and wiwith respectct to ththe investigigation. - hehe did nothihing wrong a ae wasn t invnvolved in c collusi, and d he wasn t t involved in obstrucuction. - anand it s in n this mimindset, whehere that m morning, trtrump picks up the p phone for a a call with president zelensky. - the president says, there s a lot of talk about biden s son, so if you can look into it, it sounds s horrible t to me - trump p spends thehe call a asking zelelensky veryry specificacally to help him m investigatate hunter b b. - whwhite house e notes of t t cacall show ththat when zezely asked d for a shipipment ofof anti-tanknk missiles,, trumump counterered with these wordrds, i woululd lie you to do o us a favoror thoug - whatat zelensky y doesn t rere is, that i inside the e white house, trump has put a hold on several millllion dollarars ofd toto ukraine i in anticicipation of f zelensky agreeingng to thesee investigigations. - manyny of those e who are close toto donald trtrump think thatat none o
takingng official l action to help h his son enrnrich himsef inin ukraine, , he thinks s ts going to b be a goldenen momet for donald t trump. - over the beginning of 2019, i start getting texts from rudy about ukukraine, texexts about t how hunterer bideden was corrrrupt and d ukraine, a and pepeople need d to look ininto. - - at this popoint, giululiani has r really left truth and facts to the side. he has fulully joined d the consnspiratorialal mentality of president trump and his administration, totally signed on to that. - rudy wants to build a case. so he goes to get evidence. now one of the problems is, is he falllls into this murky woworld of rusussia and ukraine e and all sosorts of comompeting agegendas. and d he demonststrates vevery little e discernmenet as to o who is a r reliable source a and who isnsn t. the proboblem is, ththis wasnt some b backroom dedeal in quee.
exploit the gaps and ukraine s arsenal, in this case it s air defenses, and exploit that hesitation that we have seen from the u.s., which is ukraine s biggest backer. that is what we are seeing at the moment. i think that, in words, putin spelled it out really clearly in that meeting that he held on monday, the first of two that he held with russian servicemen who had taken part in what he still called the special military operation. take a listen. translator: for our part, we are going to intensify the strikes. of course, no crime against civilians will rest unpunished. that is certain. if you are in any doubt that russia is laser focused on ukukraine s western allies, in particular the u.s., putin said in that same meeting, he s said the west is s not helping g our enememy, thehey are our enemy. he went on to detail, essentially, production numbers of a artillery shells.
and now 60% of his military is destroyed. so, he s in a really tough position right now. but it s a position of his own making. i know it s early, congressman. but have you gotten any kind of briefing on the? and what sense do you have of what this could mean for russia s war in kukraine? well, not on the most recent developments, but i have been closely tracking the wagner group and it s operations not just in ukraine but around the world. particularly of interest is the impact of wagner in africa. they re very prevalent throughout africa, including western africa and central africa where they run a lot of mines and do for profit operations and cozy up to the governments in that region. so, i m going to keep a close eye on the impact of this now kind of burgeoning conflict between putin loyalists and prigozhin and the impact it might have worldwide on stability, particularly in africa. congressman, we only have a couple moments left. i want to get a sense of where the counteroff
polarization that you can t be sure that in two years or four years the president you make a deal with basically is tossed out in favor of a completely different approach to foreign policy. that is the undercutting of the u.s. stage in withdrawing from the iran nuclear deal and withdrawing from the paris climate accord. but kukraine is hanging over xi and biden and what lessons is xi taking away from vladimir putin stepping in it in ukraine and i think that is a big topic of discussion among two of them. and there is two reads of that. one is that the u.s. response in terms of arming ukraine and isolating russia and punishing it economically should make beijing think twice about inn invading taiwan and but the lesson is go hard, you know, go fast and hard as opposed to, you