That frankly president obama was sending you pillows and sheets. And i gave you antitank busters and people didnt want to do that but i did it. Many republican elected officials are following the white house lead and acting as if this transcript is exculpatory and the scandal is not real. That is not accurate. The transcript is not exculpatory and mitt romney called it deeply troubling and justin amash called it, quote, highly incriminating. The president doesnt know the difference between right and wrong. Later today the Washington Post noted that Joseph Maguire scheduled to testify before the house and Senate Intelligence committees tomorrow threatened to resign if the white house continued to force him to stonewall congress. Maguire later denied ever considering stepping down. Lets get to cnn correspondent Kaitlan Collins traveling with the president in new york. And kaitlan, not surprising the white house is trying to say nothing to see her but there certainly is. Reporter yeah, this is not the reaction the white house was expecting. They thought they would put out this transcript and it would prove the president didnt say anything inappropriate tieing military aid to the biden family and potential investigations instead in the president s own words people are can read not only did he bring up joe biden but he also told the ukrainian president to be in touch with the u. S. Attorney general and his personal attorney on potential corruption investigations. He pushed a theory about stolen emails from 2016 tieing that to military aid immediately after the ukrainian president brought it up and it is also raising questions about the conduct of his attorney general now that people are learning that this was actually had a criminal referral that the Justice Department dismissed and said they werent going to start an investigation into it. So it is essentially having, jake, the opposite effect of what the white house thought it was going to do by releasing this transcript. What are white house sources telling you privately about this call . Reporter basically they thought this would get democrats off their back and stead it has done the opposite with democrats doubling down and focusing they say potentially on the president s conduct with the ukrainian president and instead in turn President Trump has essentially beenen credulous. He thought his efforts to reach out to nancy pelosi yesterday were going to get democrats to back off of this. It has done right the opposite, jake. Kaitlan collins traveling with the president in new york. Thanks so much. As we await for the president , lets chew over this with our experts. Bill let me start with you. Why do you think President Trump thought that releasing this transcript was somehow going to clear things up as opposed to the reaction that it got from democrats and people like mitt romney and people like yourself . I think the house had made clear enough that if he didnt release the transcript, that itself will be impeachable for obstruction. So maybe theyre telling everybody it is going to clear us and getting away with gaslighting that i suppose they told everybody they thought it would clear us. Maybe it is just desperation, and mike, as a former fbi agent and the Intelligence Committee, this is just one part of the whistleblower concerned about and do you understand why an intelligence professional listening to that call would have his antenna go up. It sounds like in the whistleblower complaint there are other issues as well. Of course it would. You never use domestic politics overseas and you never try to entangle domestic issues overseas. For members who travel overseas, both parties, you dont go overseas and bad mouth the president , i dont care if it is of your party or not of your party, it is not done for the interest of the United States. So when you start dragging domestic politics overseas it will send off all kinds of red flags and if the intelligence professionals around that conversation are going to say, hey, wait a minute, you cant stop the money for a domestic political issue. This happens a lot. You dont do x country, were going to do y. That is not a quid pro quo. That is a tough negotiation but this smells like something different. They have a long way in my mind to get to impeachment but this does smell like something. And is there a crime here potentially . At least one. You have the idea of asking a foreign national, the foreign government, a president to interfere with the election the u. S. And everybody talks about high crimes and misdemeanors as a nebulous concept and also in there is bribery and in a sense is asking you to give me something in exchange for an official act. Before i give you money for military aid, you have to scratch my back and give me dirt on a political opponent. But this is not a direct quid pro quo. It is not. But when you get into semantics of whether or not you are giving something of value here for what im asking you to do, you are already in losing territory when politicallyspeaking congress has the ability to say this is definable as that. You also have the idea of whether youre asking for somebody to essentially have abuse of power and corruption and using taxpayer dollars to finance your campaign and incentive and you have a whole host of things happening here but this happened the day after Robert Mueller poorly performed in his hearing and thought maybe he was emboldened and maybe the bright shiny objects over time he thought blinded him in his own intellect. Is there a risk here for democrats . Impeachment is a drastic step. Weve only seen it happen a few times in our nations history. It is. We dont know where this will head. We have not seen confirmation of a floor vote or what the process will look like. But because of the strategic patience ill call it what happened for Speaker Pelosi is this was led by seven democrats freshman from red and purple states who have National Security credentials who are not seen as political, not seen as grandstanders and they became the face of the move to move forward with impeachment and i think that is politically far more advantageous for democrats than it would have been a few weeks ago. I just this was a phone call made by the president of the United States from the oval office to a foreign leader two months ago asking for basically well trying to get dirt on a political opponent and i believe also the foreign leader would know the aid is withheld, congressionally aid and not discretionary aid from the president. This is not something that happened in the campaign three years ago or a confusing meeting in trump tower and who knows what don jr. Told the president. This isnt even the coverup in 2017 and the kind of chaos of air force one and put out a misleading statement about who knew what. The degree to which this is and there is no mueller. That is very important fact. A year ago the reaction of the House Democrats that wanted to avoid con fronting this would be well let Robert Mueller investigate it and well see what he finds this is their responsibility. If there is no impeachment process, the house of representatives of the United States is saying this is fine. And by the way, you dont have to have the full investigation the same way you did with Robert Mueller because the president has told you what hes done. You almost facilitated the idea and streamlined the process and said i wonder whether the president has engaged in behavior when he said here is what i did, it accelerates the thing to say well now it is a matter if what you did constitutes an Impeachable Offense and not whether you did it. And more importantly, were talking about looking retrospectively in the background and saying do we want to maybe have this partisan relitigation they thought of an actual election as opposed to looking ahead and can i nip something in the bud and the American People have