kaitlan, reportedly telling the president that all roads lead to putin. here we are with yet another road leading to or from putin. and this was a big question inside the white house when the president wanted to make that july call to zelensky because he had already made a congratulatory call earlier in the year. they had already spoken, got that out of the way. people were surprised, we were told when we were reporting this out, by the president wanting to make that phone call because before he had essentially dismissed zelensky, believing he was just like his predecessor. he was going to be corrupt, wasn t going to be able to make any kind of reforms or changes, but also noting that the way the president has reacted to these two people who were very anti-corruption and how the president has squared that with his insistence that this was all about corruption in ukraine when he was pushing them about joe biden and about that unsubstantiated theory, really pulls that into view for you
evolution in president trump s 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 kbh d comedian, and this is someone who is linked to ukrainian corrupt oligarchs. this is somebody who has a long time oppositional and sort of tough with putin over a long period of time. and 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.