LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Rachel.
I have a bit of a cold that you might be able to hear.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: You seem to have a little frog in your throat.
O`DONNELL: Yes, instead of our usual evening chat, I`m not sure how many words I`m actually going to be able to speak tonight, so I`m going to have to save it for the TV show here, the actual story stuff we have to do. We`ll chat tomorrow night if I have any voice.
MADDOW: I`ll drop off some hot cider.
O`DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel. Thank you.
Well, despite the cold, I am very excited about tonight`s show, not just because of the impeachment ground we have to cover tonight, because at the end of this hour, I am going to be in super fan mode because we are going to be joined by this year`s co-winner of the Nobel Prize in economics whose work is already in the center of the Democratic presidential campaign, even if many of the candidates don`t realize that.
The Nobel Prize in economics was not established until 1969, and when I became an economics major in college in the 1970s, professors in the economics department at my college won the Nobel Prize three years in a row, and they were the biggest stars in the world to me. And they still are. And tonight you will meet the second woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in economics, and she will tell you what you need to know about the most important issues in the presidential campaign that you discuss every day already and that the candidates discuss every day.
And you will be surprised which billionaire agrees with her, at least on some of her research. That is at the end of this hour and you don`t want to miss that.
But we begin tonight, of course, with impeachment. The Ukrainians knew. The Ukrainians knew that Donald Trump was withholding military aid authorized by Congress. And the Ukrainians knew long before the first public report in "Politico" in late august that that aid was being withheld.
That was the single most important point in the transcript released today of Laura Cooper`s deposition testimony to the impeachment investigation of Donald J. Trump. Because that destroys the Republican defense that Donald Trump couldn`t possibly have committed extortion if Ukraine did not know that Donald Trump was withholding the aid to Ukraine. That is one of the Republican talking points that they`re planning to use in the public hearings, talking points that were obtained by "Axios." We`ll have more on that later.
That particular defense is now gone because Ukraine knew. Laura Katherine Cooper is the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. Military aid to Ukraine was the most urgent issue in her jurisdiction at the Defense Department. She testified that Ukrainian officials learned of the Trump administration withholding of military aid and begun asking questions about it well before "Politico" first reported it in late August, according to what she had been told by Kurt Volker, the Trump special envoy to Ukraine, and the acting ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor.
Quote, I knew from my Kurt Volker conversation and also from sort of the alarm bells that were coming from Ambassador Taylor and his team that there were Ukrainians who knew about this.
On July 26th, Laura Cooper found out that both military and humanitarian aid were being withheld from Ukraine, and at her level, all of the governing professionals like herself were worried that it was illegal. Quote: Immediately, deputies began to raise concerns about how this could be done in a legal fashion, Cooper said. The comments in the room at the deputy`s level reflected a sense that there was not an understanding of how this could legally play out.
Laura Cooper testified that Ukraine had met all of the requirements for U.S. aid before President Trump put a hold on that aid in addition to her worries about the legality of the hold, Laura Cooper was worried about what it meant for Ukraine`s very survival. Quote, if they are seen as weak and if they are seen as lacking the backing of the United States for their armed forces, it makes it much more difficult for them to negotiate a peace on terms that are good for Ukraine.
Mick Mulvaney was drawn deeper into the Trump appeasement of Russia in another deposition transcript released today of the testimony of Catherine Croft, a special adviser for Ukraine at the State Department. Catherine Croft testified that a previously unknown hold was placed on a separate piece of military aid to Ukraine. Catherine Croft testified that the Office of Management of Budget run by Mick Mulvaney put on hold to Ukraine because Mick Mulvaney expressed concerns that, quote, Russia would react negatively.
That is exactly why those missiles were authorized to be transferred to Ukraine, so that the missiles would have a negative impact on Russia`s policy in the region. Catherine Croft testified that the Office of the Management and Budget was the lone objector to transferring the missiles to Ukraine and that all the policy agencies, including the State Department, and the National Security Council, supported the transfer. Ultimately, Mick Mulvaney surrendered to all that pressure and Ukraine finally received the missiles.
Christopher Anderson`s deposition transcript was released today. Christopher Anderson, a career foreign service officer who has been involved in Ukraine policy at the State Department testified that during a June 13th meeting, John Bolton made a joke about every time Ukraine is mentioned, Giuliani pops up and that the president is listening to Giuliani about Ukraine.
