what we found out he is come i there would have been a new can t remember if it is zero or that never happened with me and they are. round of massive sanctions near $0 from any european county to the larger point of the against turkey. and you will see in the meeting one of the things you missed the president didn t want for lee legal aid. meet you for the president say to take the meeting. agreement that on the basis of we gave them tanks and they give he didn t want the phone call. them pillows. the pause of 120 hours, a that is absolutely right. that was rick perry was as vocal as the europeans are pushing for that. mick: at the end, he has cease-fire over the next five about supporting ukraine, they are really, really stingy when a courtesy extended at the time. it comes to legal aid. days, that we will not be they were not helping ukraine implementing additional he was never realistically sanctions during that period of and that is still to this day are not in the president did not time. like that. entertaining a meeting with once we have a permanent i know you are blowing up your cease-fire, following the question but still going. president zelensky? mick: we get asked by those were the driving factors. foreign leaders all the time to orderly withdrawal of all ypg visit the country or have them did he also mentioned to me come visit here. we try to be courteous and say forces, the united states also empath the corruption related to yes and some accommodate and the dnc server? absolutely, no question about some we are not. agrees to withdraw the sanctions that. but that is why we hold up the that were imposed on several i do not remember let me answer the question. cabinet officials and several money. i don t remember a serious so the demands for an conversation about setting up an agencies earlier this week. investigation into the democrats was part of the reason to unfold actual meeting, no dates discussed and i saw that typical funding to ukraine? pleasantries that we have. i don t think it was dangling a reporter: to be clear, it mick: to look back to what meeting or anything like that, simply sanctions that would be removed. happen in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was yes. nothing else would be offered or mr. president to to add on to worried about incorruption with the nation. the white house november? given to the turks. that is absolutely equivalent. mick: i think that depends vice president pence: right. one more question. which ultimately then flowed. on how the next couple of days ago. by the way, there was a report it it is still on schedule and i vice president pence: go that we word the money if we understand that ahead. didn t pay out the money, it would be illegal. vice president pence s meeting reporter: thank you, it would be unlawful. is going longer than expected that is one of those things, a today. i hope it s not going on with a mr. vice president. while you are here negotiating little shred of truth in it that with the turks, several hours. press conference right now. it is one of those wait and see makes it look a lot worse than things. the president has been clear can i finish? it really is. we were concerned about over what he wants to see out of the president erdogan and he wants a about an impoundment. i put half of you folks to bear to come up the budget control wants protected and i think you go down the long list of the things that the president has reporter: using the act and pound budget control act mentioned to president erdogan. sanctions to blackmail. and if we are able to get that of 1974 says if congress appropriates money, you have to that meeting can go forward. spend it. if not the president will reveal that is how it is integrated interpreted by folks. this is a plan. we knew that money had to go out that responsibility, yes, ma am. vice president pence: the united states of america did not by the end of december or a good you just said you were reason not to do it. support surrogate turkey s miliy that was the legality of the issue. involved in the process in which this is a quid pro quo and the money being held up temporarily. actions in syria. funding will not flow unless the you name three issues in the president trump made that clear. investigation is into the country, whether or not the the united states imposed country they were assisting was democrats server as well. sanctions and the president made an ongoing investigation but how it clear yesterday and we made mick: we do that all the is that not an establishment of time with foreign policy. clear today that there would be we were holding money at the an exchange with quid pro quo? same time for what was it, the additional sanctions coming to tribal countries. mick: those are terms, bring an end to the violence to we were holding up aid for the those are terms you use. the loss of innocent lives in tribal countries so that they go look at what gordon sondland said today in his testimony was would change their policies on this border conflict. that my think, in his opening immigration. by the way, this speaks to an that being said, let me say that statement he said something like i really believe today today s they were trying to get the important point because i heard this yesterday. i can never remember the deliverable and the deliverable was a statement by the ukraine gentleman, mechanic, the guy about how they were going to deal with corruption, okay? come i don t know. go read his testimony if you cease-fire is a credit to president trump and to haven t already. president erdogan. and if you go and believe the and he is right that is actual it s a credit to the strong news reports because we have not seen any transcripts of those. ordinary course of business. relationship between the this is what you do when you the only transcript is a have someone come to the united states. testimony this morning, but if and turkey. it s a credit to the strong you read the news reports and believe them what did mckinney white house either arrange a visit for the president, a phone relationship between our two leaders. call with the president. where there are differences say yesterday. a lot of times we use that as an between friends, it s important he said he was really upset with opportunity to get them to make the political influence in a statement of their policy or that the friends mother feelings foreign policy. to announce something that they that was one of the reasons he were going to do. it is one of the reasons you can be known. was so upset about this. president trump did that in this i have news for everybody, get then sort of announce that on case. over it. the phone call or at the it facilitated us being able to there was going to be political influence and foreign policy. i m talking, mr. carl. meeting. this is the ordinary course of reach an agreement that has resulted in the cease-fire and that is going to happen. foreign policy. elections have consequences and i m sorry. is it appropriate for any we believe will set the stage for creating a peaceful and foreign policy will change. president for this president to the obama administration to the pressure a foreign country to trump administration. what you are seeing now is a investigate a political opponent? mick: mick: every time stable, safe