Transcript Zelensky News Today

And yet all of this is a distraction, an attempt to get us away from it. Whats also interesting to me, hallie, the president of the United States takes a lot of time trying to take down joe biden. That suggests to me that he believes biden is the strongest possible opponent. Weve had 70 headtohead matchups in polls. Biden has won every single one of them. In that sense its not a surprise the president is spending the time, using the power of his office to try to take down his number one opponent...

Ukrainians president zelensky. major revelations about what the president said about joe biden and hunter biden. well break down the document with someone who understands what were looking at better than just about anyone. the man who ran the situation room under president obama who was in charge of preparing transcripts of his calls with foreign leaders. hes going to join me in just a few moments. also, we continue to get live reaction from the hill, including from a member of the house intel...

His response here, the way he handled that. let me read it to you. he appears in his response to comply with president trumps request, saying, quote, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person. he or she will look into the situation, specifically the company that you mentioned in this issue. now, we have reached out to the prosecutor general here in kiev, yet to hear back on that. unclear if an investigation was formally launched at this point as a result of that phone call. but its crea...

Unclear. ive been speaking to high level diplomats here in kiev and theyve expressed their skepticism that zelensky woof taken that step. it would be perceived by democrats there in the united states as taking a side, which zelensky does not want to do. he wants to keep ukraine in the space of a bipartisan issue there in the united states, seen as essential to his strategy. keep in mind, his key campaign promise to become president of ukraine was to end the war in the east. the u.s. support is a...

It would focus on the individual congratulating on the election, it would include broad strategic elements of the relationship we have. perhaps there might be one or two troublesome spots a president might raise but not usually to the explicit nature that this conversation is. >> before that quote i read, the president of ukraine, president zelensky, said in part, i would like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. we are ready to continue to cooperate to the next step, spec...

>> thats good spot to leave it. thank you so much, larry pfeiffer, for helping us sift through that. we want to talk about, just a few hours ago president trump will be meeting face-to-face with the ukrainian president, volodymyr zelensky. nbc news correspondent erin mclaughlin is in ukraine. im also joined by senior editor ryan heath. now that the memo has been released, how difficult of a position to say this put the ukrainian president in? >> president zelensky finds himself in an extremely...

Us a favor because the country has been through a lot and ukraine knows a lot about that. immediately before is president zelensky who starts to talk about, on page two at the bottom, starts to talk about defense specifically. >> the whole structure of the call is the president of the ukraine requesting support from the united states of america. specifically zelensky mentions they want more support in terms of sanctioning russia, more funding for ukraine. on the bottom of page two of the transcr...

Zelensky is going to come out. and then, of course, as you say, the transcript, if you read it, is maybe 50% of the call. there are el lip sis in the transcript. theres much more color and nuance that make it a lot worse. as matt says, boy, if they thought this was the way to staunch the blood, what underlies it and what will come out next. >> do we know, harry, why there seems to be this narrow focus on campaign finance reform violation? >> yeah. well, that was just what the referral was. intel...

Kiev? oh, good, we do. erin, to this transcript here for moment, president trump is asking president zelensky to talk to rudy giuliani about affairs there in the ukraine. the attorney general, bill barr, about affairs there in ukraine. hes not asking president zelensky to talk to, lets say, the ambassador or the secretary of state or his national security head. what do we know about rudy giulianis connection to ukraine? >> we know at this point, craig, that rudy giuliani did make contact with of...