It turns out that was not a joke. Christopher Anderson testified that the acting ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, quote, repeatedly expressed his concern that Giuliani would make his job difficult. Christopher Anderson testified that he agreed, quote, that if Giuliani`s narrative took hold that the Ukrainian government was an enemy of the president, then it would be very hard to have high-level engagement, it would be harder for us to pressure Russia to come back to the negotiating table in that case.
As usual, the Democrats issued highlights today of the hundreds of pages of transcripts that they released. Those highlights identified by the Democrats are all harmful to President Trump. The Republicans did not release a single page of highlights in any of today`s depositions or any of the previous depositions because there are no highlights in these depositions that are helpful to Donald Trump`s defense.
Republicans were in every one of these depositions. Republican Jim Jordan was in each of the depositions he released today and he did not make one helpful point to the defense of Donald Trump in these depositions. There is no evidence in these depositions of why Republicans decided to remove one of their members from the intelligence committee so they could give that seat to Jim Jordan so he would be the star inquisitor for the Republicans in the public hearings this week held by the Intelligence Committee. Jim Jordan was able to be in the depositions because those depositions allowed three committees to be present, including the Oversight and Reform Committee, and Jim Jordan is already a member of that committee.
But the public hearings will be for the house Intelligence Committee only and the Republicans` big move, their big move for the defense of the president in the public hearings, was to bring in Jim Jordan on the same week that Jim Jordan was once again credibly accused of being aware of a team doctor sexually assaulting members of the Ohio state wrestling team when Jim Jordan was a coach on that team. NBC reported last week that a lawsuit filed on Thursday says that when a person identified in court papers as John Doe 42q saw Dr. Richard Strauss masturbating in front of him at a wrestling match, he reported that directly to Jim Jordan, who was the assistant coach. Yes, that`s Strauss, Jordan and then then-head coach Russ Hellickson replied, according to the lawsuit.
If that claim in that lawsuit if proven true, then Donald Trump would not be the first sexual assaulter that Jim Jordan has protected.
Leading off our discussion tonight are Democratic Congressman John Sarbanes of Maryland. He`s a member of the House Oversight Committee and has attended several of these impeachment investigation depositions. Also with us, John Heilemann, national affairs analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. He is co-host and executive producer of Showtime`s "The Circus".
And Evelyn Farkas, former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration, a former staff member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. She is an MSNBC national security analyst.
And, Congressman Sarbanes, I want to get your reaction to the depositions today, especially to the point that the Ukrainians knew, they knew that this aid was being withheld and they knew it long before it became public.
REP. JOHN SARBANES (D-MD): Well, Lawrence, thanks for having me on today. I think we were pretty confident just based on the overall testimony that was coming forward over the last few weeks that it would become clear that the Ukrainians were aware of this hold having been placed. Now, you have a direct corroborating testimony to that, and it puts a lie to the Republican defense that somehow the quid pro quo wasn`t there because there wasn`t Ukrainian knowledge that there was a quid pro quo.
They knew exactly what was being done to them. It was a breathtaking abuse of power on the part of the administration to tie this security assistance to a promise that they would investigate -- the Ukrainians would investigate a political rival of the president. That`s all becoming clear.
It will be much more clear this week, I think, to the broad public when we get the testimony from these three diplomats. These are very professional people. The testimony they delivered in closed session was very compelling, and I think you`ll see that will have a real impact in terms of the public getting an opportunity now to hear directly from these witnesses.
O`DONNELL: John Heilemann, we`re going to discuss later this hour what the Republicans have planned for the public hearings.
JOHN HEILEMANN, MSNBC NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes, it`s compelling.
O`DONNELL: The big public move is Jim Jordan moves up to the center spot here in the Intelligence Committee hearings.
HEILEMANN: Yes. And, you know, look, it signals as clearly as could be that Republicans will not fight this fight on the facts. They will not fight this fight any other way than rhetorically and through demonization of these witnesses and trying to impugn their characters and impugning their motives. They think this is a political firefight and they`re bringing in one of their political firefighters with a big rhetorical flamethrower to fight the fight.
And I think, you know, all we`ve seen, Lawrence, over these last weeks is increasingly clear, vivid, undeniable picture of what actually happened here. And I think Republicans, as pernicious as they are in many cases, as pathological in their lies as they are, they`re not stupid, and I think they recognize at this point there is no argument to be made on the merits. The only argument now to be made is going to be, yes, there was quid pro quo, but it wasn`t maybe a totally bad quid pro quo. It was a small quid pro quo, not a big one, and, hey, these guys are all terrible people who are testifying against Donald Trump, and we have an election in 2020, so let`s -- this isn`t enough of a big deal to throw him out of office.
