information not from the president but through mulvaney and sondland. the one exception is that there are these direct conversations that were overheard between gordon sondland and the president but republicans have been saying, well, maybe he misinterpreted or it s just his word. we haven t heard the president say himself that he wanted these investigations. apart from the transcript of the phone call in which he refers to the bidens and crowdstrike server and things like that. so the republicans will probably seize on this to try to create that space between the president and the people who are speaking for the president. in this case, rudy giuliani. and rudy giuliani because he is such a loose cannon at times. he goes on television and speak his mind in ways that others probably would not. he s an easy target to try to wrap much of these allegations around. and much of the scrutiny about the wrongdoing around and the gop will try to amplify that. and republicans and the president
phrase quid pro quo. it s really kind of a meaningless phrase because it s really what is it the president trying to do. it does not matter whether they use the magic words quid pro quo. it would be like a person in a mafia setting which the president seems to like to talk about saying, take care of that guy. get rid of him. but i never said the word murder. it doesn t matter he didn t say that or tells sondland, that s not what i m asking for, a quid pro quo. it s his actions, what he is asking for. asking for the investigation. this other call that may have been the correct date. it seems clear from that context that he s very specific about how he wants the ukrainians to make a public statement that they re opening the investigation into biden. that s really where the problem is for the president. these sorts of technical defenses are just falling away as they usually do. shan wu and karoun, bless you both for getting up early to be here with us. happy thanksgiving. happy thanks
at the senior levels of the military they understand how erratic the president is and try to shield the military from that. they had more success when jim mattis was secretary of defense. now with mark esper, it seems he s more willing to do trump s bidding. and i fear that will do long-term damage to the professionalism and the apolitical ethos of the military. kwquickly, i want to get to your op-ed in which you skewered the republican party for its undying loyalty to the president. he keeps handing them one poisoned chalice after another. they get judicial appointments but trump s law breaking undermines any conservative claim to be defenders of the constitution. they get tax cuts but the resulting deficits undermine any conservative claims to be budget hawks. by backing israel s annexation of the palestinian territories, trump is undermining its future as a democracy. they get to keep power for the time being but his unethical and
devastating, important and accurate because what he s saying is self-evidently true. president trump does not understand the military. he does not understand the code of conduct. and he has made so many shocking and ignorant statements that have appalled many people in uniform who are otherwise inclined to support any president, much less a republican president. this president has tried to frame any pushback from senior pentagon officials as coming from the deep state. he did it again this week at a rally in florida. let s listen. i stuck up for three great warriors against the deep state. i will always stick up for our great fighters. people can sit there in air conditioned offices and complain but you know what? doesn t matter to me whatsoever. what are the implications of that kind of messaging? it s very destructive. it really undermines the military.
a phone call where the president supposedly said no quid pro quo. but now we have new reporting from t the washington post saying no other witnesses or documents can corroborate that call. it s just sondland himself. according to the post there is evidence of another call between trump and sondland that occurred a few days earlier. one with a very different thrust in which the president made clear that he wanted his ukrainian counterpart to personally announce investigations into trump s political opponents. so shan, sondland is a key figure in this impeachment inquiry but is he a reliable source? he certainly is not a reliable source in our usual sense whof is trustworthy. he obviously has probably lied under oath but where you can trust him is when you have corroboration from other sources, other statements, sometimes from the president s own mouth, and what s happening here is the republicans have been trying for a while to place so much emphasis on the latin