offers confirmation of the whistleblower account of a quid pro quo. contradicting the president s claims. how damming is taylor s testimony? it s pretty damming. the transcript of the phone call that we have of the president with the president of the ukraine. was damming enough. now you re filling in the details and eventually the testimony that we heard today will be public. he will testify on the record at some point. and you will have i guess a west point grad with 30 years in the foreign service saying that he knows that the president or believes strongly the president committed an impeachable offense. this is damming testimony and there s going to be more coming. you have to tell me, you spoke to a lot of republicans today and say they re saying the same thing about the president. what is it? i think a lot of republicans in the senate don t like this president. and i think they re kind of hedging their bets. and they are put in a tough bind today because of exactly what he
said in early september, according to mr. morrison on the national security council president trump told sondland he was not asking for a quid pro quo. but president trump did insist that president zelensky go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of biden and the 2016 election interference and this of course is in the context of fact that the ukrainians are wondering where the military aid is and it is not there. for the president to say it is not a quid pro quo but you have to go do x it is not only a quid pro quo if you say it in latin. if it happens in english, it could also be a quid pro quo. even if you say this is not a quid pro quo but you need to do this. yeah. right. exactly. quid pro quo means this in exchange for that. this for that. it is an exchange of one thing for the other. that is a quid pro quo. and it points up the real issue, i think, which is why what is the intention of that quid pro quo? is mick mulvaney the white house chief of staff po
let s start with you, susan. what bill taylor said about pressure on ukraine president to announce investigations into 2016 election interference. ambassador sondland said everything was dependent on such an announcement including security assistance. president trump wanted president zelensky in a public box by making a public statement about ordering such investigations. did the president trumps problems just get a whole lot bigger? this was the most powerful testimony we have seen. we re saying a month ago we would have been shocked to see the level of specificity. the concreteness of the allegation and the fact they go directly back to president trump. i can t emphasize that enough. what ambassador taylor testimony has done along with that of several others over the last week pierced the vail of the white house. which they continued to try to insist upon and show that
president trump took numerous specific actions he was in effect orchestrating and directing this ukraine. and this testimony is a specific concrete and damming really, as any testimony in any investigation that i have seen on capitol hill over the last few decades. taylor recalls a conversation with tim morris son. a top russia expert. about a phone call he had with sondland and president trump. he said he had a sinking feeling after learning about this conversation from ambassador sondland. president trump told sondland he was not asking for a quid pro quo. president trump did insist that president zelensky go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of biden in 2016. interference. and president zelensky should want to do this himself. is this not the definition of quid pro quo?
and tying the investigation to burisma seemed to in his mind be tied directly to the conversation that was set up with the president of ukraine, zelensky and defunding. here s the problem, it s behind closed doors, we don t have access to what transpired in the cross-examination and republicans tell a story of not being able to push back on some of the questioning. i think this is potentially a big development but we don t know what we don t know. shannon: republicans went out to the microphones and said this whole process continues to be behind closed doors with the vast majority of house members are not even allowed to see the transcript or be a part of these things. they were called to be more transparent and if democrats are going to get the american public on their side and convince them you do see the polls moving but both sides of the aisle says this needs to open up but at some point it would have to before we get to a vote.