zone. group of mostly career the united states is committed bureaucrats or saying, you know i get that question, it is, andp to achieving that. what i don t like president trump politics why beating your wife. reporter: will participate in this it assumes the president has mr. vice president, can i finish witch hunt that they are done that. my question. we haven t done that. undertaking on the hill. harris: they are shouting i m going to talk about what elections to have consequences, and they should appear at questions in ingres turkey. foreign policy is going to this president is doing, yes, i want to go to change. obama did it in one way, we are ma am. the president s personal general jack keane, retired doing it a different way and four-star general, fox news attorney rudy giuliani sees his senior military analyst. there is no problem with that. with a couple minutes until the work as a personal attorney is mr. michael look intertwined with the president top of the hour, you are joining me by phone. national agenda when it comes to as you look at the situation. mr. mulvaney did that come into ukraine. consideration do you see those issues as mick: i m sorry, i m being 120 hours. are we sending troops back into intertwined? very rude. chose to qualify just if political interest has a facilitate the safe zone? president of a political no, we are not. candidate come is that intertwined with the national this is really erdogan s concern interest? mick: i don t know how to answer that question except rudy about the sanctions. the president heard that in his the question is not just about a voice when erdogan called him on political decision tuesday and the president was of how you want to run the giuliani as his personal lawyer. the present wants to use him. very emphatic. government. speak with the personal attorney this is about investigating to be working in ukraine on i m going to impose the political opponents. issues both the national issues. sanctions unless you abide by a are you saying mick: dnc server cease-fire. he said we can achieve the same do you think that is okay for mr. giuliani says attorney-client privilege issue buffer zone used in diplomacy, the u.s. government to hold up because he was working the we are trying to do in the first aid and require a foreign case before you introduce this president interest. is that appropriate? mick: i don t know anything violence. government to investigate inappropriate about that, yes, that s why we have the political opponents of the president? sir. mick: you are talking about i m sorry, the lead in the back. cease-fire and why we have the looking forward to the next thank you mr. mick mulvaney. withdrawal and why we are finally going to get a buffer election. the dnc, the dnc is too zone without any additional killing. involved in the next election is you said not like previous harris: it is 20 miles that not correct? wide, the safe zone barrier. mick: wait a second, hold 120 hours. they are hoping for a long-term on a second. to investigate the dnc, information, but how does the cease-fire. before i let you go, you ve been right? mick: there is an ongoing, critical of the president s there is an ongoing action. are you still critical? investigation by the department president let north korean break of justice into the 2016 off with top u.s. leaders? or removing the right direction? election. mick: the question is he made the right move here i can t remember the person s responding to breaking off obviously. he deserves a lot of credit for name, dorm, okay? talks. that is an ongoing is there news the last couple of it. he knows erdogan. days on that? that is part and parcel for this investigation, right? the president of the united states the chief october 5th and israeli. decision. i do still think strategically law enforcement person cannot ask as someone with ongoing mick: i m sorry. public investigation into wrongdoing? i m not briefed on that, yes, that is just bizarre to me that pulling out of syria, giving the sir. you would think that you can t thank you mr. mulvaney. return of isis and the iranians do that. so you would say, dnc is not there have been published seeking domination, it s a reports that you were objecting within the president s official strategic mistake i think we will regret. about finance. family to the appointment of harris: may be it s moving so biden is now running for the fast enough that we can get our ken cuccinelli as head of the hands on the holding cells with democratic nomination, right in isis fighters in them. it s been a week. department of homeland security. is that so, and if so what is 2020. thank you, general jack keane. mick: that is a hypothetical because i did not happen here but i would ask your objection to his possible thank you for watching during appointment? all the breaking news. you mick: i have none and i i am harris. know on the call the the daily briefing now. president did ask about think he will be good at the job. investigating biden. yes, ma am. dana: hello, everyone. are you saying the money that really, the whole time you were was held up that had nothing to sitting in the front row and i have asked a question yet? i m dana perino. vice president pence and do. mick: know the money had secretaries take pompeo that the nothing to do with biden and that was the point made to you. the quid pro quo, didn t want you are drawing a u.s. and turkey have agreed to a cease-fire. distinction. joining me is donna brazile. mick: three factors i was to do it and all on the up and involved with the money being up, why did it have to go into stephen, the senate leadership held up temporarily. fund. three issues for that. more restricted server? harris faulkner had a first hour the corruption of the country, why was it move from one server whether or not other countries to the other? mick: i m glad we got that participating in support of of breaking news. the vice president and secretary ukraine, and whether or not and went to finish on. of state left last night. cooperating in an ongoing i m not going to answer your they went there to tell erdogan investigation with the question the way you want me to department of justice. the president is serious and if that is completely legitimate, but i am going to answer your we can t figure out out a way to yes, sir. question so give me a second. do a cease-fire. i will not talk about how we regarding the secretary of they have 120 hours to get handle classified information in state department, the deputy people out of harm s way this building. hopefully. secretary or asian or european have a question about private it s a good move because this conversations and i don t talk was an unmitigated disaster, aid and george testified that about those either. i will not talk about that but i will address and here s why. you asked him to step down from there s only one reason people care about that, right? they think there is a cover appear they hope there is a issues regarding ukraine. cover up. some hope there is a cover up is that true? oh, my goodness gracious there must be something really mick: who said that? duplicitous something george. underhanded about how they i m sorry, i don t know who that handled this document because there must be a cover up. is. is that who testified this