defend that conduct, all they can do is attack other people. this crazy theory about ukraine in 2016, a widely debunked theory about what joe biden was up to in ukraine when all he was doing was acting on the consensus of the entire u.s. government and the european union to see a corrupt prosecutor removed. they don t have any defense for trump so all they do is go on offense and attack whoever they can. the new york times editorial board had an extraordinary editorial suggesting who should be questioned, not just rudy giuliani and william barr, but mike pompeo, mick mulvaney, who was involved in holding up the arms sale that had been approved by congress and supported by the pentagon and state department, but holding up that arms sale of $391 million to ukraine. vice president pence, who was pulled back from attending the inauguration of the ukrainian president.
nations ravaged by civil war. this is beyond repugnant. in a civil war, americans are killing one another. i mean, that is how reckless and irresponsible this is. the president is not only peddling debunked conspiracy theories, he s engaging in the kind of rhetoric that only would have been found in the pafarthe reaches of the most extreme fever swamps on the right and it s got to be very concerning. thanks so much to all of you. coming up, family ties. how the president s son helped in propelling congress to start impeachment proceedings. and live from new york saturday night live back for its 45th season on nbc. true to form, already taking on the race for the white house. i m also america s cool aunt. a fun aunt.
was approved by our congress, by our pentagon, by our state department, holding up that money, pressuring him and saying, but i have a favor and then coming up with this conspiracy theory really that ukraine interfered with the u.s. election rather than russia. well, i can t personally imagine having that conversation, but i ll be careful in what i say because i so value the relationship between the united kingdom and the united states and i so want that to work out whoever is the prime minister, whoever is the president, that i don t think british politicians saying too much about domestic united states politics is a good idea. you have processes, you have procedures. they seem to be now getting underway and i think we should let you sort that out in the way that you do here in the u.s. without too much interference from us. what about the u.s. withdrawing from the iran nuclear deal? i think that was a matter of regret. i mean, barack obama and i and
you all for starting us off today. coming up, republicans revealing their wobbly defense to protect president trump from impeachment proceedings. this seems to me like a political setup. it s all hearsay. you can t get a parking ticket conviction based on hearsay. we re not going to impeach a president on hearsay as long as i m around. the inspector general determined that the whistleblower does have a political bias. the whistleblower wasn t on the call. the i.g. didn t read the call. but you and i have all the information we need. the president did nothing in this phone call that s impeachable. but first, object of their obsession, the trump administration s new cause to investigate hillary clinton. her former spokesman joins me next right here on msnbc. stay with us. righter he on msnc stay with us
that was quite a snub. clearly more pressure on the ukrainian president. they sent the energy secretary rick perry instead. michael atkinson, the inspector general clearly under pressure. kurt volker, the now resigned state department envoy for ukraine. you know, all of these people from different agencies. what is the likelihood that they re going to get access to some of these people? an impeachment inquiry gives you far greater latitude to go after people in terms of subpoenas, compelling testimony. obviously at the heart of this is trump s conduct. but if you saturdtart to pull t threads, it s the widespread corruption of the u.s. government. in the white house someone we know used a secret classification system to take an unclassified call and try to hide it from the rest of the government. in the state department, what we know already is instead of the normal conduct of u.s. foreign policy, you had rudy giuliani, the president s personal attorney, people involved in his