haberman, white house correspondent for the new york times and cnn white house correspondent kaitlan collins. you have some new reporting on in fighting within the white house. i do want to get to that. first what we did receive just an hour ago was this memo from house republicans on how they plan to defend the president. one of the things they will discuss broadly speaking is the president s mind-set, his doubts and skepticism about ukraine in general, and then they have these four talking points which i m frankly surf are prizprised is what they re leading with here. that the july 25th phone call shows no conditionality or evidence of pressure, the president says do me a favor and brings up just the bidens and the 2016 election and also there is witnesses saying that there s also kinds of conditionality around that call. zelensky and trump say there was no pressure on the call, well, president trump may not be the only important witness here, president zelensky is under an awful l
reporter: good morning to you, erica. with public hearings scheduled for this week, vice president biden told the crowd last night that he believes president trump violated the constitution and that the house had to act to protect it. former vice president joe biden defending his and his son s actions in ukraine at a cnn town hall in iowa. there s absolutely zero basis to the accusation that i acted any way inappropriately or that my son did. this is all about trump trying to create a diversion. reporter: republicans not relenting and now calling for hunter biden to testify before congress despite no evidence of wrongdoing. there is zero rationale for that to happen. we have a president who has is one of the most corrupt people to serve in that office. reporter: biden saying he feels the house had no choice but to pursue its impeachment inquiry given the facts of the case and believes senate republicans could vote to
things they will focus on is the president s state of mind suggesting that he long was skeptical of ukraine. let me read this to you. to appropriately understand the events in question and most importantly assess the president s state of mind during his interaction with president zelensky context is necessary. this context shows that president trump has a deep seeded genuine and reasonable skepticism of ukraine and u.s. taxpayer funded foreign aid independent of and preceding any mental of potential investigations of ukraine s interference in the 2016 election or hunter biden s involvement in burisma, a notoriously corrupt company. how important is the president s state of mind here? i ve been involved in u.s./ukraine policy for half a decade, and i m skeptical about sending u.s. aid to ukraine. president obama was skeptical about sending u.s. aid to ukraine. that doesn t mean that either of us used our positions in order to try to extort a foreign
necessary. this context shows that president trump has a deep-seated, genuine and reas reasonable skepticism of ukraine and u.s. taxpayer-funded fore n foreigned a. what does the president s state of mind matter to you? i can tell you, i think they are grasping at strauss. when you look at the memorandum of the transcript of the conversation of the president with president zelensky of ukraine, this was declassified by president trump and distributed to us. and we took a close look. what did he refer to? it wasn t corruption in general. it was would you investigate my potential opponent joe biden and his son hunter biden and look into some bizarre fox-inspired theory about undermining the last presidential election. it really wasn t about corruption in the ranks in ukraine and whether even though $400 million from the united states would be well spent. it was for his own personal, political agenda.
i will read from that transcript. the president keeps saying read the transcript. president trump said to president zelensky, there s a lot of talk about biden s son that biden stop the prosecutor and a lot of people want to find bought that. so whatever you can do with the attorney general, he s talking about william barr, would be great. biden went about bragging he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me. of course there s rudy giuliani who is roaming all over kiev in ukraine with operatives trying to establish some political theory for the president. this isn t about corruption. it s about a political agenda of the white house. and rudy giuliani, how much should it matter what giuliani tweeted this week, which was everything i did, i did for the president, my client. i was working as his attorney, and that s it. well, of course he s going to try to find that defense to avoid any testimony. but i think everyone knows his role, and the pre