week? there s always a good cover up i don t believe i ve ever talked when we have an impeachment, to anybody in named george camp right? nixon had a cover up with tape or ask anybody to resign their stomach a clinton a relationship position. another thing, there are with monaco linsky. let me ask you this, if you want to cover this up, would we have reports that you had been conducting a review of the phone called the department of justice almost immediately and have them look at the transcript of the tape, which we did by the way. calls with vladimir putin, the if we wanted to cover this up, would we have released into the ukrainian president and the public? by the way, i am glad all this question is, what are you doing, concern about the document edited and what does it stand is that true? do you acknowledge you have been for adam schiff and on conducting that review? television yesterday, yesterday or the day before we don t need to hear from the whistle-blower anymore because now we have the mick: again, no one here had any difficulty with the transcript. the memoranda of document. call. we think the call is perfect. we don t think there is any difficulty with a call at all. i ve read it several times. everyone wants to believe there is a cover up. by the way, and on the call, my you don t give stuff to the public and say, here it is if you are trying to cover office is on the call but no one something up. i want to answer your question by explaining how we handle raised difficulty with me on the documents in this building. i m telling you that you can call. i understand no one on the call stop asking the questions there in here thought there was because there is no cover up. difficulty with it. i can prove it to you by our so get to the point what we are actions. look, i know we can do this all doing inside. was this an attempt to night. i m not going to take anymore. nice, thank you. uncover the whistle-blower? harris: white house chief mick: no, if you are having the house to what they are going to do, doesn t it simply makes of staff mick mulvaney taking sense for us to sort of find out questions. this whole thing started where what happened? they will hold the next g7 this is one of the questions i don t understand from you folks summit. it will be at the trump doral that we get all the time. which is, some of you have property in miami, florida. criticized us for having a war i am harris faulkner and you are room, okay? which we don t, by the way, you watching outnumber overtime. we have played that life and the don t have a war room when you haven t done anything wrong. clinton had a war room, i think press briefing room with mick mulvaney at the last 30 minutes. nixon did come up but they simultaneously, you may have heard him talk just a little bit actually did something wrong. we don t have a war room when you say that you are not taking about syria and what is next in it seriously. terms of steps to take. yeah, we are. it s part of what we do. now that the nato ally turkey when you work for the trump has invaded northern syria as we administration you are used to this kind of attention. we know how to do this we are pulled out u.s. troops. preparing for it. what will happen next? yes, lawyers are looking at it we can tell you vice president and yes p.r. people looking at mike pence and secretary, it but if we were not doing that, we would be committing secretary of state pompeo art in malpractice. but i don t think there is anything extraordinary that we turkey awaiting. are doing. if we popped out up on the we are dealing with oversight screen from a little bug down from the democrats since they there you will see it get took office. bigger. in fact, it s all we ve been raised step up to the left turn and enter turkey to get their doing with the democrats as they news conference after meeting took office because they have for more than three hours with not certainly been doing legislation since they took turkeys president erdogan and office. both teams respectively. a lot of news this hour. at the definitions that we i want to unpack it from here. have heard of, do you believe rudy giuliani s role as an bringing in fox news advisor to the president is problematic? mick: that is the chris stirewalt. chris, let s start with the news president s call. which no doubt will be a steve scalise asked a similar criticism of criticism of the question on television and i fifth holding a cheese from the thought the answer was great. g7 summit at one of his you might not like the fact and properties. chris: i thought to tell understand from reading his opening testimony that gordon sondland did not like that you, the idea that this giuliani was involved and said administration feeling with what that in his testimony. this administration is dealing okay, that is great. with, right, a lot. you may not like the fact that the unraveling in syria. giuliani was involved. you ve got the march trump that is great, that is fine. it is not illegal, it is not impeachment here at home, impeachable. the president gets to use who he breaking news story every day. the world is on fire. wants to use. if he wants to fire me and hire why? someone else, he can. it is beyond my imagination. the president gets to set foreign policy. he gets to choose who to do so. why this administration thought as long as it does not violate that number 1, to do it at all law or laws regarding given the criticism that the confidential information or classified material or anything president will receive for using one of his own properties for an like that the president can use who he wants to. event like this fear that is not because the president direct you or anyone else to work with necessary in the first place. that is an unnecessary problem rudy giuliani? mick: yes, who was it, the to create for himself. within the next step today, to do it now if you do it this way, may meeting and i think this is widely reported. i just might wish i could think of a good reason for it. in fact must sondland mentioned harris: when i hear you say that we talked about this last it in his testimony and rick perry in his testimony with the wall street journal. hour on the couch on someone as the may meeting in the oval office that i was in my the president of the united states who actually hires think senator johnson was there as well as mr. voelker was jobs and has big businesses there. the president asked rick perry to work with mr. giuliani. wonder how the american people did you think that was see it. appropriate when you were asked might be very different. as well? maybe that s part of the mick: i wasn t asked. you were not asked. calculation and all of this that was my question, where you mick mulvaney about the specific or anyone else asked? location. he didn t get the names of mick: and i think the mortals have been been looked question the president told at, but probably a lot more to rick perry, sort of, the issue talk about that, but let s one of the reasons they were in continue with ukraine and syria. the office you talk about right now the vice president of energy. the united states and secretary very interested in trying to get ukraine as an energy partner. of state are in anchorage, turkey. after more than three hours of that is why mr. perry meeting first with