the immy kags of implication is they re going to have to come out and give information about problems if they re talking in an honest way, but for the most part, republicans have been in lock step, not new, but for something like this, it is certainly no question. it s interesting, you know, david chalian because you ve got senator mitt romney, now senator ben sasse. you got two republicans now who are beginning to say they re concerned about what they have seen over the past 24 hours. . yeah, i mean, mitt romney has been on an island. i guess there was room for senator sasse there who recently won donald trump s enforcement for an election campaign. ly just vote, there is yes, typical politics. if the shoe were on the other foot, they would be behaving differently. you see the clips of lindsey graham from 1998 as a house impeachment manager and compare that to the clips today, you can do that.
sunlen serfaty, thank you very much. those viewers who may be tuning in this hour, step back a little bit, give us some perspective on the enormity of this day, and the developments that have unfolded. yeah, it was a woman shell of a day, and a day where the future of donald trump s presidency came into focus in some ways of what it s going to look like at least for the remainder of this term. of his first term, should he get reelected. what you saw was in the release of this rough transcript of a phone call, you saw something very rare in washington, you saw largely an unspinable document here. i know the president and his team are trying to down play the severity of this, but it is as clear as the president had made it in the days before about whi actions were, this tripleanscri wolf, made crystal clear, the
into this as well. what do you think? you have a situation where the ig s report is going to provide additionalal context here, and may additional context and may get to the bottom of why rudy giuliani was involved rather than people from the state department. there s a bigger question about why the president was seeking the help of president zelensky for, you know, his own benefit but why did he send essentially his bagman, rudy giuliani, instead of working through people who are part of the executive branch, but i want to go back to something that dana said a minute about what senator sasse said. he s warning republicans not to say there s no there there here because unlike the mueller report, you have a situation here where even if we haven t seen the ig report, even if we haven t heard dni mcguire s testimony yet, if our viewers read this four-page rough transcript or rough summary, it lays out pretty clearly and sarah just did in her report,
rudy giuliani and the president have gone around and undercut the actual foreign policy work of the state department. you know, it s interesting jeffrey toobin, you read this, i assume two times, this rough transcript or shear ummary or memorandum of this phone conversation in july, between president zelensky of ukraine and president trump. in that conversation, the president says at one point near the beginning of the conversation and i m quoting now, the united states has been very very good to ukraine, and then he says, that hasn t always been reciprocal, and then he says something along the lines, and i m quoting from this rough transcript, i would like you to do us a favor, and then he refers to investigating the bidens, hillary clinton and the democr democr democrats. sometimes we talk about donald trump talking in code.
consider to be corrupt officials in ukraine. you have been looking into this. what are you discovering? i have been tweeting back and forth with senator menendez on this recently, wolf, and president trump and the white house just tweeted out something on this as well, alleging that democrats had improper contact with ukrainian authorities related to investigations that were going on in ukraine. ler let s be clear, two wrongs don t make a right. even if there was inappropriate contact by democrats or republicans before president trump, that doesn t absolve him of wrong doing. on this particular issue, senators menendez, durbin and levy did send a letter to the ukrainian authorities, regarding press reports that they were backing off of investigations because they did not want to upset trump. they wanted to curry favor with trump, these members of congress wanted to ensure there was nothing inappropriate influencing the functioning of the ukrainian law enforcement system. they were tr