That`s going to be the argument in the House and Senate, I think, which is much more vociferous and pernicious on the part of the House Republicans than on the Senate Republicans.
O`DONNELL: Evelyn Farkas, there`s two tracks that emerged in the testimony, especially the depositions released today, and that is the specifics of what the Trump administration was up to. But another track that`s very clear in these depositions is why this is important, why this is not a minor offense that President Trump is accused of here, and there is a lot of talk by these witnesses about just how important this aid was to Ukraine, how important it was on a daily basis.
EVELYN FARKAS, MSNBC NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Right. I mean, because this aid was so critical to defending Ukraine`s sovereignty, they`re essentially holding the Russians back from launching a bigger offensive. Yes, there is ongoing sighting, as Laura Cooper herself points out in the testimony, but there is always a view that the Russians and the separatists that they back we`ll do more, they`ll try to take more territory, or try to take more Ukrainian lives to put pressure on the new Ukrainian president in particular.
I think it`s really unsettling because it shows you, then, that the president, president Trump putting pressure on the Ukrainians, trying to get a bribe from them, basically, he`s trying to get this bribe, this dirt on Biden, and this dirt relating to the 2016 elections, right, in order to then release the aid. I mean, it`s actually a dirty game that the president is playing with them, and it`s, again, putting lives at risk.
O`DONNELL: There is a really startling revelation in Christian Anderson`s deposition released today showing Donald Trump`s just constant posture of appeasement -- I`m not sure what else to call it -- towards Russia. It comes this way in "Politico`s" highlights of this antidote. It says in one highlight related by Anderson, he described an early 2019 conversation in which the then-national security adviser John Bolton revealed Trump had called him as his home to complain about a CNN story that made it appear the Navy was pushing back against Russian aggression in the Black Sea. We met with Ambassador Bolton and discussed this, and he made it clear that the president had called him to complain about that news report. And that may have been just been that he was surprised.
Congressman Sarbanes, how surprised were you and other members of the committee when you hear testimony like this?
SARBANES: I mean, this is astounding, Lawrence, if you think about it. The president is protecting Russia, it appears to be the case, at the expense of an ally, Ukraine. And he`s prepared to hold back $400 million of security assistance that that country needs to defend itself against Russian aggression because he`s more interested in defending Russia than defending an ally that the United States Congress decided should receive foreign assistance to the tune of $400 million.
And if you think about it in terms of these diplomats that are going to be testifying this week, if you look at the record of William Taylor, of Marie Yovanovitch, of George Kent, these are diplomats who have spent their whole careers fighting corruption, and their own president is trying to pull them into a corrupt scheme. And to their credit, I have to say they`re raising a red flag, they`re pushing back, and they`re saying, this is not right. And they`re doing everything they can -- you can see that from the testimony -- to make sure that that kind of a trade will not happen on their watch.
But they`re under tremendous pressure. I think when the public sees and hears the testimony from these professionals, they will see that these are folks that are playing it straight, that wanted to represent the interests of the United States, not the interests of Russia or anybody else, the interests of the United States, and that`s why we can have such confidence in the testimony they`re going to be delivering.
O`DONNELL: And, Evelyn, that`s going to be one of the challenges in the committee`s presentation publicly is to get that balancer right between the specifics of what`s being -- what the president is being accused of here and the reason why it`s important, which is what Congressman Sarbanes was just talking about and what the witness was talking about, and that is Ukraine policy, which may be more of a challenging thing to make clear to the public.
FARKAS: Well, I think, Lawrence, I think the way to do it is to actually focus on Russian policy. So, the opposite of pushing back on Russia in the Black Sea is surrendering to Russia in the Black Sea, right? That`s not in U.S. national security interests, it`s not in the security interests of our neighbors -- sorry, of the neighbors there, so Turkey, for example, a NATO ally, a problematic one, but still. It`s not in the interest of freedom of navigation.
If you surrender to Russia in any of these items, you will see Russia pushing further. And that`s not in the U.S. national security interest, because Russia has violated international law. They have broken the taboo on changing borders using military force. There are other leaders in other countries who would like to do the same starting in Europe.