the president secretary perry was heavily involved. and that is when the president of turkey, erdogan and brought in teams and staff to talk for said to mr. perry, gordon. another couple of hours. that is a long meeting and mick: that is a term you conversation and if they get ready to talk to the nation, what may have been accomplished? what was possible there? chris: getting erdogan to are using. take the meeting was the what is a shadow foreign policy? the president asked who else progress. right? we read the reports erdogan is in the room? throws trump s letters away and who is in the room when the will not meet with anybody or president is having this talk to anybody. conversation, okay? harris: and then trump said gordon sondland the investor to there was confusion whether or not they would meet. the e.u. chris: given the reporting kirk voelker wh who is special designated all envoy to the that we had read and given ukraine. i sit next to mike pompeo with a erdogan s very belligerent, very meeting with the congressional hostile public utterances, leaders and i understand i which, of course, consumption in turkey because strongmen like to coordinated a coup against you by putting sondland and voelker look strong as it turns out. that was after all we had heard in charge of ukraine. you know, they both work for me. from erdogan to have him, in there is not a shadow policy fact, take the meeting is here. the president is entitled to who probably progress. and probably progress in the have whoever he wants. direction of, how do we put i m 100% confident. humpty dumpty back to the other a little bit and move in that i m sorry, i m sorry, yes. direction? so this is one of those things to follow on that, can you where even the meeting itself is describe the role that you played in pressuring ukraine to fool. harris: you know what is investigate the and secondly interesting and i m not hearing just talked about so this was a can you walk us through the fresh perspective for you and i to chew on, if you are welcome meeting that president trump was at the president has dangling over volodymyr zelensky accomplished something that he at the white house, what were promised the american people. that you would try to draw down the preconditions of that troops and pull us out of enlist wars. he looked at afghanistan earlier meeting and was investigating going on? mick: the first answer is this year taking 14,000 down to not. what was your question? why did i do with ukraine? 86,000. and he said he wanted to do it did you do anything to carefully, different than pressure ukraine to investigate president obama had done the bidens? formally in iraq where he was mick: i know. what is the second question? highly criticized for doing something similar. son of the president takes a speak with the question is about look at a situation where you the meeting. at the white house between the have reportedly fewer than 100 may be even less than 50 where two president? can troops on the border between can you walk us through the syria and turkey. discussion at that meeting? reports are that turkey would the table for a precondition and move in anyway. we don t know. what the investigation of we were in the room. bereavement ever brought up? but if that is or is not the case, you move those american have the conditions to meet with lives out of the way and turkey president trump? does this. mick: not to me and not to the president has promised he anybody i know of. i what mick: will push back and triple that economy cripple that economy with sanctions and that is where sit. chris: yes, but number one, we don t know, but i think it is highly unlikely that turkey would have undertaken these operations at risk of american lives. because the consequences for turkey, which has a big, but not great military, right, they are big and buy a lot of russian stuff. they have a large army numbers, but of course, they would be no match for the united states, not even close. so i doubt that they would undertaken these operations had the united states not taken the troops out of the zone. but number two come in terms of the campaign promised upcoming year is a problem. the trips are not coming home. we are sending 2,000 trips to saudi arabia. the president and the middle east will continue on and on and on. especially as tensions increase between the sunni coal states and the chia in iran. as it gets worse as things evolve in the region, and united states presence will not end and in fact this is not a drawdown but a moving around. the president s goal, people can either support or not support the president s goal in syria. it s not about bringing troops home here, it s about letting syria go. he does not want the united states to be responsible for what happens in syria next. he wants the russians and the turks and probably the iranians to take over what happened in syria and not the united states. that can be worthwhile policy goal if you agree with the post on that. the problem here has been execution. the way that his it has been conducted in this hurly-burly catch and catch way. harris: i want to step and because what i have seen his criticism for the critics. and that is how many americans want to fight with the kurds? are they familiar with what is going on in syria? that is something, no doubt, will be talked about going forward, kind of the education of the point so on and so forth. it is a lot. all right, let s move on to something next. [laughter] harris: mick mulvaney was talking about ukraine and he said there is no cover up. from that phone call that the president had with the leader of ukraine. the president held funding for ukraine due to concerns about corruption. there is going to be political influence and foreign policy, the ukraine money held up and had nothing to do with joe biden. the president gets to set foreign policy with the people he chooses. i m kind of giving you the highlights of what the acting chief of staff chief of staff said appear the president did come in fact asked rick perry which we learned about depositions a little bit being talked about even though they were supposed to be behind closed doors. he did ask rick perry to work with his attorney rudy giuliani on ukraine. mulvaney said, i was never in a meeting where biden was mentioned. he talked about was on the phone call and how there was nothing on that call. chris: look, for a little context here, let s think about mick mulvaney being on a tight rope, right? we should all keep a little sympathy for mick mulvaney today who is in a very difficult situation as reported to the president and has talked pretty openly with his advisors about canning mulvaney. certainly, not making him the real chief of staff. so here is mulvaney who sort of has his drop on the line, but he also knows that he will have to go testify at some point. he also knows that he has to answer questions about this. so this guy is juggling five or six different things. he s got to go out and meet the press and ask questions. harris: he took every question, but let s get to the facts of what he was saying, and does it make sense not to consider them at this point. things like when he says on that call, there were many people and he starts the list of people in the cold. he didn t thing down my neck hear