and i think that once this impeachment inquiry gets going, we ll learn a lot more about what happened. and i have a feeling that this time where there s smoke there s fire. you have been calling for impeachment proceedings well before this latest ukraine reporting. what makes this moment so different that the house speaker was now willing to launch a formal inquiry? i think this is something that people out there can understand. this is the facts of this he s trying to strong arm a leader into investigating a political opponents by with holding aid. it harkens back to what he did in the 2016 campaign. asking russia basically to locate e-mails. it s the same playbook to try and dirty up the political opponent with false accusations. but the american people can get this. this sound like the corrupt
doesn t matter what i said. or it was normal conversation. but now, this is diverging from his play book because he certainly wasn t this forthcoming in the mueller investigation right away. and i think that once this impeachment inquiry gets going, we ll learn a lot more about what happened. and i have a feeling that this time where there s smoke there s fire. you have been calling for impeachment proceedings well before this latest ukraine reporting. what makes this moment so different that the house speaker was now willing to launch a formal inquiry? i think this is something that people out there can understand. this is the facts of this he s trying to strong arm a leader into investigating a political opponents by with holding aid.
reporter for the washington post and an msnbc contributor. kelly, i want to start with you because right now our colleagues are lining up just outside the oval office ready for the president to invite them in. it is all but guaranteed he s going to be shouted questions about this ukraine reporting. reporter: well, certainly the president has already put a bit of his intentional answers out there with tweets that he has put out into the universe today, and that gives us a bit of a roadmap on what president trump may say. and that is he will accuse the whistleblower of being highly partisan. that raises the question does the president know the identity of the whistleblower or is he assuming any whistleblower who would accuse him of wrongdoing would inherently be partisan? so that will be part of what will take place here today. and the president saying that his conduct, he describes it as a phone call. we don t have all of those details yet. so the president is giving some informatio