So, Again, it is in the national security interests of the United States to stop Russia so that we don`t have other wars breaking out.
O`DONNELL: John?
HEILEMANN: I just -- I tell you, with due respect to Congressman Sarbanes and with due respect to "Politico," "Politico" says it`s an odd anecdote.
O`DONNELL: Yes.
HEILEMANN: And the congressman says it`s astounding. It`s appalling. It`s not outstanding and it`s not odd because there was not any time in Donald Trump`s administration where he`s ever not acted when the chips were down, when the choice had to be made, where he`s never not acted in the interests of Russia. He`s he often defends Russia.
This is the pattern. The pattern is, in circumstance -- of course he was upset about pushing Russia against the Black Sea. Donald Trump has been acting in Russia`s interest in every crucial respect, meta, macro, micro. Across the three years, it`s the least surprising thing in the world. It`s disgusting but it`s not astounding.
O`DONNELL: Congressman Sarbanes, you`ve been invoked here. A quick LAST WORD, congressman, I think you might have a semantic disagreement here. Go ahead, Congressman.
SARBANES: Well, look, I certainly agree with John on that, that it is disgusting, but he`s not just acting in Russia`s interest, he`s always acting in Donald Trump`s personal political interests, and that`s why this is an abuse of his power. It`s a betrayal of his oath of his oath of office.
He gets up every morning, unfortunately, he`s not thinking about the 350 million Americans whose interests he should represent. He`s thinking about his own personal political gain. This is just another example of that. The witnesses this week are going to show that`s what`s going on.
O`DONNELL: Congressman John Sarbanes, Evelyn Farkas, thank you both for starting this off tonight.
John Heilemann is going to stick around.
And up next, what are Mick Mulvaney and John Bolton up to? They`re trying to defy the congressional subpoenas and create a delay tactic?
And later, the Republican witness list for the impeachment inquiry was submitted over the weekend. It is not going to fly. And there is a leak tonight about the Republican planned tactics in the public hearings this week.
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O`DONNELL: What is John Bolton up to and what is Mick Mulvaney up to?
Mick Mulvaney tried to join a lawsuit brought by John Bolton, and another subpoenaed witness to the impeachment investigation. The Bolton lawsuit is unnecessary and it`s trying to ask the judge whether John Bolton should answer to a subpoena or should he take Donald Trump`s advice not to testify. John Bolton is a private citizen now who was beyond the control of the president of the United States and there is no legal reason for him to evade that subpoena.
Mick Mulvaney dropped his legal attempt today to join the Bolton lawsuit after Bolton objected to Mick Mulvaney joining his lawsuit. Mick Mulvaney says he will now file his own lawsuit asking the same question of the judge. In both cases these are delaying tactics designed to slow down the impeachment investigation, but Chairman Adam Schiff says they will not -- the committee will not engage in a months-long legal pursuit to enforce the congressional subpoenas of these witnesses.
But the investigation will take a negative inference from Mick Mulvaney`s refusal to testify on the assumption that if Mick Mulvaney had something helpful to say about Donald Trump, anything helpful to say about Donald Trump, he would testify. And, therefore, his refusal to testify can be taken as a negative inference against President Trump.
The first news reports of John Bolton`s memorable -- John Bolton`s inevitable book appeared this weekend. Viewers of this program knew that John Bolton was working on a book deal the day he left the Trump White House since I announced it here on this program that night because it was wicked obvious. Reports indicate that John Bolton is getting a $2 million advance for his book from Simon & Schuster. In order to get a book advance like that, the author has to tell the publisher what the publisher is paying for, what the publisher is getting.
Therefore, there are people at Simon & Schuster tonight in midtown Manhattan who already know what John Bolton is refusing to tell the impeachment investigation.
Joining us our discussion now is Chris Lu, who served as a senior aide to president Obama. Before that, he was deputy chief counsel of the House Oversight Committee. And John Heilemann is back with us.
Chris Lu, I want to get your reaction to this legal maneuver that we`ve never seen before. I`ve got a congressional subpoena. I`m going to go bring a lawsuit to ask a judge what I do with it.
CHRIS LU, FORMER OBAMA WHITE HOUSE CABINET SECRETARY: I think it`s fair to say none of this is on the level, Lawrence. I mean, this is a case of Mick Mulvaney wanting to avoid being held in contempt of Congress, wanting to delay the proceedings but only willing to abide by the court`s ruling if it goes in his favor. And so, what he`s doing, really, is trying to eviscerate congressional oversight.
