through the summer. and apparently, now president trump was following up a day after to make sure the ukrainian officials were opening the investigations precisely as he wanted them to. so on friday, hans, the president went after marie yovanovitch as he was testifying in front of the house intel committee. sondland is somebody who is much closer to the president. he donated a million dollars to his inauguration campaign. if everyone is to be believed that s testified so far, he and the president had a close relationship. he was on the phone with the president. in his text messages, he says he was on the phone with the president. how is the president reacting to sondland s testimony? and do we have any indication that they ve had any interaction lately behind the scenes? have there been any conversations between the two at all? no, we don t know that. and i should be very clear on that. just to add sort of the just reporting on the wild card aspect of this, remember when sondland i
yelling. sorry. it gets loud there in the hall. it s not accouncally perfect. fire away. hopefully, you can hear me now. let me ask you this. what are you hoping to get out of david holmes testimony, public testimony, on thursday? i think the thing to take away from it is the president of the united states didn t care about ukraine. that s why this policy went forward. all he cared about was the investigations. and in that conversation, he referenced sondland saying he only cared about the big things. well, obviously, there s a war going on there, which is a pretty big thing that influences not just our ally but the entire region and, frankly, our own national security. so this puts it in perspective. you re getting a little taste right now by the way of what it s like to be a reporter at a political rally. even a trump rally. not being able to hear yourself think, let alone talk when it s so loud. this room wasn t built for
president zelensky, who said there was no linkage, no pressure, no pushing whatsoever, no linkage between any type of security assistance dollars and an investigation. we have the fact that the ukrainians didn t even know that the aid was held at the time of the call. and most importantly, of course, we have the fact that they didn t do anything to get the aid released. reporter: so, there is it is, another aspect of the republican defense, the hearsay argument, even though david holmes, that official that testified yesterday, that foreign service official, would seem to flatly contradict and rebut the hearsay argument. alex? i ve just got to say that i laugh there at the president s tweet not because of the president s humor but the rather elementary, if not less than that nature of it. anyway, thank you very much. appreciate it, mike viqueira. the other big headline this hour, new details from the closed-door testimony of david home ames, who says he overheard the president on
minutes. okay. meantime, good day to all of you from msnbc world headquarters in new york. high noon in the east, 9:00 a.m. out west. welcome, everyone, to weekends with alex witt. closed-door testimony now under way. how a senior white house budget official could hold an important piece of the impeachment puzzle. also, the first direct account of an overheard phone call where the president allegedly asks about ukraine investigations. forget about everything else, why this could be the real bombshell moment. the testimony you might have missed. the biggest takeaways from the first public hearings. plus the point of order is will the chairman continue to prohibit witnesses from answering republican questions as you ve done in closed hearings and as you did gentlewoman will suspend. this week when you interrupted our questions. not a proper point of order. jeanetgentle woman will suspend what was that about? a member of congress explains. but top of the hour, brea
two separate foreign policy channels for ukraine. he was clearly in the regular channel which was led by national security advisor john bolton. he called it highly irregular by rudy giuliani. in include gordon sondland and energy secretary rick perry. he said in this channel people wanted to talk about the connection between a white house meeting and ukraine investigations. he calls a direct correlation between his reelection to a second term. taylor says, i understand the reason investigating was to cast biden in a bad light. it would benefit the political campaign for the reelection of president trump. the other big story breaking today is chairman adam shift announcement that sam that we are going to open a hole noon