was exerting on them, then he would have been very clear about that. because he's not, it gives them the space, the oxygen they feel like they really need to make the argument that, in fact, he was just having a polite conversation, that he was bringing things up in a suggestive manner the way any president might do in that sort of a foreign policy setting. >> and also in terms of things he says, his state of mind, they will also make the point he was doing this, of course, because he saw this deep seeded genuine reasonable skepticism he had of ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption as we learned in that memo. there's another factor at play here of course when it comes to the president, and that is the president's influence over republicans. and you wrote in your latest piece for "politico" about how the president and his allies are really obsessed with potential republican defectors and what has been done with them, writing rarely does a republican become more wrathful than when he learns of a republican criticizing him, particularly if done in a public setting and even when he hears of an interseen attack he's been known