of Los Angeles County.
So, it's 83 times as many people but half as many voters. Right? So, it's a misrepresentation of scale there. And of course, he doesn't want to talk about who actually won the most votes in 2016 because he comes up by the short end of that.
A really good analogy though that I actually saw online over the weekend from Kevin Kruse, a historian, is comparing it to the 1972 map for Richard Nixon which was almost entirely red.
[23:30:03]
Nixon actually blew out George McGovern in 1972. And then two years later he's impeached. So you can try to impeach no matter how right it is. And then of course there is the little matter of fact that the map that Trump shared wasn't even accurate.
LEMON: Yes. You said that Trump's map isn't even accurate. That there are a number of counties that are red on the map but should be blue. BUMP: Right.
LEMON: Tell me about these counties.
BUMP: Well, so I mean, there's a few of them especially on the west coast. You can see them circled there in black. And the point is, I mean, I think what he did is essentially someone took a map from early on election night when it looked like those counties were going to be won by the Republican.
But since the only thing he's looking at here is the amount of red on the screen, it's bizarre. I mean, that's a generous way of saying it. It's bizarre to then use a map that has more red than is actually representative of what actually happened because it doesn't even matter how much red there is because that doesn't correlate to the votes at all anyway.
LEMON: He doesn't know how to distinguish between a county of millions and residents in a county with a few thousands.
BUMP: Well, he doesn't care about it, right? I mean, he just wants -- he likes that map. And there's this great story from his, you know, when he's 100 days in office. Some Reuters reporters came into his office and he like handed them maps of the electoral voters, though they, 100 days into his presidency were unaware of what had happened.
He loves seeing all that red. He has a framed version of the electoral map in the White House. He adores that map even though what it shows is essentially an election that he lost by 3 million votes.
LEMON: The implication that this tried to impeach this, right, that he put up on the other map, right, that he said try to impeach this. Is that the president is so popular, Democrats wouldn't dare impeach him. There it is right there, wouldn't dare try to impeach him, but what is the flaw in that logic?
BUMP: Well, the flaw in the logic is he already lost the popular vote, right. I mean, he has always tried to present himself as having this broad mandate. He looks at the elector vote in totals. I've got over 300 and Hillary Clinton only got 220 or whatever the numbers are.
He tries to say that that's the mandate, but it's always been the case and the thing that he has always reeled against is that he lost that popular vote. It's why he lies about there being, you know, unauthorized votes in California and the in New Hampshire and so on and so forth, because he can't deal with the fact that he lost that popular vote.
And in fact, especially when you look at Richard Nixon, he won by something lik 13 million votes in 1972 in a much smaller United States. Trump lost by 3 million votes and then for him to put try to impeach this on top of a map that shows that is bizarre.
LEMON: Well, didn't his voter fraud commission come up with all this evidence that he was right about? That's sarcasm because that's defunct and they had to -- BUMP: It's sitting there in that CNN studio in North Carolina.
LEMON: Good come back.
BUMP: All right. Doing my best.
LEMON: You're pretty sharp, buddy. Thank you very much, Philip Bump, I appreciate that.
Impeachment proceedings are heating up, but in a lot of ways, the partisan divide is bigger than ever. Why what we're seeing now is a whole different ball game from past impeachment.
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[23:35:00]
LEMON: As impeachment investigation is heating up, here's a provocative question from a former acting CIA director, John McLaughlin, asking this. He says, "Which Republican will have a Watergate moment?"
And he writes, "Could there be a Hue Scott in 2019 An old-fashioned centrist Republican, Scott was one of the three senior GOPers who went to the White House in 1974 with Senators Barry Goldwater and John Rhodes to tell President Richard Nixon the party had lost confidence in him. The game was up and it was time to resign or be convicted in an impeachment trial."
Let's discuss now. Ron Bronstein is here, Douglas Brinkley as well. I wonder if we're going to have one of those moments, fellows? Good evening. Douglas, what do you think? Is there a Republican who can stand up to Trump in a moment of truth if that arrives?
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: They haven't made themselves obvious if there are one. I mean, for a while, people thought Lindsey Graham due to his friendship with John McCain, and oh boy, is McCain missed now. Or that Lindsey Graham might be a kind of somebody who just tells the truth to people even though he's a conservative politician.
But alas, he's not going to be that person. He's up, you know, dealing with politics in South Carolina. So I don't see, maybe Chuck Grassley may step up. I thought somebody like ex-president George W. Bush or James Baker, former Secretary of State George Schultz might write a letter to an op-ed piece right now.
I mean, the re-establishment of the Republican Party doing something, but instead it's just a congressman here and a couple of ex-senators.
