the focus as narrow as that has been so far, focused on the ukraine, not on all the things that some democrats want to impeach the democrats for. the white house is trying to brand this as illegitimate, unconstitutional, and attacking the process which most lawyers will tell thought process is whatever she wants it to be. right. and when you re attacking the process, you re already losing. i keep coming back to this question. if the call was so perfect as the president has been saying for days on end, why not be cooperative? why not let the eu ambassador, our ambassador to the eu, testify? why not let people testify and say what a great job and how perfect this call was? i mean, it s a rhetorical question, because we know the answer, it was not a perfect call, the transcript, or i should say the notes of the call on july 25th were not perfect, which is why where we are right now. and i would suggest one other answer. it s whatever rudy giuliani was
heldibili accountable, but he can t even be impeached. they re saying the president s conduct cannot be police incod y way, shape, or form. in fact the whistle-blower protection affords the whistle-blower safety so that the state department or other agency officials cannot be present, their lawyers are not supposed to be present when state department witnesses are testifying in this kind of procedure rather than the demand from the white house that they have the opportunity to question these witnesses. yeah, the white house has you know, the white house has in their letter pretended, if we were in a, say, criminal process, the criminal trial stage. in fact if this was a criminal analog, this would be indictment stage, where everything happens in secret. the identity of the whistle-blower is protected so the white house can t retaliate
for all of the syrian refugees who are currently in turkey, to get them out of turkey and stick them in syria. those are his two objectives and he s probably going to achieve them. and at the same time, tom, imagine this, the president has invited erdogan to come to washington for this much-sought-after meeting he s wanted since may of 2017 when his bodyguards were indicted by the metropolitan police for, in broad daylight, beating the heck out of anti-erdogan protesters. you have to ask yourself, what is the process? process? you would hope that there s some process somewhere when considering these things. it doesn t appear to be the case. president erdogan tweeted this morning that the purpose of this incursion was, as you said, which is to rid this area of the kurds who are our allies here. it s a real stain on the
that will be a challenge for them in terms of how to respond to that. also in the court of public opinion, the white house clearly in that document yesterday laying out both a constitutional argument but also a political statement and saying in some ways, look, the president is not being treated fairly here, if you re going to impeach him, if you re going to go through this process then he needs to have due process, he needs to have the right to have counsel present and be involved in the interviews that you want. that might bolster his case among people who are wavering in his base or others who are traditional supporters of president trump while also potentially forcing the hand of the democrats to either have a discussion about that vote or move on without these witnesses that they dearly want to question. kristen welker, from what you ve learned, what about white house yielding at all on masha yovanovitch, the former ukraine
i guess maybe he s too young to know captain kangaroo. procedures and orders and process and all of this. when you look at the substance whether it is the whistleblower s complaint or the transcript of the july 25th call or text messages that we end up getting last thursday or friday, that s a strain for republicans. thank you. mark murray, we got another debate. another nbc debate in georgia. looking forward to it. we are. it is take your children to workday here at our nbc newsroom. a moment that made all of us stop and smile today. stay with us today here on andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. reports on msnbc.