osama bin laden was very big, but osama bin laden became big with the world trade center. this is a man who built a whole, as he would like to call it, a country, a caliphate, and was trying to do it again. director, the white house also took a photo of president trump following developments of the raid, okay, just as a photo shows barack obama watching osama bin laden s raid, a photo that you re in. what s your reaction to the killing of al baghdadi and to the president s handling of it? well, first, i mean, it is a good thing. it s a great accomplishment, and it s another testament to the professionalism of our special operations forces, and i m proud to say the absolutely crucial contributions i m sure intelligence made to this. so from that standpoint, great accomplishment.
sondland when he made the statements alleging the quid pro quo. they have trump dead to rights. it s smoking it s going to smoke. there s a fire. and trump is going to burn it all down because republicans cannot argue the facts on this. they attack the process. attack the institution. and i made a prediction on twitter there they ll attack vindman because there s no bottom. and he was attacked as a double agent. vindman says in opening statement he s not the whistleblower. that s suggests how many people were alarmed. it wasn t just the whistleblower. there were more people. this awareness that this administration was admitting crimes and covering them up. this whole idea that it was a perfect call, that nobody indicated to trump otherwise. that nothing was wrong. it s bogus.
i mean al baghdadi everybody hears because he s built this monster for a long time. but nobody ever heard of osama bin laden until really the world trade center. that is not true. here s the fact. the fact is that trump s january 2000 book the america we deserve, mentioned bin laden once but never called for him to be killed. but this president is determined to get credit for killing al baghdadi. i ve been looking for him for three years. i ve been looking for him. i started getting some very positive feedback about a month ago, and we had some incredible intelligence officials that did a great job. even though he has tweeted again and again, claiming that former president barack obama didn t deserve credit for the raid that killed bin laden. and with all that as a backdrop,
here s our breaking news tonight. an army officer who is a top national security official at the white house, plans to tell congress tomorrow that he heard president trump pressure ukraine s president to investigate joe biden. and according to his opening statement obtained by cnn, lieutenant colonel alexander vindman twice reported his concerns out of his sense of duty. so let s discuss now. congressman gerry connolly is here. he s a virginia democrat who will be hearing the colonel s testimony tomorrow. so we re happy to have you here. thank you so much. great to be with you, don. so cnn obtained a copy of the lieutenant colonel vindman s opening statement. he was on this phone call with trump and zelenskiy. when you hear that he twice reported concerns about trump s pressure on ukraine, what did
whether with new leadership, new names, whatever, these terrorist groups easily reconstitute. and this one was not down and out. it was just down. so we have every reason to be concerned. the secretary of defense has already announced that 100 isis captives, terrorists who had been in prison have escaped. you know, somehow president trump thinks it s more important to guard dormant oil fields than to protect the kurds and protect our gains against isis. so everything is upside down here, and it s quite dangerous for our security. and would we have been able to do this without our allies, without the kurds? no. it would be very difficult to have the kind of actionable intelligence we needed without the kurds. you and many in the obama administration and journalists have been on the wrong side of the president s tweets, right? he tweets about you a lot. but, listen, you along with folks on both sides of the aisle have been critical of president trump s handling of the syria. he twe