During my eight years on the House Oversight Committee, part of it was during the Clinton administration. We took depositions of senior Clinton administration aides. When I managed President Obama`s candidate, Eric Holder testified on the Hill about Fast and Furious. Hillary Clinton testified about Benghazi.
So this idea that White House aides never testify is completely at odds with precedent. If it`s taken to its logical extreme, it just simply wipes out Congress` ability to do any kind of oversight. And let`s not forget the most important point, if there is any kind of privilege here, Mick Mulvaney already waived it. You`ll recall he stood up in that press briefing room and he admitted there was quid pro quo. So, again, as you correctly pointed out, if he had something good to say, he would be out there saying it right now.
O`DONNELL: And, John Heilemann, as we know, $2 million book advance for John Bolton means he`s telling people, book agent, book editors, pitching the material that he`s refusing to tell the Congress.
HEILEMANN: Yes, and I think it`s likely that you and I know some of these people.
O`DONNELL: Yes.
HEILEMANN: If we went out with the proper implements, we could probably extract this information from them if we were hard-hitting enough about it.
I think the question from Bolton is a tricky one. What if we assume, if all the following is true, based on some of the testimony today it does seem Bolton was with these people, these professionals, who looked at this and said this is likely illegal. It looks like Bolton weighed in at various points in order to get that aid ultimately released.
We all have views about John Bolton`s politics, his ideology, but it seems in this case he recognized the illegal peril in place here and tried to get out of testifying if only to save his own skin. Now the question is, what is his in his economic best interest? And there`s two competing things here. Being a hero in this case is probably in his economic interest in terms of selling books. A public thought John Bolton did the right thing telling that story to sell a lot of books.
Unfortunately, becoming a hero in the story requires him to testify and if he testifies he gives away some of the stuff that would be the news in the book. So he`s got a very tricky thing to figure out here. How do you figure out a way to land this plane that drives the most interest, gives away some of the information but not all so the book is not drained of all its testimony.
O`DONNELL: The book, Chris, quite predictably, as I said the first night when he left the White House, is scheduled for publication before the presidential election, because, of course, if Donald Trump were to lose, the book value collapses right away. But -- and so does a book like this have to get cleared the way James Comey`s book had to get cleared because he worked with the FBI? Since Bolton works on national security issues, is there a clearance process for that and can the Trump administration simply refuse to clear him?
LU: Well, Lawrence, there`s actually two issues. One is the clearance issue if there`s classified information or might implicate classified information that`s in there. The other important thing is you`ll recall, all Trump officials apparently signed a nondisclosure confidentiality agreement which Trump has selectively enforced or tried to enforce against some of his former aides, including this anonymous book that just came out. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
I suspect John Bolton probably realizes on the nondisclosure agreement, that`s not really enforceable. It`s never been enforceable against anybody, and he`s probably a smart enough guy to understand what is classified and what`s not classified and will probably state it in broad outlines.
O`DONNELL: When the book deal is introduced in court in the Bolton lawsuit, I`m sure the judge is going to have even more reluctance to take the Bolton case seriously.
HEILEMANN: Yes, I think that`s probably right. And, look, I think one of the things that Chris says -- we are all under the impression that people sign these NDAs. It has been claimed. Certainly at the beginning of the administration Trump tried to get everyone to sign.
I`m not sure everyone did sign and Bolton came relatively late to the administration, so it`s not clear if they were as rigorous about trying to get everyone to sign those NDAs and I`m certain that John Bolton knows it`s the most unenforceable paperwork in the history of the world. So that I think is meaningless. The other one is a question for him in terms of the White House screening issue on classified information.
O`DONNELL: All right. We`re going to have to break it there. Chris Lu and John Heilemann, thank you both for joining us.
And when we come back, Republican chaos. That is what is planned for the public impeachment hearings, outright Jim Jordan-led chaos.
And later, it`s been the billionaires versus Elizabeth Warren, and those billionaires are worried about what she wants to do with taxation and other issues. But the current - this year`s co-winner of the noble prize in economics has much to say about that policy debate. She will join us at the end of this hour.
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JONES: On Saturday Republicans submitted the list of witnesses they would like to call in the public impeachment hearings, and that list shows us that they are not at all serious about actually investigating the accusations against President Trump.
