Perceptions of ukraine to the dismay of some of his advisers. Quoting now from the Washington Post, quote, over time, you just see a wearing down of defenses, a former white house official said, describing the struggle to contest the influence of giuliani, putin, and orban. And just pause a minute to consider the implications. The leader of the one country that no president before this one has fully trusted was telling this president not to trust ukraine, a country that russia seeks to dominate. Joining us now is john hudson, who shares a byline on the story. John, what exactly happened in these conversations between President Trump, putin, and orban . And i understand at least one of the conversations with orban was face to face in the white house, and there wasnt anyone else present. Is that right . Thats right. U. S. Officials described to the post an alarming sort of evolution in President Trumps view of zelensky and ukrainian officials in general. Now, it started out a little bit
positive. they had a congratulatory phone call and u.s. officials were comfortable with the direction things were going. and then things turned sour. and so one conversation, for instance, he had with vladimir putin, trump actually broached the subject of zelensky and said, what do you think about him? and putin said, according to a western official familiar with the conversation, that this is someone with this is a comedian and somebody who is linked to ukrainian corrupt oligarchs. he was speaking of cole moye ski at this point. this is somebody who has a longtime oppositional and sort of tiff with putin over a long period of time. so these conversations added to each other and sort of reinforced trump s view already that ukrainian officials are corrupt. ukrainian officials did not want him to win the 2016 election. and that was a view that was very difficult for u.s. officials to combat and counteract, who saw ukraine as a country that they wanted to ally