that s his testimony. no. the omb official. told minimum. and the president has not allowed the omb official to testify. we could clear this up easily. that the information came from mick mulvaney. and that came from the president. mick mulvaney is the president s chief of staff. mick mulvaney refuses to testify in this proceeding. right. so the only people willing to testify are the individuals who are taking their oath seriously and understand the gravity of the hearings that are going on and who are appearing under subpoena to testify before the proceeding. firsthand knowledge, he was told by someone who was told. to get to the mulvaney point, fiona hill said sondland said he was told by the chief of staff. he had a deal with the chief of staff in return for the investigations this meeting will be scheduled. right. okay. sondland s testimony is completely different. i agree.
much in the senate. no. there is a real frustration amongst senate republicans who had a closer relationship with john kelly. mick mulvaney is a man of the house. he comes from the house of representatives. he s close to people who are in the freedom caucus. and if you re leader mcconnell, senators told me they wanted don mcgahn in there because if you re going to have a transactional relationship with president trump, it s got to work like a machine. get all the conservatives into these judicial posts, don t care about the president s tweets. it s just nomination after nomination stealthily overhauling the entire federal government. when that process breaks down a bit and pat cipollone is not as focused, then you have a gap politically between the senate and the white house. it s amazing, too, don mcgahn, the guy who sort of kept the president just on the other side of the line of criminal obstruction of justice and the current white house counsel may get him impeached. the stra
for a senator to make. and the problem that i think that the president ultimately has here, for years senators have been able to look the other way at some of the things he does because they don t have to vote on it. and eventually at the end of the day there is going to be a trial and all the evidence is going to be laid out. they are going to have to vote on it, and the public is going to be watching closely. and i think the buckets of senators you lay out, there are four senators who are retiring this cycle who are no longer accountable to donald trump. they don t have to worry about being attacked. there are five other republican senators in various close seats who have seen thar proval ratings plummet over the last month and are in dire straits for the election. then there are other people who just, i think, on at some point, may be so tired of having to defend him all the time that if the public opinion goes south on this, and that s the key thing to watch is the public opinion,
is right. the deep frustration about how he is both inside and outside the white house how he has sort of steered the ship during this impeachment inquiry that they felt like the president has been angry at him from the beginning that he has not been able to sort of navigate some of these rough waters, that he hasn t been able to change the story line at all. some of that may be unfair, but he didn t do the president any favors. john kelly point, certainly he had some success keeping the president in line for a few months, some success. and also by the end of their relationship, the two men weren t speaking. so it s perhaps the former chief of staff is overstating his ability to keep the president out of this politically legal hot water. but certainly there are republicans all over why the april who are frustrated there isn t someone in the building who can provide any sort of guardrails. house republicans know mulvaney but they don t all like him. in the afternoon after his now hist
of the day the maneuver his maneuver to pull american forces out of the kurds still standing with us. or will they just remember that speech that he just gave? for me, you know, obviously i focus on the fact that he did withdraw troops, the fact that he did in the same speech go after obama needlessly, right? i focus on that. but i wonder if the average sort of voter, average republican that s still on the fence, if their only takeaway from this was the point was the way in which he delivered that message the other day. you know, betsy, i lapped up all of the reporting in every news organization about how they kept this secret. seemingly, some of the timing even from him. but how they had accelerate the timing because of his decision. he really has, and take whatever