everybody here in washington is coming to this conversation in good faith. but i am also under no illusions that people who don t already agree with us are going to have any idea what our message is if we don t go out there and talk about it to anyone who will listen. yeah. and by no means, is anyone trying to shame you for talking to fox news or talking to republicans. because that is part of the job, right? but it seems like you are battling something more than just the economics of this. this feels like a cultural battle as much as anything else. so much of the american myth making revolves around the open road and the gas powered engine. those highway videos from the 1950s some people are still very much entrenched in that sort of thinking about what kind of country this is. and i wonder how you think you combat that. people want to hold on to this past of america that is no longer our president and certainly is not going to be our future. but how do you get them to let go of w
battling something more than just the economics of this. this feels like a cultural battle as much as anything else. so much of the american myth making revolves around the open road and the gas powered engine. those highway videos from the 1950s some people are still very much entrenched in that sort of thinking about what kind of country this is. and i wonder how you think you combat that. people want to hold on to this past of america that is no longer our president and certainly is not going to be our future. but how do you get them to let go of what you call i think euphemistically, perhaps, the status quo. how do you think about your work in that vein? i think the most important thing to remember is, if we want to be true to a tradition, we have got to remember that that tradition was about looking to the future. in other words, the best things about our past had to do with getting out of the past. and the worst things about our past are the things we do not have to repea
ignorance on the democratic side, and the witnesses just put their fingers in their ear and never bothered to look into burisma or hunter biden. but you re saying the same thing from republican witnesses who say, i don t want to touch this, i didn t want to go anywhere near this. the willful blindness on the other side is not to ask the followup questions, what is this connected to that volker himself had to be refreshed by looking at other testimony of what these investigations, euphemistically referred to, were really about a? there is a lot of head in sand going on here from a number of these witnesses on those questions. jonathan swan, i m looking for some sand here. let me ask you something about this, even the notion that anyone could feign ignorance about what rudy giuliani sought. we now have almost a dozen witnesses tying giuliani s efforts, including giuliani, to donald trump s desires and
and try to explain them. the white house counsel today does not really represent the president, per se. really, they represent the office of the president, and they could speak out and say, mr. president, you re hurting the office. and we have a duty to represent that office well. so, they re really in a bind when he does this sort of thing. and apparently, a lifetime of doing this is not going to be changesed very quickly. devlin, you also have some new reporting about the white house pushing the rnc to pay for legal fees associated with the russia investigation? right. there are folks around the president who would like the republican national committee to help pay the president s legal costs. obviously, this is not going to be a small legal bill. it s not a small legal bill now. it s only going to get bigger. and there s apparently what s been described to us euphemistically as a robust discussion of the differing points of view on that. so it hasn t been resolved as
anti-torture. but his incoming cia director, mike pompeo, is assuming that the senate confirms him has suggested that he would be in favor of bringing back waterboarding. it s more important what donald trump thinks about this. because that would be the policy that they are pursuing. and he has suggested that he would like to bring it back. but there is also difference of opinion within the intelligence community itself, and also the cia, where officers and people working within there have straight-up said, we will not do it if you tell us to. you will have to bring your own bucket. president trump will resign over this. but it s this torture issue is a very important point, because you flash back to 2008, when barack obama was first running for president. both he and john mccain ran against torture. euphemistically branded as enhanced interrogation, as if that s supposed to make it sound better. it s straight-up torture. and donald trump ran and won on a torture platform, saying