anything and he s got experience when he says that from his perspective that s a fact. when he talked about it, you didn t want the american public to know what was going on he would not have given that miranda m. heath first said transcript and then memorandum from the call which we know would have been put together by members of intel and others on the call and all of their notes combined. the president would have necessarily released fact? would there have been the level of transparency that we have seen? there may have been a push for more but he said no cover up. chris: what is he going to say, right? we don t know. harris: he could have dodged the question but he didn t. chris: well, i would give him mostly a dodge there. what he is saying, there is no cover up and we released everything. we did everything totally aboveboard. we know they release the memorandum under pressure. the initial response from the administration, we will absolutely do no such thing and that would endanger foreign policy and how can you ask. under pressure, yes they release that appeared under pressure, push me, pull me back and forth. he painted a picture that was normal and everything had been totally just absolutely credit and just fine. no one had concerns and out of the blue the democrats imagine this and have taken honest and normal facts and turn them into something bad. that is not what happened. and the most favorable to the administration of the light most favorable to the president, there were plenty of people uneasy about what trump was doing. there were plenty of people uneasy about what giuliani was doing. and there were plenty of people who thought that this would dominic was outside of normal practices to bring his political rivals into this process. harris: all right, we shall see. we don t know all of who will be cold. you think mulvaney is on the list. chris stirewalt thank you very much. chris: few bed. harris: today has been a loss with the passing of congressman elijah cummings. we have invited on the program democratic congressman emanuel cleaver of missouri to be with me now. before we get to his friend, there you are come i can see you now, congressman, thank you. we will get into that in details but because there is breaking news in the white house, the chief of staff, acting chief of staff the last 30 minutes come i want to get your reaction to what is playing out in ankara in turkey. we are getting ready to hear from the secretary of state and the vice president. emanuel: well, years ago during my last term as mayor, the institute sent me to a place called where i met with kurds and turks. trying to get them to work together and so forth. but i m very familiar with the situation. and i think it is unfortunate, it is not unfortunate but tragic that kurds are being slaughtered and in some instances, the turks are asking to be filmed as they shoot kurds. there are enemies, i m sorry, the turks are with russia and the united states. the turks were aligned to us first and foremost. but now, they have formed allegiance with syria. and i think we are going to see the return of vices, but i don t know if the president quite understands the seriousness and the significance of pulling u.s. troops out. the turks wanted nothing to do with getting the u.s. him because they know that as someone said earlier on the show, they have no way of matching the strength and power of the united states. harris: you know, congressman cleaver, when you talk about the president and all of this, he has consistently said that he wants to look at pulling us out of endless wars. and he solved this as such potentially if turkey was going to move in, pull americans out of the way because they will move in anyway. that is what has been reported. as you look at this, let s bring it out to talk about the american people. i m curious if people looking at this, don t simply hear the president saying he s putting america first and is pulling the men and women out of harm s way. do you think that there are americans who want us to fight side-by-side, that a group now has joined syrian forces? emanuel: no, i don t think so. and this may surprise you, but one of the things i have agreed with the president since the beginning of this campaign is, i don t want to engage americans men and women in battle endlessly. and another reason is, we have defamed the power, the united states congress. since 1944, we have had 119,000 americans killed in battle without any declaration of war. and so, i don t want to assenting troops here and there and here and there. on the other hand, i don t think the turks would have even in a drunken state attack the kurds with knowing that americans were embedded with him. because you start killing americans, you are going to bring in the full strength, the might of the united states. they didn t want to do that. there is no other nation that wants to do that. harris: i was just given a two-minute warning to vice president pence and the secretary of state. and i want to talk about elijah cummings and the modesty that that man had talking about living on the hills of accomplishment civil rights like clarence mitchell at the top advisor for lyndon johnson and being a beneficiary of that night and 64 civil rights act and wanting to go forward and carry the banner. talk to me about your friend. emanuel: he did carry the banner. i had him in kansas city not long ago speaking. and in my introduction, he mentioned some of the things he accomplished. but more than that, just a good, decent man. he and i often talked about this, and i said this when i introduced him in kansas city, he has dominic has a law degree by theta kappa, and a theology but i accused him of being a bog preacher. every time i turn around, he has somewhere starting out as a lecturer and ended up as a preacher. he did that in kansas city at one of my his mother was a preacher. and he up in a neighborhood and still lived in the neighborhood. and i bet there s not a single member here in congress, particularly that came from an urban area that lives in the heart of the urban core. elijah cummings would not move. it was a very dangerous neighborhood. they created a tv show around it. he was an amazing human being and i loved him more than i can even express. harris: he will be missed. congressman cleaver, thank you for your time. i ve been to your church in kansas city. i started my career there at fox. good to see you. emanuel: good to talk with you. harris: we have an hour of breaking news. i want to get to jennifer griffin life at the pentagon, jennifer. harris breaking news out of turkey. we have not heard anything from the official report, but we do see on twitter that one of turkey s top reporters is reporting that the u.s. and turkey have agreed the turkish side will remain in a safe zone. that the turkish mud that president erdogan and vice president pence reached a deal to suspend into northern syria for 120 hours. that is according to turkish sources. we have not heard that from american sources. and the white pg also known as the stf, syrian democratic forc, the kurds will be allowed to withdraw from the designated safe zone. it is not clear at this point whether the stf will actually agree to the terms or whether because this was being negotiated by the american