Almost all of the witnesses that they want, which include Hunter Biden and the whistleblower are not relevant to the impeachment inquiry, and so they will not be allowed to testify by Chairman Schiff, which will be supported by a majority vote of the committee.
Three of the witnesses requested by the Republicans already testified in depositions, so there is a chance those witnesses will be allowed to testify publicly. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff responded to the Republicans` request saying they will consider Republicans` requests.
But added the impeachment inquiry and the committee will not serve as vehicles for any member to carry out the same sham investigations into the Bidens or debunked conspiracies about the 2016 U.S. election interference that President Trump pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit.
Chairman Schiff noted that the Intelligence Committee would not participate in efforts to threaten or intimidate or retaliate against the whistleblower. He also made clear that the impeachment investigation has yielded growing evidence that renders the whistleblower`s testimony, "redundant and unnecessary," and would only place their personal safety at grave risk.
AXIOS is reporting tonight that House Republicans on the Impeachment Committee have settled on four talking points that they will use to undermine the democrats` arguments that the President should be impeached according to a staff memo circulated to committee members Monday night.
We`ll discuss those Republican talking points in the secret staff memo, that`s not so secret anymore with David Jolly after this break.
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JONES: Tonight a memo obtained by AXIOS shows the four talking points that Republicans say they`re going to use in their defense of Donald Trump in the public hearings. The July 25th call summary - the best evidence of the conversation, shows no condition conditionality or evidence of pressure.
President Zelensky and President Trump have both said there was no pressure on the call. The Ukranian government was not aware of a hold on U.S. security assistance at the time of the July 25th call. Too bad, that`s already been proven untrue.
And president Trump met with President Zelensky and U.S. security assistance flowed to Ukraine on September 2019, both of which occurred without Ukraine investigating President Trump`s political rivals.
Joining us, David Jolly, a former Republican member of Congress from Florida. He`s an MSNBC Political Analyst. David, are you surprised by your former colleague`s approach to the public hearing according to the leaked memo tonight?
DAVID JOLLY, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: I`m not, nor am I surprised that its largely inaccurate, because as you mentioned, Lawrence, all the corroborating testimony of witnesses suggest that in fact there was this orchestrated scheme and Ukraine was aware of it, even to the extent of U.S. diplomatic personnel drafting statements for Zelensky to read.
What is interesting in this though is each of their four arguments seems to play into a broader theme that they`re going to argue there was no quid pro quo, and that`s an inflection point for Democrats to have to make a strategic decision. Because I would make the case no quid pro quo is required.
It certainly didn`t need to be felt by Ukraine, but the act of asking Ukraine to investigate the Biden`s in and of itself even without a quid pro quo was impeachable behavior by the President of the United States.
The Republicans four arguments are all trying to undermine a quid pro quo argument. Corroborating evidence will overcome it. But Democrats will have to make the decision, do they require quid pro quo to move an impeachment article or not.
JONES: Yes, it`s so clear that it`s the solicitation that is the violation and that`s all you need is the solicitation and the solicitation doesn`t have to be rewarded with action by the other side that you`re solicited from, it`s all right there in solicitation.
But this is one of those arguments where the it sounds to me David like the Republicans are just going to keep saying the thing whatever that thing is and they don`t care whether it`s true or not. And they don`t care whether it`s just merely feuded by a witness. They just need to say it so that`s the piece of video that Fox News can use.
JOLLY: Yes. Lawrence neither the facts nor the Founders are on the Republican side in this impeachment inquiry. We know that we will hear on Wednesday there was a quid pro quo. That Rudy Giuliani was a personal representative of the President, not a diplomatic representative the State Department.
And we will know that - and we will learn that there was a direct line to the West Wing to Mick Mulvaney and the Donald Trump from Ambassador Sondland. The facts are not on the Republican side.
Neither are the Founders. James Madison worried when they were writing the Impeachment Clause of President would engage with a foreign power, engage in deceit. George Mason was worried a President would try to interfere with an election. This is exactly the presidency that the Founders feared.
And so what we will hear from Republicans is not an argument about the facts or about the Founders` view of impeachment, it will be geared towards a Republican reelection strategy in 2020 - this grievance politics that Republicans are victims. This will be about keeping their base and ensuring there`s no erosion of Republican voters in 2020.
JONES: And David I expect we`re going to see all sorts of parliamentary disruption, point of order, Mr. Chairman, interruptions, objecting to questions every little thing they can think of they`re going to turn this into as much of a circus as they can.