LEMON: Ron, back in Watergate era, Congress operated in -- I'll let you in, but I just want to put this up. In a much more bipartisan manner, you pointed out in your new piece in cnn.com that six Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee actually voted to approve the articles of impeachment against Nixon. Can you ever see that happening now and who's going to have that moment that was mentioned? RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, first, the party
were much more heterogeneous then, right? I mean, you had very liberal Republicans like Jacob Javits of New York or Charles Mathias of Maryland. And you had very conservative Democrats. You still had all the southern segregationists Democrats that Joe Biden has gotten in trouble for praising.
And so there was a lot more kind of tradition of building coalitions across party lines to get things done. And, you know, when Nixon was impeached, yes, Vietnam had been deeply divisive in the country, but there was like a backdrop of the two parties working together particularly on environmental legislation. He had ha lot of experience working with Democrats in Congress before Watergate.
[23:40:00]
But yet, his approval rating, Don, among self-identified Democrats was at 51 percent when he took office for his second term. Today, the parties are much more sorted geographically, demographically, racially, by education.
And I think it is much more difficult to imagine anything like what we saw in Watergate. You know, the question to me isn't whether there is an individual Republican who might step up. Mitt Romney might be a good example.
The question is whether there will be anybody behind them even if they do given the enormous pressures that now exist to kind of stand with your side against the other. And certainly Donald Trump has played to that kind of tribal vision of politics more than any of our modern leaders.
LEMON: And you have to remember too that there was, you know, didn't have the proliferation of 24-hour news media and conservative media during that time. Doug, here's the former White House speaker Newt Gingrich on Fox News yesterday morning -- former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich on Fox news yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Impeachment is about whether or not something happened of sufficient weight that the president should be taken out of office. This has nothing to do with that. This is a rush to judgment by left wing Democrats who are engaged in literally a coup de etat.
Their goal is to drive the president of the United States out of office because they hate him. Now, I don't think partisan hatred comes under high crimes and misdemeanor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Douglas, will messages like that to Trump's base help him survive this impeachment?
BRINKLEY: I don't think so. It seems very desperate to me when you start having to use terms like coup de etat and civil war and treason. And Donald Trump keeps trying to appeal with his base to stick by him. But the Democrats are moving forward.
We're going to have to see where the evidence leads itself. But we have that transcript of the phone call by, you know, from the president, and so that's --
LEMON: Admitting.
BRINKLEY: -- that's going to dominate all of this.
LEMON: Right. He admitted what he did. He put out the transcript and there it is right there.
BRINKLEY: Yes.
LEMON: Ron, I just want to read another point from your piece, OK. You said Trump has focused his policy agenda almost entirely on the preferences of his core supporters and has treated the parts of the country that resisted him more as a threat to mobilize his voters against then as potential supporters to be wooed. If Trump had worked harder to build a bipartisan base of support, would he be more insulated from impeachment?
BROWNSTEIN: Sure. Absolutely. I mean, you're talking about the widest gap we have ever seen between the approval rating of a president among voters in one party and voters -- he has poor rating among Democrats. In Gallup, it's at 5 percent. Support for impeachment now is 20 points higher in -- roughly 20 points higher in some polling than it ever was for removing Bill Clinton from office.
And Trump is treating this the same way he has treated everything else. The reason they use this kind of highly inflammatory dangerous language is because they are talking again, as always, only to their base, trying to make it difficult for Republicans to step out of the line and support impeachment.
But all of this does come at a cost. I mean, I think that if you look -- it's not that a majority of the country is yet for impeachment, but you could easily imagine how we will get there given where we are in public opinion now.
And particularly among the constituencies that have moved the most away from the Republican Party under Trump, which are young people, minorities and college educated white voters. I mean, I think this kind of language is precisely designed, I think as Doug was suggesting, to drive all of those away even if it makes the Republicans more careful of crossing him.
LEMON: Guys, got to be the last word. I'm out of time. Thank you gentlemen. I appreciate it. See you next time. Hillary Clinton weighs in on impeachment and some of the most critical moments in her life.
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HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think the gutsiest thing I ever done, well, personally, make the decision to stay in my marriage.
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[23:45:00]
LEMON: Hillary Clinton, back in the spotlight promoting a new book she wrote with her daughter, Chelsea. And not surprisingly, they have a few things to say about the impeachment investigation.
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CLINTON: We have started an impeachment inquiry, which will look at the evidence. And I think that's exactly what should be done. I believe strongly that this particular incident has had such a huge impact because we have known for a long time that he was a corrupt businessman who cheated people.
But to see him in the office of the president, putting his own personal and political interests ahead of the national security of our country just pierced through whatever confusion or denial people had. And at that point, Speaker Pelosi rightly said this is something we have to investigate and that's what's going on.
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LEMON: Let's discuss now with Amanda Carpenter and Kirsten Powers. I just had a 2016 flash back. It's crazy. It's like 2016 all over again. Hello to both of you. Amanda, I'm going o start with you. Hillary Clinton says an impeachment inquiry, you heard her there, exactly what should be done. What do you think of her comments on this?