officials, vice president pans, secretary of state mike pompeo and others, but again the reports out of turkey that there will be a 120 hour suspension of the turkish and kurds and to allow the syrian democratic forces, the white pg, the kurds to pull back out of that 20-mile buffer zone that the turks are trying to create along the border. so began, it is not clear whether the kurds will agree to this. it says that ypg heavy weapons will be re-collected to come up fortifications to be disabled. remember the kurds at the american military s insistence just a few weeks ago destroyed several fortifications and did pull back so that the americans could patrol along the border with their turkish counterparts. that is what those 28 u.s. troops were doing on that border. harris: right. jennifer: the kurds it s not clear if they will agree to this, but this is the agreement coming out. we say the president, president trump tweeted 3 minutes ago that good news is coming out of turkey. but we are awaiting a readout from the vice president pence and pompeo. harris: for cease-fire and that is significant in all of this because as we know from our own reporting, jennifer, there was confusion about whether turkey s president erdogan would even meet with our delegation who went led by the vice president of the united states. we see him now live. turkey, the vice president and the secretary of state. let s watch. one week ago turkish forces came into syria. earlier this week president trump took decisive action. to call on turkish forces to stand down an end the violence and agreed to negotiations. and today, i m proud to report, thanks to the strong leadership of president donald trump and the strong relationships between president erdogan and turkey and the united states of america. that today the united states and turkey have agreed to a cease-fire in syria. turkish side will pause, operation p spring in order to allow for the withdrawal of yp safe zone from 120 hours. in all military operations under operation piece will be paused and it will be halted entirely on completion of the withdrawal. and our administration has already been in contact with parent defense forces and we have already begun to facilitate their safe withdrawal from nearly 20-mile wide safe zone barrier. south of the turkish border in syria. but let me say this also includes an agreement by turkey to engage and no military action against the community and in addition the united states and turkey have both mutually committed to peaceful resolution and future for the safe zone working on an international basis and to ensure that peace and security defines this border region of syria. in addition to the settlement today, with the cease-fire, turkey and the united states mutually committed to the defeat isis activities and northeast syria. this will also include an agreement renewed today to coordinate efforts on detention facilities and internally displaced persons and formally isis controlled areas. also, turkey and the united states agree on the priority of respecting vulnerable human life, human rights, and particularly, the production of religious and ethnic communities in the regi region. i spoke to president trump just a few moments ago. and i know that the president is very grateful. for president erdogan s willingness to step forward and to enact a cease-fire and to give an opportunity for a peaceful solution of this conflict that commenced one week ago. for my part, i am grateful for the president s leadership. i m grateful for the more than five hours of negotiations with president erdogan and his team that arrived at a solution that we believe will save lives. and let me also say, i m grateful for this team. to be able to have alongside secretary of state, mike pompeo. our national security advisor, robert o brien, pastor jim jeffries and investor david satterfield was a great privilege. and each of the members of this team contributed equally to achieving this outcome, which is a great contribution to security in this region and it s a great contribution to the strong and enduring relationship between the united states of america and turkey. lastly my want to express my appreciation to appreciation to millions of americans who i know were carrying this moment in prayer. we heard from people all over the country whose hearts were heavy with the loss of life in this conflict over the last week. and long to see it brought to an end. i believe there are prayers, the strong leadership that the president provided for this moment, and the cooperation with president erdogan and turkey has made this possible. and so, again, let me say, a week after turkish forces crossed into syria, turkey and the united states of america have agreed to a cease-fire in syria. it will be a clause in military operations for 120 hours. the united states to facilitate the withdrawal of ypg from the affected areas and safe zone and once that is completed, turkey has agreed into a permanent cease-fire and the united states of america will work with turkey. we will work with nations around the world two ensures peace and stability is the order of the day in this safe zone on the border between syria and turkey. with that, let me recognize secretary of state, mike pompeo and thank you, mr. secretary for your hard work. secretary pompeo: thanks, the vice president said it well. i want to add to this thought. obviously, there remains a great deal of work to do in the region. there is lots of challenges that remain, but this effort tonight that s the conditions for the success or resolution of this particular piece which graded enormous unrest and instability. the president wants the decision to work alongside the president erdogan and one that will benefit turkey a great deal. thanks, i know you want to take questions. vice president pence: , where are you? go right ahead. thank you very much. how do you overcome, how do you overcome the damage that has been caused over the past week? there s been a lot of animosity and turkey. a lot of things have been said and a lot of threads have been made. how are you going to repair the relationship going forward? thank you. be 81st as you will see from the agreement, part of our understanding is that with the implementation of the cease-fire, the united states will not impose any further sanctions. on turkey. and once the permanent cease-fire is in effect, the president has agreed to withdraw the economic sanctions that were imposed this last monday. but make no mistake about it, president trump is very clear. with our allies, turkey about american opposition. to turkish military forces entering syria. president made that very clear in his discussions and his correspondent with president president erdogan. and i believe that the candor and frankness that president trump applied to this and the strength of his relationship with president erdogan both contributed to the ability for this agreement to come about. and now, we will work together to implement this agreement. as i said, our team is already working with ypg personnel in the safe zone for an orderly withdrawal outside the 20-mile mark and we will go forward together to bring peace and security this region. i m very confident of that. okay, i ve gone to please. thank you. there are reports by some international