David Jolly, thank you very much for joining us. We`re going to have to have you back once I see how they do handle themselves in that hearing room.
And when we come back it`s the billionaire`s versus Elizabeth Warren, but don`t mistake Bill Gates as one of those billionaires who is afraid of Elizabeth Warren`s policy positions, that`s next.
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JONES: We have now reached the billionaires versus Elizabeth Warren stage of the presidential campaign where it seems every other day, another billionaire is given a public microphone to express outrage at Elizabeth Warren`s proposed wealth tax and just generally express billionaire terror about a possible Elizabeth Warren presidency.
Last week Bill Gates said something that in the fractured quote world of Twitter made him appear to be just another billion afraid of Elizabeth Warren.
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BILL GATES, CO-FOUNDER OF MICROSOFT CORPORATION: I`ve paid over 10 billion in taxes. I`ve paid more than anyone in taxes. But I`m glad to have paid. If I`d had to pay 20 billion, that`s fine. But when you say I should pay a 100 billion, OK, then I`m starting to do a little math about what I have left over. Sorry, I`m just kidding.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JONES: He said he was kidding, but many people believed that he was really worried about having to pay a $100 billion in wealth taxes. And so Elizabeth Warren took that opportunity to send him a tweet saying, "I`d love to explain exactly how much you`d pay under my wealth tax. I promise it`s not a 100 billion."
To which Bill Gates said, "I greatly respect your commitment to finding ways to address wealth inequality and poverty at home. While we may disagree about some of the ways to get there, we certainly agree we need a lot of smart people committed to finding the path forward. I`m always willing to talk about creative solutions to these problems."
Bill Gates and Elizabeth Warren agree much more than they disagree. You just heard Bill Gates say that if you want to double his taxes he`s cool with that, and that makes Bill Gates more progressive on income taxation then most of the Democrats running for President.
Bill Gates stays out of politics as much as humanly possible. He doesn`t endorse candidates. He hasn`t created some giant super pack with all of his wealth. But he did make it very clear in that interview last week, brilliantly conducted by Andrew Ross Sorkin, that he would vote for Elizabeth Warren against Donald Trump if that`s who`s on the ballot next year.
He made that clear when he was asked that specific question. Bill Gates didn`t name names, but he said that the thing that he would value most in a candidate is what he called a professional approach to the presidency.
The audience started to laugh because obviously Donald Trump has the least professional approach to the presidency in history. And everyone in the room knew that Bill Gates was saying in effect that he would vote for the Democrat no matter who it is.
Bill Gates is one of the few billionaires who agrees with our next guest that billionaires are undertaxed. Esther Duflo is this year`s Co-Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and she won that prize by putting economic theory aside and studying the way people make real economic decisions in real life - people like Bill Gates and people living in poverty around the world. And what she found contradicts most of what you have heard from politicians about real-world economics and her findings should be heard in the presidential campaign.
Esther Duflo is the second woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Economics and she joins us next.
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JONES: The Nobel Prize in Economics was an afterthought. the first Nobel Prizes were established in 1895. 74 years later a Nobel Prize in Economics was added to the mix in 1969. And in the 50 years of Nobel Prizes in economics since then only one woman had won a Nobel Prize in economics and now there are two.
This year Esther Duflo is the Co-Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics for her real-world study of how economics really works in real people`s lives and how that knowledge can be used to improve the economic lives of more people.
in an echo of Esther Duflo last week, Bill Gates gave voice to one of her important findings that contradicts much political talk about taxation.
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GATES: We can raise taxes in a lot of ways, including making some gifts to foundations more taxed. We have a lot of room. The current thing is not either in terms of encouraging philanthropy or discouraging and forming new business. We`re not close to the limit. I mean there was a time where we had 70% taxation rates--
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JONES: Joining us now is MIT economics professor Esther Duflo, this year`s Co-Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Her new book is, "Good Economics for Hard Times" Co-Authored with her husband Abhijit Banerjee who is also the Co-Winner of this year`s Nobel Prize in Economics. Thank you very much for joining us tonight, really appreciate it.
ESTHER DUFLO, 2019 NOBEL PRIZE ECONOMICS CO-WINNER: Thank you so much.
JONES: It must have been so exciting for you and your husband - a first husband-wife team in history to get the Nobel Prize in Economics. Getting that phone call early morning, is it, when you suddenly discover that you`re the Nobel Prize winners?
