Page 9 - Process Argument News Today

Way right now. we are also getting reaction from the presidents defenders. lets go to mike viqueira at the white house with that. whats the latest, mike? >> reporter: alex, i think we can break down the republican defense of the president into a couple of different baskets. one is the process argument, that this has been unfair. weve heard that all along when they were in those secret meetings down in the basement, at least those closed meetings. and even after they emerged and seemingly gave th...

Democrats and republicans are preparing. what they are going to try to accomplish with the witnesses that will be before them. speaking of the witnesses, this week bill taylor, the current top u.s. diplomat in ukraine, george kent, a department assistant secretary of state, and marie yovanovitch the former u.s. ambassador to ukrun waine was recalled by the president. lets start with manu raju on capitol hill. in terms of republican strategy going in, its no surprise, it would be almost malpracti...

People inside the why is house. this is one of the things that secretary rice said. i see a state of conflict between the foreign policy professionals and someone in rudy giuliani who said he was acting on behalf of the president, but frankly i dont even know the degree to which thats the case. its troubling. its deeply troubling and she also criticized on its face the phone call between president trump and the president of ukraine. >> i think the more -- look, we know how president trump will h...

>> meantime, democrats have their witness list already in place. republicans are crafting theirs. and it seems like they continue to beat the drum, wanting to out the whistleblower and wanting to hear from hunter biden, as well. listen. >> i consider any impeachment in the house, that doesnt allow us to know who the whistleblower is to be invalid. without the whistleblower complaint, we wouldnt be talking about any of this. and i see the need for hunter biden to be called to adequately defend th...

Away from these proceedings. and the witness list that republicans would like to call. almost none of these people are liable to appear, but the fact that hunter biden is on this list, another board member, the still anonymous whistle-blower. those things will not happen but it shows the degree to which republicans want to change the subject. dont be terribly surprised if two other names on their list, the broader committees have deposed. that would come up and it would help the process argument...

Quo, and so how is this going to be playing out on television and the people can hear for themselves those on the witness stand say it? >> well, yo will have the competing storylines, and you will have this wasnt an extortion slash solicitation of the bribe which is what we mean when we say quid pro quo or we are going to say that it was a request for one thing in exchange for another, and that is perfectly fine or actually all of these piled on top of each other, this and the process argument, ...

President trumps allies and gop staff. so, david, to you, there goes another trump line of defense that, you know, this is a process which lacks transparency and the republicans have no access. >> well, because they didnt have a defense on the merits, they went to this process argument. >> that argument doesnt hold either. >> it doesnt hold at all. i worked in the u.s. attorneys office with adam schiff. adam schiff is doing a tremendous job of putting this together. hes going to be one of the ma...

That rudy giuliani. his involvement, the level of involvement. is that a problem? >> im glad democrats are concerned about that. honestly when you think about that really thats a process argument, that is not the sort of thing that you beach is a president for. if the president wants to use anybody in the country in order to conduct foreign policy, thats his prerogative. you may not like it and there are good reasons why you ordinarily would not do that because it always is a question in the min...

Is so important here. speak into what matt said, also, taylor is the first witness for a reason publicly. i do something tha do the induss have been calling for weeks. now, they are getting it. the process argument goes away and now they have to engage. its bigger and broader than that one phone call, bret. >> bret: in the cross-examination, some of this is really interesting to look at. some of the aid about knowing whether the aide was coming, about taylor himself, citing a "new york times" ar...

Different tune, remember during michael mckinleys testimony. mark meadows said obviously weve talked about confidentiality and michael mccall said we need clarification on the rules that apply to confidentiality. sometimes they like things out in the public, sometimes they dont. is anybody really running the messaging here? >> well, chris, the messaging is being run largely by the president himself and its a reactionary process. hes literally reacting to whats happening in the news each day. and...