organizations on how ypg, mainly just minorities in northern syria. christian leaders and churches are making calls to ensure peace in the region. i m wondering your thoughts on this. vice president pence: let me let the secretary also address that, but i can tell you that the president erdogan and i spoke to great lengths about the importance of protecting religious minorities. in the region. president erdogan also shared with me the perspective of many leaders and religious communities and turkey who have great concerns about violence and persecution taking place along the border. and so part of our agreement is to continue to work very closely to ensure that religious minorities can thrive and that religious pluralism is one of the characteristics of this safe zone for some time to come. mr. secretary. secretary pompeo: we certainly have heard from the vice president, christian leaders around the world who expressed much of the same concerns that you just described. we think this production and violence, this cease-fire reduces the risk of that. so we think this greatly contributes to religious minorities throughout syria and throughout the broader middle east as well. as often happens in the context of lots of religious challenges, lots of religious persecution in iraq and other places. we think this is an important contribution in that regard. the other thing we talked about it at length to the extent that abuses are identified. and we will ask each leader, certainly president erdogan and his team and others to investigate any allegations of abuse that have taken place. vice president pence: may be add an addendum to that. one of the things i know the president and the american people are most proud of is investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to help rebuild a christian and other religious minority communities and the aftermath of the horrifying violence during the isis. syrian and northern iraq. we will continue to flow those resources to support those communities, but as you will see from this agreement, it is a specific undertaking by turkey and by the united states to ensure, to protect religious minorities in the affected region. sean tandem. thank you, mr. vice president. you mention iced ypg fighters but can you explain that more, where they will withdraw two and the future of them? obviously concerns in turkey and the ypg and the many lead in the islamic states groups but what do you see for the future of northern syria? do you see any future for the syrian kurds politically? vice president pence: , well our commitment with turkey is that we will work with ypg members and we also some syrian defense forces with an orderly withdrawal over the next 120 hours. let me say that is literally already begun. and where they will be withdrawing from, is the demarcation line, roughly 20 miles south of the border. and turkey s willingness to pause and embrace a cease-fire military operations, to enable us to see the orderly withdraw withdrawal. of why pg we believe will make it possible for that to occur. i know it s already underway as we speak. but look, turkey is at a great concern about their order. while the united states of america did not approve of their military crossing into syria, we have always endorsed a safe zone. it was a matter of discussion and negotiations, and we believe that the kurdish population in syria with which we have a strong relationship will continue to endure. the united states will always be grateful for our partnership with sdf in defeating isis. but we recognize the importance and the value of a safe zone to create a buffer between syria and the british population in the turkish border. we will be working very closely. we think the agreement today, first ends the violence, president trump sent us here to do. now, i say it again and again to president erdogan, president trump sent us here to end the violence. and to achieve immediate cease-fire. and thanks to the agreement that we negotiated today at the strong that the president took in the preceding days, we achieve that. and we achieved an opportunity by working with ypg to move out of the area to create more peace and security and stability in that buffer zone. and we will be working very earnestly to accomplish that. we believe that can be accomplished during the 120 hour period. and after which will be a permanent cease-fire and then we will continue to engage. again, not militarily, the president made it clear that we are not going to have military personnel on the ground, but the united states will continue to engage diplomatically. politically, and of course humanitarian aid and support to affect all of the people affected in this region. last question. mr. vice president, you mentioned turkey s encouragement into northern syria that erdogan wants a safe zone. what concession did you actually get out of the president erdogan and number two, do you have specific insurance from the ypg they will comply with the terms of the agreement because something they have said they would not do. and finally, with the kurds moving south and now with a u.s. sanctions in terms of them moving south, how would you address and call the second abandonment of the kurds? vice president pence: , well i think you will be able to see from the agreement itself. what concessions were made. president trump and his telephone call with president erdogan earlier this week and in the directive that he gave us to deliver was very clear. that he wanted to cease-fire. he wanted to stop the violence. turkey is engaging in an active military operation. i can tell you that as our discussions began over the course of the five hour period of time that we reached a place of agreement about how a cease-fire could benefit turkey, achieved president trump s objectives and also contribute to a peaceful resolution of the safe zone. i believe, i believe we have accomplished that. with regard to the ypg, syrian defense forces, we have been in contact today. we received repeated assurances from them that they will be going out. that they greatly welcome the opportunity for a cease-fire to make a safe and orderly withdrawal from those areas and safe zone. where they still have a presence. and we are very confident that that is already taking place. and we will be using all of the leverage that we have of having fought alongside syrian defense forces and the battle against isis to facilitate their safe withdrawal. but we think, we think this is an outcome of war. and greatly serves the interest of the kurdish population, syria to greatly serve the interest of turkey and will create the kind of long-term buffer zone that