AMANDA CARPENTER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, I guess I just have complicated feelings as a woman and a Republican about Hillary speaking out in this way. Listen, she has a right to speak. She's a former first lady, New York senator, Secretary of State, Democratic nominee who won the popular vote. She should have a lot of important things to say.
[23:50:02]
But on the other hand, I'm just sitting here, it's like, another book tour? I mean, you just had the big book tour with what happened to rehash the election. You had another book to setup. Your democratic election in 2016 making millions and millions of dollars.
And so, I mean, she's going through this again? She should be able to just speak on her own two feet. I don't understand the relentless book tours. And god bless her, go make the money, all that.
But it just feels like, okay, you've sold your story so many times, and now you're just selling other women's stories. It seems like an empowering project, but she's not talking about that. She's just rehashing the election again. LEMON: Yes. Well, he did ask her about that and that was the first
thing. He said, I got to get you since, you know, there news that's happening and then they talked about the book. But Kirsten, I want to bring you in and get your opinion, but let's play this first and then I'll get you.
Clinton was asked on "Good Morning America" about the gutsiest thing she's ever done. Here's her answer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: I think the gutsiest thing I ever done, well, personally, make the decision to stay in my marriage. Publicly, politically, run for president and keep going, just get up every day and keep going.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Yes. That was the name of the book, is "Gutsy Women," right? Were you surprised to hear that, Kirsten?
KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: No, not at all. And I just want to say I don't think there's anything -- I don't think she's doing anything wrong. I think she is -- it's perfectly fine for her to write books. She's not supposed to be locked in the attic, right?
I mean she has a life and she is -- you know, she is somebody who won the popular vote, and I think it's not like the idea that she's sort of supposed to be locked away, I don't completely understand. She's been asked a question, and she answered it. She's not on some tour to talk about impeachment. She's going to get asked about it.
So, I think that what she said about her marriage is important, that she has been really maligned, really -- as long as I can remember, I mean all the way back to the White House, and it probably was before that, being accused of, you know, enabling her husband, I guess, by staying with him, of staying with him only because she wanted to be -- you know, get ahead, and it was the only way she would get ahead.
Or then on the other hand, she should leave him and what kind of woman is she that she stays with him? There was no winning for her. And I think that she made a decision to keep her family together, and that's not the decision everybody needs to make, but it was a decision that she felt like she needed to make. And I really think that's a decision that should have been respected and should be respected. And it really hasn't been.
LEMON: Yeah. You want to --
CARPENTER: Yes, I just want to mention, you know, she's going to talk about timely, newsworthy things. I think she does have an important perspective into something that's going on in the 2020 race right now.
One of the reasons that Trump was able to cast so much aspersion on her is because there was so much suspicion among the right wing that she was somehow profiting from her government service through the Clinton global initiative, through the speechmaking, and all that. And so her being on the book tour again reminds me of that. And Joe
Biden in many respects is going through the same thing with his son right now. There's an inherent suspicion in the American electorate of public servants who make money off the system.
I don't know how many times I've heard these, people go to Washington poor and somehow they walk out of Congress and the White House making millions. And so, that's a very real concern. She could speak to that. She could speak to what's going on with Joe Biden and his family as someone who has been through the ringer.
And I think there's tough questions that could be asked about whether she has regrets of making that money, you know, through previous speeches, trying to work on a global scale through the foundation. That's what I would like to hear her weigh in on when it comes to 2020 because I already know what she thinks about Trump.
LEMON: I think the -- what people would say is that there is a president and a family in office now who are making money off the presidency --
CARPENTER: Oh, sure. Yes.
LEMON: -- while they are in office. And I don't think that you think that folks are wrong by saying that. Kirsten, listen, Stephen Colbert asked Secretary Clinton about the president's attempts to pressure Ukraine into doing political dirty work for him. Listen to this.
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STEPHEN COLBERT, LATE NIGHT SHOW HOST: We learned about the Trump/Ukraine call of the private server. Is it time to, dare I say, lock him up, lock him up? What do you make of it?
CLINTON: Well --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE'FEMALE: Lock him up. Lock him up. Lock him up.
COLBERT: Sorry, I created -- sorry. I created a monster.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: I mean this, of course, is a play on Trump's political rallies, you know, where "lock her up" is still a chant (inaudible), but was it a little awkward? I watched it live, and I thought it was a little awkward. She put her hand out and then Stephen Colbert jumped in, but did you think it was a little awkward?
POWERS: No. I mean, I thought it was a light-hearted moment, right. I don't -- I actually don't think that -- I don't see any problem with it and it's certainly out of her hands, you know. It was something of a joke, I think, and then the audience got in on it and she kind of laughed about it.
[23:55:01] I mean, you can't put it in the same category of what Donald Trump
does because when Donald Trump does it, he is literally talking about locking her up. You know, she's just sitting there kind of going along, kind of laughing and trying to be good natured about a joke.
LEMON: Thank you both. I appreciate your time. Thanks. And thanks for watching. Our coverage continues.
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