did they describe kiev as complic complicit. the post reports that their disparaging descriptions did reinforce the president s perceptions of ukraine to the dismay of some of his advisers. quote, over time you just see a wearing down of defenses a former white house official said describing the struggle to contest the influence of giuliani, putin and orban. pause to consider the inl pl implications. the leader of the country was telling this president not to trust ukraine, a country that russia seeks to dominate. joining us is the post john hudson who shares a byline on the story. what exactly happened in these conversations between president trump, putin, and orban. i understand at least one of the conversations orban was face-to-face in the white house and there wasn t anyone else present, is that right? that s right. u.s. officials described to the post an alarming sort of
in your own government you can consult with. the amount of things that have gone wrong here, it s just befuddling and amazing to me. right, the idea that you re rejecting everybody who works at the state department and sending, you know, rudy giuliani to skulk about in ukraine and, you know, meet up with his friends who he s being paid by, who are taking him around to hunt down, you know, biden scoops in a server, i mean, it sounds almost like a joke, but the idea that it s actually real is extraordinary. yeah, i mean, it s horrific, and then you ve got the president throwing ukraine under the bus essentially, vis-a-vis russia by saying, okay, the brain surgeons that i have working on this, the guys like giuliani and putin of course, and of course orban telling me, look, ukraine is a very corrupt place, not to be trusted, don t help them because of course that would be bad for russia, and he buys it. the president says yeah, i believe what vladimir putin tells me about this, and so
by leaks of the content of those discussions. yeah, john hudson, stick around i want to bring in cnn senior political analyst davidger again and jeffrey toobin. shouldn t putin be the last person on the planet influencing how president trump feels about ukraine given the fact that putin has invaded crimea? absolutely, and it s hard to think of a more wholesome trio than giuliani, putin, and orban, you know. it is like what? what are we doing here? listen, a little context. it has been american foreign policy for some time now to support and strengthen ukraine, to come to the aid of those leaders. that s why we were sending them money because the russians had invaded their country, were threatening to dominate the country, and so the whole point of mattis and kelly and bolton was to reinforce the president and make sure he approached the ukrainians in a sense of trying to help them.
president trump turned his foreign policy upside down in order to get this dirt out of ukraine. kaitlan collins, i mean, it does seem i think david sounds exactly right. well, and also we need to talk about one notable aspect of this, you were talking about the lack of officials who had been there before that were very aware or very cautious of putin and the president s relationship that s, you know, mattis, john kelly, john bolton, but also the presence of mick mulvaney as a central notable aspect of this. he was someone who at times overruled national security officials. he has his own national security adviser which is unusual for a chief of staff, and as we reported over the summer, he was locked in this feud with john bolton over the holdup of this ukrainian aid, which at the time we were reporting it out, people were confused by it and didn t understand the reason. there seems to be a role in all of this and why the president was able to sit down with these officials, have
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.