and the wall street journal spoke to republican senator ron johnson of wisconsin who said he was told by an american democrat diplomat back in august that release of the military aid to ukraine that was approved by congress, let s not forget, was contingent on an investigation that trump wanted. the journal reports it this way. quote, alarmed by that information, senator johnson said he raised the issue with mr. trump the next day, august 31st n a phone call days before the senator was to meet with ukraine s president. in the call, mr. trump flatly rejected the notion that he directed aides to make military aid to ukraine contingent on a new probe by kiev. mr. johnson said. earlier today before departing for maryland, the president talked about the senate kind of as his ace in the hole. we have a great relationship in the senate. i have a 95% approval rating in the republican party. i believe the senate and i haven t spoken to that many senators. but i believe the senators look
and a tightened contest for the democratic nomination. with us to talk about it tonight, we welcome back to the broadcast, the political report he for the washington post, author of the payment s morning news letter power up. and melanie is with us. she covers congress for politico. welcome to you both. jackie, you can t argue trump got to tell biden s story this week. he just took it over. and that was the response five days deep into the story with trump arguing corruption. straight-up corruption every day. you talk to democrats and they whisper the same thing. it feels like stronger together part deux. corporate campaign a dread inaugurate, about as nimble as a battleship. what are you hearing? that s exactly right. my colleague who has been following the biden campaign closely wrote that piece that you just excerpted.
that raised a lot of questions. what was the secretary of state doing on that call? why hadn t he acknowledged it earlier? what was his role in supervising or coordinating with rudy giuliani or state department officials working with rudy giuliani, including kurt volker, gordon sondland and so on. these are all questions that remain unanswered. you can naj congress, at least the house democrats will want to ask him about that. they ve already clashed about the requests for testimony and documents. he said they were trying to brutalize state department employees but they have made clear, they don t plan to accept no for an answer. so there is a real collision here between executive and legislative branch with mike pompeo right there in the middle of it. hey,ba last night on this broadcast we quoted a superb legal thinker named barbara mcquade. i want to read it back to you. this habit of committing crimes in plain sight is intriguing. trump is practically daring us
the united states and not any current state department or president, are going to go before congress and tell the truth? well, i think this is the height of hypocrisy. on the one hand, you say trump/pompeo says i won t let congress bully my people. on the other hand we now know he was on the call where the president of the united states trashes his own ambassador to the president of ukraine. and evidently, the president, the secretary of state offered no objection. a year ago, there was an op ed in the new york times where a white house insider was saying, there are adults in the room who are trying to create boundaries and to how far the president can stray. a year later, i think what we re seeing is that there are no adults in the room. and the fact that a potentially illegal activity can become the policy of the united states of america through some sort of