DUFLO: Yes. It was pretty incredible way to be woken up at 5:00 am.
JONES: Yes. And you have no hint it`s coming, right? I mean, people don`t realize how the Nobel works.
DUFLO: No hint whatsoever. There`s no nominees, that`s - you`re not clear at all. So let`s go to what Bill Gates just said, because it`s one of the central elements of your book and the Republican argument is, of course, you must not tax anyone more than we`re taxing them. And if you tax these rich executives more, they`ll just work less. It`ll be a disincentive to work if we tax them at the highest level.
There`s Bill Gates, there`s no one who`s worked harder than him. Who`s saying, oh no, no, there`s much more room to tax us at the highest end.
DUFLO: There certainly is. And if we taxed the rich more they would work just as hard. Think about football players. In many cases there are caps on their salaries and that doesn`t stop them from trying to win.
JONES: Yes. The salary - you compare - and that`s what`s so fascinating about this. This is not just your opinion from observing the world. You`ve actually looked at salary caps on professional athletic teams in the United States versus Europe where there are no salary caps. And you don`t see any effort difference in the salary capped players versus the players that don`t have any salary caps at all.
DUFLO: No, of course, not because winning is everything and it`s the same thing among CEOs. All they want is to be richer than their friend CEOs. The level doesn`t really matter. What matters is the rank.
JONES: And this incentive issue is what you`re finding throughout your research. that incentives in in classical economic theory in the real world don`t work the way we might think they do. For example, the argument about welfare, disincentivizing people, they won`t try to work if you give them welfare. What did you find about that?
DUFLO: Similarly the poor also don`t stop working if there are no incentives for them to work, that`s also an illusion. When, for example, welfare become more generous, people don`t stop working. It`s now being demonstrated in countries after countries. Poor countries, rich country, middle-income countries, the poor are not discouraged from working.
In fact, we`ve known that since the late 60s and 70s in the U.S. where there were the so-called negative income tax experiment that actually gave money to the poor people and taxed it away at rate of 50% and it had no discouraging effect on their work. So it`s actually a little secret that we have sort of kept it hidden.
JONES: There`s also and let`s - again what`s so important about this work is you go into the field you do real experiments to find out really how things work. And you`ve looked at immigration, and you tell us in this book a very different story about what immigration in the United States is doing economically.
DUFLO: Yes. There is two big misconception about immigration. The first one is that the floodgates are just waiting to be open and if immigration was more liberal everybody would want to come to this country, because they live in poorer country than we do.
And the second misconception is if that happened then the native workers, the poor workers in the U.S. would be poorer. But in fact there is a huge literature that shows that neither of these are true.
First all the migration flows are quite low even when there are no barriers to migration. For example within Europe when there was a big crisis in Greece, people mostly stayed in Greece. So it`s not that people are like waiting for an opportunity to jump and come.
People only come when they are desperate or if they are super enterprising and really we want to make a better life for themselves, in which case, we should want to have them here, because they`ll contribute to the economy and be entrepreneurial et cetera.
The second misconception is that, if a lot of low skilled worker come they will take away jobs or wages from the people here in these countries and that also happens to be not true. People have looked at - if it was from like the influx of Cuban refugees in Miami when we kicked out many migrant worker from California in in the 60s and there are dozens of episodes like that that shows that migrant do not take away wages from native worker. And this is something people do not know.
JONES: You also mentioned in here something - a new fact that I wasn`t aware of, is that our internal migration rates have dropped dramatically. America used to be a place where people - we had a very high rate of people moving from place to place within the country, generally to where the jobs are.
And now when jobs get wiped out in a particular location, people are not moving the way they used to, which by the way is what classical economic theory always said they would do, they`ll just move to find a job. What if they don`t and that`s what you`re finding.
DUFLO: Yes, that`s actually very important presumptions because of economists and perhaps much more importantly of politicians that people would move. If I lose a job my job making furniture in North Carolina I can move to New York to sell furniture, but in fact that`s not true. The rate of mobility are very low. They are about half what they were in 1948.
JONES: We`re going to have to leave it there. Esther Duflo, congratulations on the Nobel. It`s a real honor to have you here. I really appreciate it. This is a very important book, "Good Economics for Hard Times." This book belongs at the center of the presidential campaign. That is tonight`s LAST WORD. "THE 11TH HOUR" with Brian Williams starts right now.
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