elijah cummings was a good guy, a great human being, and he was attacked by the president of the united states, and not only was he attacked, the people that he represents were attacked. his neighborhood was attacked. i was trying to stay away from this impeachment stuff because i thought we can t divide the nation any further than donald trump has already done. but after that, i did. i said he s gone too far. and i know you can t impeach somebody for being a nasty person. then i watched how he handled it. remember, he never did respond. the best counterpuncher in the world is a butterfly, and it says nothing. that s what elijah cummings did. he said nothing. he didn t go back and attack the president. that s a lesson for all of us. what legacy do you think congressman cummings leaves?
because they think he is the first time they ve seen in their lifetime with the guts to stand up to the establishment. sandra: you ve made it clear what the president s strategy should be a year out from the next election. mr. speaker, how do you think the president is doing since the democrats launched this formal impeachment inquiry? how do you think he is doing? i think overall he is doing fine. on occasion i think that he would be better off to edit his tweets. i think at times he picks fights he doesn t need or says things that are stronger than he needs to say them. but he is a natural counter puncher and has been doing that since the 1980s when he used to fight constantly with page 6 in new york. i don t think we ll talk him out of it. it s very simple. one, the economy has to keep doing pretty well and if the economy is doing pretty well he will probably get reelected. two, ultimately he has to convince the country, i think the senate republicans will
had potentially an improper conversation with the president of ukraine where he asked the president for a, quote, unquote, favor to dig up dirt on joe biden and his son. while he s on the defensive on that, instead of trying to dpend himself, he turns it back on the bidens. what he s basically saying is you think i m corrupt? look at these people. they re corrupt. with the same country, with ukraine doing something far worse than i did. there s absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the bidens in ukraine. that s something that all of the media mentions. something the president last night mentioned. he expressed frustration that every time he says this, all the stories say the bidens, there s no evidence they ve done anything wrong. for the president, he likes a foe. he likes to be a counterpuncher and he thinks this is a winning strategy, although that s debatable. let me get your thoughts about the president hitting the
him, low energy and a bit rambling, is there a sense that they have lost control of this? well i think the president seemed defeated yesterday. that is not the typical persona you see from trump where he s bombastic, pushes back. he s this counter-puncher that he describes himself as. that is not the sense you got in the press conference yesterday and after a whirlwind day of having to meet with world leaders but where the president thought he was going to be able to deescalate things with nancy pelosi to get her off this impeachment call but if you know nancy pelosi and what democrats are pushing for, that is not feasible. the president thought he had a shot at that. and when he saw her come out and make this inquiry and how quickly this was moving he was incredulous and couldn t believe just how quickly all it was happening. because as we know, dana, as you know and we all know from reporting on the president for so long, he relies on personal interactions and he likes the human
the release of what you could call a memo or summary with the 30-minute phone call with the leader of ukraine. kristen welker is outside trump tower. this is the first time we ve heard from the president after house speaker nancy pelosi said she d move forward with this formal impeachment inquiry. hallie, what we got in that initial reaction from president trump was a snapshot of the d y defiance we can expect to see from him moving forward. you heard him refer to this as a witch hunt. he then pivoted to the economy. his strength, one of his key arguments for re-election and talked about job growth and why essentially he thinks this is a distraction. this is what president trump is best at. he is a counter puncher. he s described himself in that way. the question is how big of a fight is this? is this the fight, in fact, of