he did with the g-7, doral idea which he quickly retreated on in the face of not just democratic and media criticism, but republican criticism. and the syria conversation, syria decision where he basically abandoned the kurds who ve been american alleys hurt him with his own republican base, the people he needs right now more than ever in order to defend himself against this impeachment effort. phil, the same question. he s casting about, he s using some well-worn talking points, some new ones. at one point on the miami airport thing today he said there are some people who believe it s the number one biggest airport in the united states. it s not. it s just not. yeah. no. he is not in control right now. in fact, i d say this as a season of weakness for him on a number of fronts because he has republicans on the hill who are speaking out about his syria decision, he s got his on administration officials who are defying his wishes by going up to the hill to testify as part
ability to steer the ship of state and decrying the syria decision. we certainly can t have presidents asking foreign countries to provide something of political value that is after all against the law. you are reminded that if more comes out you could support impeachment? sure. show me something that is a crime. if you could show me that, you know, trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing. that s an interesting sentence from lindsey graham there. fox news host chris wallace said a well connected republican told him if the house votes to impeach him there s a 20% chance that enough republicans will vote to remove him from office. who knows what to make of that probability number, but it is a long way from the total support from trump that we ve seen to this point. washington post phillip ruck jeret said trump finds himself mired in a season of weakness
thing and he would have sold it for a year. the dynamic has definitely changed. they re finding their voice. because they disagree with the president on syria and now he needs them. and i m curious, joe, why what is happening with the syria decision? the rationale that the president gave the public was it s time to bring our troops home. they deserve to be home. then he sent 2,000 troops to saudi arabia or announced he would. and is redirecting the troops who were protecting our allies the kurds to iraq. that s not bringing them home. he s not bringing them home. i think the simplest explanation is the best. the president didn t understand the dynamic of what our troops were doing there. when he got on the phone with the president of turkey, the president asked him for a favor and he said of course thinking he d get something in return. and it was only when the blowback happened that he i think he began to understand how many pieces of geopolitics fit
but walk us through what you heard. reporter: this is a pretty wide-ranging cabinet meeting where you saw the president at the beginning already taking questions. we saw lengthy cabinet meetings in the past, brianna, and this is another one that seemed to go on and on, the president talking about his grievances in the beginning, everything from impeachment to criticism he s facing over his syria decision. then at the end not answering a question about the job security of his chief of staff mick mulvaney who of course cnn has reported on at length, noting that right before this impeachment inquiry got kicked off, there were questions about just how long mick mulvaney was going to be in this job and who it is that could potentially replace him. during this cabinet meeting that the president had, he was talking about his decision to bring those troops out of vir ya, and brianna, the president told him he believed he made the right decision, that he knew more than the pundits who had bee
he said informant. there was more than one source according to the whistleblower complaint. he said it may have been adam schiff. that is not based on any sort of reality or any sort of reporting. what we know is that the whistleblower complaint which hews very closely with the discussion he had with the head of ukraine, this was informed by white house officials. gloria, j.w., was there anything else there? i think you covered it. he was clearly defensive on syria and the syria decision as well, and kept going back to the campaign rally in dallas saying, you know, the place went crazy when i said we re going to bring our troops back home. what i think we re witnessing here is a president who is