we don t know what s going to happen. we don t know how any of this will play out. other than to say that trump has unleashed vast quantities of human suffering. he has destabilized the most destabilized region in the world. he has harmed, deeply, the national security interests of this country. i want to sort of play devil s advocate for a moment on this. i actually believe in the def s levelleve advocate. i imagine a future that a democratic president, even republican president, withdraws from afterstan begaghanistan. we can t be there forever. it is the longest war in the republic. the forms of argumentation here, i fear they ll be used there. we fought alongside the afghan fighters. we re unleashing hell. the taliban will rush back in. i worry about the same arguments being used then and stopping and promoting a war going on
that is textbook abuse of power, undermines our national security and the president betrayed his oath of office. and so the intel committee led by adam schiff who s doing a phenomenal job will continue to unwind that thread. but speaker police has said we re operating under an impeachment umbrella. so there s a total of six committees. the foreign affairs committee is involved, the oversight committee is involved, the ways and means committee is involve, the financial services committee involved and also the judiciary committee involved as well. there s also one other aspect that pertains to rudy giuliani, there s a criminal investigation out of the southern district of new york in which two of rudy giuliani s associates, men represented pie their own lawyers as being part of president trump ps legal team are being indicted in federal
and president trump himself referred himself to the turkish plan as cleaning it out. you have a 22-mile strip that for many, many years turkey in all fairness they ve had a legitimate problem with it. they had terrorists, a lot of people in there they kpt have, and they suffered loss of lives also and they had to have it cleaned out. had to have it cleaned out. that is the one story. that is story that s dominating a lot of the politics and coverage. everyone is watching and thinking why did this happen, right? 354 people in the house condemned trump s decision, that includes 129 republicans. most or much of the senate has criticized it. huge bipartisan consensus it s terrible across the ideological spectrum. not just the partisan spectrum, why did he do this? why did trump do this? that is one story.
department is obviously getting its kind of revenge now, right? they re having their opportunity to speak out finally and explain all of the misery and the chaos that they ve been through over the last two years particularly over the last obviously eight or nine months with regard to the ukraine story. the second one, though, and one i think is more important is them raising alarms about a foreign influence operation taking place yet again on american soil targeting the 2020 election. it s been a very clear thru line here is that people connected to the russians. we know about a ukrainian oligarch who is very connected to putin, very connected to the former ukrainian president who is very connected to putin has hired two of president trump s closest allies and people he considered to be his lawyers during the russia probe in order to dig up dirt on joe biden and relay it pack to giuliani and to the white house so it can be used against him.
government, the two things he arguably cares most about in terms of specific internal u.s. matters. those are also the two things that giuliani we now know was personally repeatedly lobbying the president about. giuliani was that gold trader s lawyer, okay? he represented him. and back in 2017 giuliani traveled to turkey and held a secret meeting with erdogan to basically figure a way out for turkey to further aid which is weird because plea bargaining is usually a thing that happens between defense lawyers and prosecutors in the united states, not with a foreign head of state in a foreign country. so that s one of the issues erdogan wants in the u.s. that giuliani was working on. here s the other. we learned just this week, okay, that giuliani privately urged the president, president trump, to extradite that turkish cleric