whole new generation is discovering why we need to defend those values but to your point, i was listening to ron klain and you asked him about what donald trump did when he reached out to vladimir putin, and he said he described it as disgusting, and i guess i want to push back a little bit because i think that understates it. this is part of problem of donald trump. we kind of run out of words to describe what he is doing and of course it s disgusting but it s much worse than that. it is a fundamental betrayal of the country and it is dangerous. it is dangerous because he is the odds-on favorite to be the republican nominee for president again. he is sending a message to vladimir putin that we are not united, that perhaps he could wait out our national resolve, and it was a betrayal because the way that trump put it was, well, putin might actually give me this dirt on joe biden because he doesn t like this country. he made it very clear that putin might do it because he would want t
who every day we wake up and see him dropping bombs on hospitals, on schools, on children, and we have the former president, who thinks that s a great person to try to engage in a political scheme with. it s absolutely disgusting. we re grateful for the fact that most republicans on capitol hill are working closely with us to try to confront president putin. we have had strong bipartisan support for aid to provide economic aid, lethal aid, military assistance to the ukrainians fighting president putin, but if donald trump thinks that some kind of crackpot scheme conducted in conjunction with vladimir putin can serve his political interests, that will fail, as it has failed every time, and it says a lot about who donald trump is, and how much he cares about our country s security. well, those questions have been asked and answered, and i ll ask you what those answers mean another time. i do want to ask you about the president s comments today about
leads them to other crimes. what they were and who committed them and continue to do so until they exhaust the options and they re working on different time frames. you brought up witnesses in a box. how act jeff rosen, the acting ag with the notes? bill barr wrote a book saying donald trump is unfit for office and would vote for him anyway and clark trying to overturn. any consideration to put them in a jury box? i think if they put rosen in the jury box they lose immediately because he said i have no idea what trump was doing and his state of mind. he did know that trump wanted to fire him but pressed on that by the committee he said he can
all sorts to the ukrainians. to confront that aggression and try to push back the actions by president putin inside ukraine. in the end, you know, no matter what president putin says, this is kind of distrust but verify. we don t really trust what he said. he said he had no intention to invade in the first place. he did. we don t trust what he s saying now about a pullback around kyiv. we just see kind of a repositioning of russian forces and most importantly, what we need to do is help the ukrainians in this struggle any way we can. just really quick, last question, is the president feeling healthy? i know he was in a socially distanced meeting yesterday with the cia director who tested positive for covid. yeah, president feels fine. i saw him today. looks great, sounds great. american people saw him today earlier talking about gas prices. covid is around. that s a reality. it s a reality in all of our workplaces. we take reasonable precautions here at the white house. the preside
we always have questions. but how important is it for the president to be out in front of this, understanding, as you said today, that prices are painful, explaining how much oil came from russia, how much we can sort of back fill through these strategic reserves and what the long-term plan is? how much of your time is spent figuring out how to not just solve the problems but communicate and try to calm people down? well, look, nicole, i think it s very important. i mean, the president s been very straightforward. we ve really been at this in terms of putin s aggression for three or four months now, and it was very important for the president to go in front of the american people and the world and say, hey, we believe putin will invade ukraine and lay that out, first then laying out his plan to do it through false flag operations and false provocations to take away putin s any kind of putative rationale for what he did and then engage the allies publicly and show we have a united f