was caught red hand ed using military money to get re-election help? i think we re at a point now where the political divide is so severe and the republicans are so committed to protecting their dear leader no matter what that they can t concede the basic facts. i mean, during the iran-contra scandal way back, ari, there was not much debate eventually, after the investigation was done, of what oliver north did, selling arms to iran, giving money to the contras. whether congress forced them to break the law, whether it was impeachable. that s what the argument became. what we have now, and eventually when it came up with the clinton business that he had the affair with monica lewinsky, clinton didn t argue that nothing
foreign policy, sub just gait it all to it political interests, brings in a henchman guiliani, everyone is cold take orders from guiliani, he s the real boss here? well, i think, chris, first of all, congratulation on the 20 years. thank you. but i think one of the things that you end up with is foreign policy that doesn t serve the person public or the american interests. which saw in the iran contra scandal in the mid- 80s what foreign policy or operational policy run out of the national security council instead of the state department means. we had convictions in those cases. now we have it taken a step further. it s not even run out of the white house, it s private. that is deeply demoralizing to career foreign service and career diplomatic professionals who serve multiple presidents across parties and who have suddenly been you know
the country deserves to hear from josh bolten under oath. he s one of the people at the center of all this. we deserve to hear from giuliani under oath, from mulvaney under oath. anderson, as i go back to think about these things, remembering another crisis and another administration when reagan was president in the iran-contra scandal broke. the president was in deep trouble. there was talk of impeachment. what did he do? he said, look, we re sending everybody up that the hill wants to hear from. we re going to send every document up. we re going to clean house inside, and we re going to play this totally open, totally straight. and guess what? it went away because it was still a kries, still a blot on his record, but he did it the right way. john, we re a long way away from how reagan handled this. you know, we expect more transcripts tomorrow. i mean that may not be the last
about what the process will be, so there s a lot of information out there. david? i think there s a lot of information, but the day is going to come very quickly when we re going to have televised hearings and i think on televised hearings, the country deserves to hear from josh bolton under oath. he s one of the people at the center of all of this. we deserve to be able to hear from giuliani under oath. we deserve to be able to hear from mulvaney under oath. you know, anderson, as i go back and think about these things, remembering another crisis in another administration, when reagan was president, the iran contra scandal broke. and the president was in deep trouble. there was talk of impeachment. there were growing forces for impeachment. what did he do? he said, look, we re sending everybody up that the hill wants to hear from. we re going to send every dakumeda document up. we re going to clean this inside. we re going to play it totally open, totally straight. it went away. i
the books, which said, the reagan administration can t give aid to the contras in nicaragua. and then the reagan administration definitely gave aid to the contras in nicaragua, secretly. even though there was an explicit law prohibiting them from doing so. they sold missiles illegally to iran to get the money. this whole crazy thing. but the reason the reagan administration ended up getting in so much trouble for iran contra is because they just blatantly broke that law, which specifically said they couldn t do what they did. and the reason they broke that law, ultimately, is because of ed meese. because ed meese, ronald reagan s attorney general, very soberly concluded, when it comes to following the law, presidents don t really need to do that. yes, there was an explicit law just passed by congress that very clearly and unequivocally intended to stop the reagan administration from doing this thing that everybody knew they wanted to do. when the reagan administration went ahead and di