withdrawal that followed. martha: thank you, good to see you. when we come back. from jimmy carter to george w. bush, what history teaches us about our presidents engaging in quid pro quo s. that s why there s otezla. otezla is not a cream. it s a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don t use if you re allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. spr
the phone call where he leaned on the ukrainian president to dig up dirt on a political opponent. this all comes as two more diplomats will answer questions to congress this week. joining us now political correspondent abby phillip and elie honig. we have this second whistle-blower who has come forward. what more can this person add to the picture? given that we have a transcript albeit a rough transcript of the phone call where president trump leans on the ukrainian leader? we have text messages where there are diplomats talking about quid pro quos. so what does this second whistle-blower add? i agree with you. we already have quite a bit to go on. generally speaking it s worse for donald trump. it s more leads to follow up on. whistle-blowers point investigators. look here, look there. the first whistle-blower led to this devastating evidence. who knows where the second whistle-blower goes. we know this person has first-hand evidence.
of how damaging the written messages all saved to the cloud could be and texted back, bill, i believe you are incorrect about president trump s intentions. the president has been crystal clear, no quid proquos of any kind. the president is trying to evaluate whether ukraine is going to adopt the reforms president zelensky showed in their campaign. i suggest we stop communication by text. joining me to the russian federation, and msnbc legal analyst and a former federal prosecutor. you ve been on the air a lot talking about these back and forth conversations and you made i think a really salient point is that with all of these different people who are talking back and forth about what ukraine could do for the united states in these investigations, only one person said this is a bad idea and explicitly said we
i guess we ll never learn for sure? they had all kinds of information that backed up what the allegations were, so the fact that rick gates was a criminal himself didn t sway the jury and he basically walked away. this is going to be an easy, factual thing to lay down unlike the campaign finance which the argument has been it s a squishy crime, it s not a real crime. this idea of collusion, corruption, quid pro quos. if they have e-mails that make these requests, that s going to be tough, i think, for republicans and democrats both to sidestep. you just had bill barr, the nominee for the new attorney skbr general, on the hill today discounting what counts as obstruction of justice. klobuchar, too, and he was reiterating it. the people who were in charge of mueller, if he gets reconfirmed which seems likely, saying, this is a bad thing you cannot do.
grande mal version of that relationship. ibturn pecker gave him coverage. that s the quid pro quos. if the national inquirer had this story and there was a discussion potentially about paying and then there was no payment, why wouldn t there be? if you re running for president, you re worried about it and this is what it s going to take to get it buried, why wouldn t the payment then happen? i can t speak to why the president didn t pay or there was no agreement reached for the payment, but i do think one of the most interesting aspects of what happened today is the fact that michael cohen taping his client, which formal federal prosecutors i spoke to today is totally unethical and almost completely unheard of. really undermines this narrative we ve been talking about for months is cohen s loyalty to their client. someone who tapes their client and potentially exposes them to this, do they really have that