repeatedly he prioritized this stuff, conspiracy theory, biden, over what should have been the focus of the policy. maybe fiona hill is what some expected sondland to be today. short of that, as well, you ll have her statement, the bigger picture issue here which is what happened to u.s. policy priorities there? and it s interesting. we know that u.s. national security was subjugated to the president s personal interests which, at the same time, helped russia s interest. how do we know that? because yesterday vladimir putin was celebrating what he heard in the impeachment hearings. he was speaking to people in moscow. thank god, in his words, people are now pointing the finger at ukraine and not russia for interfering in the election. it s remarkable how many times trump talking points and arguments mimic russia s. whether it s intentional, we don t know. but what is a fact is that they are often in line. and the totality of this evidence from people at different levels who took note
to weaponize their own political opposition research and false narratives. you know, a lot of the story of the trump presidency has been about foreign influence. that was really the main part of volume one of the mueller report. it was about foreign influence and the 2016 campaign s openness to receiving that foreign influence. what we ve seen be uncovered about the summer and the early fall of 2019 is that pattern continuing. the trump campaign, this time the trump 2020 campaign, willingly wanting foreign assistance and embracing and trafficking in conspiracy theories that are feeded by foreign influence and foreign governments hostile to the united states interest. and dr. fiona hill is a subject matter expert on ukraine, on russia, on that region of the world. and i think her testimony is going to be incredibly
compelling and a real warning about the current situation that the united states is in. and the president is using his very powerful use of social media over 60 million followers, i think, and that s something that we see that we worry about. those of us in the national security space that we worry about authoritarian governments using technology, using social media to influence how their citizens are thinking about things. and so it s very concerning. certainly is. just to put it another way. what did the president always say? no collusion and no obstruction. what we have seen with ukraine is collusion, again, between the united states and a foreign government to try to help him win the election. and obstruction. no witnesses produced voluntarily. no documents produced voluntarily. collusion and obstruction, it s what happened with mueller and it s what happened with ukraine. everybody stick around. there s a lot more we re following. the arrivals of dr. fiona hill
yesterday is very different than what he s seeing reported. and a lot has to do with gordon sondland himself. what the president has been pointing to as his defenses for gordon sondland and what s being said about sondland is exposing testimony that we saw yesterday as the republicans tried to push back on that. and, chris, this comes as sources are telling us that the president is trying this interesting tactic over the last 24 hours of trying to convince people that he didn t really know his hand-picked european union ambassador all that well. now that s confusing aides and allies who the president is speaking with because they think the best line of attack is pointing to where gordon sondland couldn t say the president had explicitly or personally told him he was withholding that military aid or white house meeting in exchange for the investigations that he wanted. but that is the attack and that is the tactic that the president is trying this morning. this comes as people inside th
which is, yeah, he s not smart enough to get that this is a conspiracy theory about ukraine. and, yeah, he ll talk to a guy who doesn t even know gordon sondland asking him for directive. so ignorance is bliss. i think it s one of the reasons today is going to be interesting. fiona hill is going to sort of lay out why ukraine did not meddle in the 2016 election, but it s not it s not going to go. i think the republicans are going to say to the ultimate issue which is the president s mind-set and why he thought, because of press articles, honestly because of rudy giuliani, why he actually thought that ukraine did actually meddle in 2016. how does litigating a conspiracy help the cause here? if you are the democrats and you get into a back and forth litigating nonsense, aren t you empowering the nonsense? i think that s going to be one of the issues. in a way, it doesn t really matter. as we talk, just so you know, there s david holmes. he s coming in this morning to