a very different stance and they should have on prospective conduct. And i think the politics have shifted because there is foclk for months wareHouse Democrats would be and how many would come for impeachment and red and purple states and they are moving toward that now the question should shift to republicans in the senate, where they are on this. People who are vulnerable like Susan Collins and cory gardner. Are they going to stand by t stand by the president of the United States who will hold back military assistance to get political beneficial information on his opponent . Is that where they are going to be in their vulnerable races . So even on the politics it shifted a bit as well. Just to be fair, the senate voted unanimous to move forward on getting the whistleblower. And if youre going to get to an investigation you need the facts. So to be fair, those republicans came out and said, yes, were going to get to the bottom of this and support the effort to get this document. I agree. But theyve also been quite quiet and to date i think that is not going to stand for much longer. The focus will shift. And this is so much more manageable than the giant Mueller Report. It is a set of acts with giuliani going over there with the phone call and one country and it is easy to investigate. There are a couple of documents, the transcript and the whistleblower report and there are ten or 20 people to have testimony from and if they dont testify then that becomes a question of whether that obstruction is impeachable. This is a more manageable way to go forward in terms of investigating and conceivably impeaching than a whole medley of things that have happened over the last years. To be fair, as congressman rogers pointed out, there is a medley that were good that were going to get because the whistleblower complaint are about other things including potentially giuliani outreach and more. All ukraine focus. It is one set of events over three, four, five, six months with mike pompeo and john bolton and who said what when and mr. Giuliani what did you discuss with the president and then hell say president ial executive and then theyll say it was for political purposes so it is more manageable for democrats to manage. I want to bring in pamela brown now with more on this rough transcript of the call stwen President Trump and the president of ukraine zelensky. Pamela, walk us through what this rough transcript said becaused white house thought this would clear them but it is actually had the opposite effect . It appears that way. And youre hearing President Trump today defending himself saying i never pressed the ukrainian president to investigate joe biden but we have the transcript and it is illuminating and the reader and viewer could decide for themself. The president starting off after exchanging pleasantries reminding zelensky all of the u. S. Has done for ukraine saying when i speak to Angela Merkel she talks ukraine but doesnt do anything but a lot of European Countries are the same way so i think it is something you want to look at. But the United States has been very, very good to ukraine. I wont say it is reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good. But the United States has been very, very good to ukraine. Following that the president zelensky thanks President Trump for the aid and President Trump went on to say well i want to ask you a favor, though, he started off talking about his Conspiracy Theory that ukrainians might have the dnc server from the 2016 election and then on page four of the fivepage transcript he brings up biden saying there is a lot of talk about bidens son, that biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you could look into it dot, dot, dot, it sounds horrible to me. This was his first time where he mentioned biden by name. But, jake, it is important to note that he obliquely referenced the biden investigation and reopening that several times throughout the course of the conversation urging president zelensky to work with his own attorney general william barr and Rudy Giuliani on the matter. We should also note that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by joe biden in this case. The president then we should note how president zelensky responded to say to that saying first of all im knowledgeable about the situation since we won majority the next prosecutor general will be my person, my candidate and will be approved by the parliament and will start in september and he or she will look into the company that you mention in this issue. We know that prosecutor is now in office, jake. And so white house officials and republicans are saying, look, it is not so damning. There was not an explicit quid pro quo, but jake, it is certainly implied here and we know the president talked in his own language, his former fixer Michael Cohen said he speaks in code and it is clear he started off the conversation discussing all of the u. S. Does for ukraine to tee up the later request and the conversation. Now democrats say it doesnt matter whether there was quid pro quo or not, what matters is that key grasp on joe biden where the president asked the ukrainian president to essentially reopen an investigation into his political rival joe biden. Again the president defending himself saying no, he didnt pressure him but what is interesting if you look at this in a larger context here, jake, this is also illuminating because once again you have the president working with his trying to work with his own attorney general to investigate a political rival and what makes it clear he wants his attorney general to be reported and our past reporting is that hes done that with Mark Whitaker and the white House Counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton and james comey and it is interesting that one piece of the puzzle, this is one conversation between President Trump and president zelensky from july, there is another conversation in april. We dont know the contents of that. Pamela brown breaking it down. Thank you so much. While we continue to wait for President Trump to come out, lets continue to talk about this and congressman rogers, im thinking in my head, the comparable analogy would be barack obama in 2011 asking ukraine, russia, whoever to investigate one of mitt romneys sons and if it came out in the exact same transcript except it was obama saying it to a foreign leader about romney and one of his sons, i dont think that there is any doubt that the Republican Party would be up in arms and calling for impeachment immediately. This doesnt seem to be anything other than pretty clearcut to me about how people would respond if the shoe was on the other foot. And i would get closer. The fact i was one of them that was adamantly opposed and objected to Hillary Clinton using foreign surrogates into an adversarial country to try to find campaign dirt. When she hired the research firm. Absolutely. And i was very vocal then and i argue this doesnt look all that much different to me and we should be outraged at his actions and what you are seeing with republicans is we need a lot of other data to make sure that this impeachment is the right answer. Were going to take a very quick break. It is a very fastmoving afternoon. Well break down lots more coming up. Stay with us. Tmobiles newest signal reaches farther than ever before. With more engineers. More towers. More coverage its a network that gives you freedom from big cities, to small towns, were with you. Because life can take you almost anywhere, tmobile is with you. No signal goes farther or is more reliable in keeping you connected. They give us excellent customer otservice, every time. E. Our 18 year old was in an accident. Usaa took care of her car rental, and getting her car towed. All i had to take care of was making sure that my daughter was ok. 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