the impeachment dominated the news most of the week. the host of media buzz looked at how the mainstream press is covering these historic sessions. reporter: coverage of impeachment hearings has split into parallel universes with anti-from commentators saying the testimony of career diplomats is devastating to the president and pro-trump analyst calling it secondhand and irrelevant. an incredible witness, very matter-of-fact guy, straightforward. these guys, i couldn t tell if they were doing a job interview talking about their great-grandfather and his wife or they were homeless guys. this devastating new testimony about donald trump caring more about investigating joe biden than he cares about ukraine. what actually unfolded was complete and utter disaster.
you put in your article a link to a speech. tell us, did she get involved in ukrainian politics? well, certainly the ukrainians thought. so and how do we know? because they began asking quells of her bosses within a couple days. the first time i ever heard maria yovanovitch s march 5th she called for the removal of a prosecutor three or four weeks before the end of the very contested ukraine presidential election. all of a sudden i heard from career diplomats you won t bleeble believe what our career diplomat did kerfluffle because geneva convention doesn t get involved in election stuff and she gave a speech. two days later her boss goes to ukraine. one of the first questions he gets why did you mettle in those election with our comments. he defended her and said this and her words speak for themself. i m not going to say anything more about them. this same issue came up in the hearing today because the democrats want to pretend ukraine didn t interfere in our election. but the amba
all of this mounting, damning evidence from career diplomats, is he put himself above the law, he put himself above our national security and above global security, because of course, by weakening ukraine, you are strengthening russia, and that puts the world at risk. that puts europe at risk. the republicans, as you know, have pretty much stuck to the narrative that the witnesses this week are giving information that s just hearsay. let s take a listen to some republican lawmakers during wednesday s hearing. here s that. officials alarm at the president s actions was typically based on secondhand, thirdhand, and even fourthhand rumors and innuendo. we ve got six people having four conversations in one sentence, and you just told me this is where you got your clear understanding. well, we re not in a court, gentlemen. and if we were, the sixth amendment would apply, and so would rules on hearsay and opinion. and most of your two testimonies would not be admissible whatsoever.
responsible for ukraine would have been able to help with that, but they were as marie yovanovitch just said, they were sidelined. different channels at play, according to ambassador taylor. you re there, anita, in the white house every day. who do you get a sense that the president is turning to as his right-hand men or women to try to navigate him through this whole impeachment process that is taking place? is it rudy, ivanka, none of the above? the president has done this before, kind of calling people and talking to different people that may be friends outside of the white house. we do hear, i know this changes a lot but we do hear that the acting chief of staff mick mulvaney you mentioned sort of have been sidelined, i do think he has his family around and obviously really working with the white house counsel s office, because they are dealing with the legal part of this. but there are, there is a group of people at the white house that are last week and will do
speaks to kind of a free wheeling style of diplomacy that the administration has really emboldened, and he s got these ambassadors who are politically close to and personally close to the president, and he s given them a long leech, aash and a l running room. that s what you come up with, especially in an administration that doesn t particularly trust career diplomats of the state department and doesn t trust intelligence agencies. you end up with very influential diplomats and ambassadors with direct lines to the president. and president trump once praised gordon sondland in may and recently tried to put some distance between them. take a listen. our ambassador to the european union gordon sondland, thank you, gordon. where is he? great job. let me just say, i hardly know the gentleman. what do we know about their relationship? well, we know he the ambassador was a major donor to the trump campaign.