The mulvaney press conference, and then were in the public statements in the two weeks of testimony in front of the committee. and those basic facts are not contested as the report says here. it s up to congress now to decide who to do with those facts and that gets to your points about the historical significance of these acts and is this conduct that really any party for the future wants to consider as appropriate and acceptable for any president to engage in and that s why these proceedings are so important to create historical records. i would add, too, what mulvaney said in one sentence is absolutely true. of course this influence and lobbying in foreign affairs in this town. happens every day. however, corrupt influence in foreign affairs, ask paul manafort how that worked out for him. the point is, there are limitations to what you can do. you have to register. there are as i think yovanovitch and register as a foreign agent. yovanovitch, hill, others
well, that s right. i think the republicans are largely in denial about the legal case and, of course, to the extent that we see a compelling legal case, that should make for traditionally would have made for a compelling political case but let me push back on the notion that additional testimony from mulvaney or others is necessary to link the president to this effort. we have to remember that we already have a summary of the july 25th call in which the president clearly puts himself right in the middle of this scheme. we then have the mulvaney press conference where he essentially just admits to it all. then we have the sondland testimony. if you take those three pieces of evidence together, they do link the president to this effort and so, again, while more evidence might be nice to have, i m just not sure democrats think it s necessary at this point. yeah. i think it s a point that adam schiff echoed earlier. greg bower live in washington, d.c. we are just getting started thi
Mick mulvaney. acting chief of staff. they always insist on calling him acting. i guess i would disagree with you slightly by the idea that this administration has never seemed to be that cleverly strategic in the kinds of things they do. it s chaotic in the way they operate. my sense on the doral decision is he s just got too many fronts he s fighting right now, and just take some of the pressure off, back away. and give his republican friends or allies or critics an opportunity to say, well, he did the right thing. the mulvaney press conference was truly one for the history books. and for people outside the white house, many of his close allies, even before he got to the quid pro quo part, there was a lot of head scratching about the fact that the white house would have a press conference to brag about this particular situation, the same week when they have spent tons and tons of air time complaining about the biden family, because of this focus on how self-dealing the trump ad
Mar maria anijosa and marilyn farcus. we re starting with so many different pieces of news both on syria and the g-7. let s talk about the news conference and the way mick mulvaney handled it and whether or not we re seeing some cracks within the republicans standing behind this president on this singular issue of whether or not there was a quid pro quo. we haven t seen too many cracks. there was some alarm after he tied those together. the cracks emerged more broadly from the other things, from doral, for example, the other part of the mulvaney press conference and separately from the syria issue. the thing that was so remarkable about the mulvaney press conference, first of all that he laid his cards on the table. this thing we said, yes, we did it, and get over it. to do something that his own
We haven t gotten over it. i don t think we re going to sort of get over it any time soon. here s the thing for me. i think there are ways to explain sort of, even if there were quid pro quo, it was motivated by public policy. look, you know i ve spent months before trying to explain why i thought the mueller investigation actually wouldn t damage the president too much. this, i think, actually is a much more concern to the president and his administration. the big issue, i think, with that mulvaney press conference was that he didn t seem prepared for it. it seems like the white house actually just doesn t have a system in place to deal with these issues. and they re serious. you know, you ve got the president s lawyer, his personal lawyer under federal investigation for issues related to his interactions with the president and other state agencies. this is serious stuff and for the chief of staff to the white