dan henninger, ed rollins, former political advisor for president reagan and mary anne marsh, former advisor for john kerry. nice to see you. what is the story this week from these three days? i expect it to be more of the same. that we ll have witnesses testifying that they were aware of the fact that there was a second channel running in ukraine policy and then that second channel was pressing the president of ukraine to investigate burisma, joe and hunter biden. in other words, i don t think the story line will be advanced very much at all. so we re going to end up in the same place we were when we started with this. i think ukraine is just a difficult story for the american people to absorb. if politics to ukraine are a hall of mirrors, if we do understand the president intervened via rudy giuliani and probably ambassador sondland somehow with president
very effective in just sort of making clear that there was this narrative going around about corruption, that the president did not seem interested in dealing with it but instead was pursuing this second channel. so i think democrats have to completely emphasize every way in which this was unorthodox and how these career professionals over and over again called attention to it. thank you very much. eli, stick with me. president trump made a surprise trip to walter reed medical center on saturday. the white house framed the unannounced visit as phase one of the president s annual physical exam. the president s two previous physicals were on the public schedule in the past and announced well ahead of time. they did not take place over multiple phases. so, eli, my question is, what exactly is going on and why haven t we seen the president yesterday and why are we not seeing him today? well, we don t know. we ll often go over the course of a weekend not seeing the
him to feel like he s his only defender. so melissa, it appears you know despite whatever criticisms have come by way of the president, taylor, kent, yovanovitch, you know, vinman all have been unflappable. do you see the same for williams since her open testimony is upcou upcoming. certainly. these are career foreign service professionals. they re testifying to a similar kind of feeling. that they ve watched everything that s going on in the state department and white house and this is highly unusual. highly inappropriate. a second channel, a shadow channel and the is not the way foreign policy s conducted. stair stepping forward and have been up flappable in making that case. the committees seem to say
about to go public. so where do things stand? what are the biggest revelations so far? joining me now is our prosecutor in resident elie honig. thank you for being with us. the first public witness is going to be ambassador william taylor. what are the biggest revelations from the testimony from him that was just released? yeah, john. we ll be hearing from bill taylor next week. by the way, i think that s by tactical design. he is the perfect leadoff witness. his testimony goes right to the heart of the matter and he s backed up. the first thing that bill taylor testified about is this irregular, informal channel of u.s. policy making with respect to ukraine. that consistented of volker, sondland, perry, and rudy giuliani. taylor told us what that second channel did is the security assistance got blocked by the second channel. security assistance here, that s the hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid we ve been talking about. and taylor saw that that was wrong. taylor testif
question, are you aware quid pro quo literally means this for that? i am. to be clear here, quid pro quo really implies both parties are seeking the illicit transaction but the ukrainians really didn t want any part of this. that is what makes this particular example extortion. taylor also describes two channels of policymaking, a regular channel run by traditional diplomats themselves and the second back channel that included people like gordon sondland, and hick perry and the president s personal lawyer, a man who s not part of the u.s. government, rudy giuliani. taylor testified that while parts of ukraine were operated by the russian ukraine the security assistance got blocked by this second channel. the security assistance, the military aid to ukraine they needed to help defend themselves from russian aggression and occupation got blocked by the nontraditional irregular channel that includes the president s personal lawyer. taylor describes how members of the state department lear