adviser saying, no, mr. president, this isn t right. and then rudy and later turned out perhaps even others are feeding in this conspiracy theory. and so what we literally have reached the point of is that american foreign policy is being conducted in a vital region in the world to prove up a fiction. and that s what s so bizarre here. this is why you re also seeing and it s one reason, honestly, why you re seeing such vigorous circling of the wagons from some of the same people that have been feeding this conspiracy in the underbelly of twitter and the internet for months and now years. so trump has gotten to the point where he s become so convinced of this at times he s distorting american foreign policy. and i think that s one thing that hasn t sunk in to the american people yet. they get the aspect of this that is here s trump and biden and it gets kind of confusing because hunter biden s business dealings were something that a lot of americans don t approve of. i believe rightly
allies are concerned about this, are those outbursts that we saw, thatting anner that that anger that we saw. there s a lot of skepticism it will work this time, willie. his own best messaging came out and said out in the open that he wants ukraine toest have the bidens and then said he thinks china should do the same. how does the white house defend that comment to you? they have not. that was the big question here at the white house throughout the day yesterday, will you defend what the president did on the south lawn in the response that we got over and over again, willie, was no comment. and so essentially they re not saying anything. but what we witnessed yesterday, that remarkable moment shifted the debate from what the president did to whether calling for a foreign governor s help is acceptable, will. i elise, one of the people defending the president of the united states in all of this is
summary of the phone call on july 25th between president trump and president zelensky, then put that with the whistleblower complaint, there s a lot of crossover there. you put this together with text messages we see from american political appointees and diplomats talking about all of this, and then add in yesterday the president of the united states standing on the south lawn and saying, yes, i believe ukraine should investigate the bidens and, by the way, china should do the same. what does that story tell you? you know what this tells me is that, you know, you ve got this sort of idea that trump supporters have that there s a twitter trump and then there s this difference between twitter trump and american policy. and american policy is solid even though trump can t put down the phone. this is twitter trump operationalized into american diplomacy. this is one part corruption, which is the requesting a foreign government without any real foundation to investigate a rival, and then
research can be a thing of value and therefore in violation of the law? i believe so. mike. so, ellen, even as limited as we are, we understand speak for yourself. we understand the law as you just explained it, what i want to know, i think what people want to know is what is the penalty for what donald trump has is doing? what s the penalty? well, penalty s vary. if the fec were to consider a complaint, and, again, i don t want to talk about the specifics of any particular fact person, but the fec has civil enforcement authority over the federal election campaign act which includes the foreign national ban, the justice department has criminal enforcement authority. when the fec looks at a complaint, it often will assess a monetary penalty at the end of an investigation. and it s very hard to say at the
the secretary of state mike pompeo who actually was listening in on that phone call and he finally remembered the fact that he was listening in after four or five days. but the status of the state department s role in this whole ukrainian mess, the personnel at the state department, i understand there s a real morale issue at the state department, has been for some time back up it s growing. what do you hear? that s right, mike. i mean, i have seen from my sources talking to them that there s a concern about president about secretary pompeo and on one hand trying to balance the policy of the state department. at the other hand trying to answer his audience of one, president trump. and let s be clear, secretary pompeo, we know, has future political ambitions, whether it s senator, governor of kansas from his home state or the presidency. in this particular instance, my sources say that he never told kurt volker the envoy to ukraine that he was on that call with