figures constitutional patriotism. it look like president trump might get away. most americans didn t know anything about it in the few who knew of it would be too afraid, too intimidated to cross the most powerful man on earth. president trump could rest easy. but if donald trump misjudged the american character, the framers of our constitution did not. i account for 17 honorable public servants who came forward to testify over the intimidation and disparagement of the president. is that right, mr. goldman? yes, there were 17. i counted 17,000 officials who served republican and democratic presidents alike who came to testify. in fact, four of president trump s own national security staffers came forward to report trump s scheme to nsc lawyers as soon as they learned about it. didn t they can make mr. goldman? morrison and vindman went to the lawyers. yes. that move me a lot. my father was a staffer on the national security council under president kennedy and he said the most important thing you can bring to work with you every day is your conscience. he devoted his career to the idea that people must be truth to power when power becomes a clear and present danger to democracy. and to the people. so i want to talk about two of the many honorable government witnesses who went under oath and stood up for the truth. mr. goldman, who is dr. fiona hill? the director of the national security council until this year. her family had fled both nazi germany and soviet russia. i think her family came from england. marie yovanovitch that was marie yovanovitch. dr. hill advisor lawyers july 11 and why did she go to report what she had learned? what motivated her? she was concerned that ambassador sondland and mick mulvaney were entering into essentially a transaction whereby the ukrainians would open up these investigations for president trump s political interests in return for getting the white house meeting that president trump had offered. i want to talk about deputy assistant secretary george camp who served as a career foreign service officer under five different presidents, republicans and democrats alike. he updated notes to file on four different occasions to note the grave concerns about the president s conduct. what led to draft the notes on these files? there was a conversation at the end of june were several american officials had indicated to president zelensky that he needed to go forward with these investigations. there was one august 14th i recall but you bring up a very important points, which is all of the state department witnesses and particularly, and frankly all the witnesses other than ambassador sondland took unbelievable, meticulous notes. i would ve dreamed of for a witness like that as a prosecutor. it makes for a very clear and compelling record a clear and compelling evidence that spaced on based on contemporaneous notes. do we have mr. kent s notes on this progress? we have none, advisor solvents first-person cable, these emails. so many documents that the few that we have gotten have been so helpful to the investigation. why do we not have them? the state department refused to provide them that was setting i was. the notwithstanding rr s subpoena.>k out the crimes of the political leaders. in united states, not a lot of people are afraid despite president trump trying to silence them. he is trying to make our country like russia and we can be think will found a lot of heroes who stood up to the truth for the constitution. i yelled back. gentlemen yields back. ms. velasco. my first questions are for the american people. america, are you sick and tired of the impeachment scam? america, would you like congress to get something done? i would sure do. mr. castor, the rest of the questions are for you. i would like yes or no questions if possible. my first question is important. do any of the democrats back when this witnesses established the president had committed bribery, extortion, or high crime or misdemeanor. good heavens, no. mr. castor, the deputy assistant of the national security, mr. morrison, listened in on the phone call. he testified that he was not concerned that anything discussed on the phone call was illegal or improper. is that correct? yeah, he was afraid about leaks. witnesses testified it s common for foreign aid to be paused for for various reasons including concerns that the country is corrupt and tax dollars is misspent. ambassador volker claimed that this hold was not significant. is that correct? yes, a number of witnesses also said the same thing. former u.s. ambassador to ukraine marie yovanovitch testified that in ukraine, and i quote, corruption is not just prevalent, but frankly is the system. is that correct? yes. all the witnesses confirmed the environment is very corrupt. mr. castor, ukraine company burisma held a reputation in ukraine is a corrupt company. is that correct? big time. according to the new york times, hunter biden was part of a bribe effort by burisma to bring in well-connected democrats during a period when the company was facing investigations. is that correct? yes. the new yorker also had a pretty extensive report on that too. obama s deputy assistant secretary of state george kent testified that he raised concerns directly to vice president biden s office about hunter biden s services on sondland burisma s board. is that correct? yes. mr. castor, on the july 25th call we all saw the video earlier today. were joe biden bragged about he told ukraine, if the prosecutor is not fired, you aren t getting the money. mr. castor, is this the same prosecutor that looked into burisma? it is. in a similar scheme, obama s assistant attorney general said, and i quote, awarding prestigious employment opportunities to unqualified individuals in order to influence government officials is corruption. plain and simple. mr. castor, here s another key question. given that, one, burisma had the reputation of being a corrupt company, obama s own state department was concerned about hunter biden serving on burisma s board at the same time that vice president biden was acting as point person, and three, obama s assistant attorney general said in a similar scheme that the corruption, there is corruption plain and simple, do you think then it is understandable, reasonable, and acceptable for president trump to ask ukrainian president to look into the hunter biden/burisma s potential corruption scheme? yes. mr. castor, there are four are disputable facts that will never change that prove there is no in impeachable offense, no quid pro quo on the july 25th call, ukraine leadership did not know the aide was held up at the time of the july 25th telephone call, ukraine received a white house meeting phone call, and aid even though ukraine didn t initiate any investigations. do you agree? ukraine received a meeting with vice president pence in warsaw had a meeting not at the white house but in new york at the united nations. mr. castor, did mr. turley testify in the past hearing that this impeachment inquiry has not passed chairman nadler s three-pronged test? he did. thank you. i yelled back. thank you. the gentleman from washington is recognized. thank you. let s focus on the republican claim that president trump withheld military aid to ukraine because he was supposedly concerned about corruption rather than the fact that he abused his office for personal gain. let me be clear. we actually do not have to read the presidents mind on this. as on page ten and will see on television, he told us himself what his intent was. what exactly did you hope zaleski would tell about the bidens after the phone call? i would think if they are honest about it, they d start a major investigation on the bidens. very simple answer. the first and best witness about the president s intent was donald trump. let s review the basic facts with already established. first, president trump does not even mention the word corruption during either of his calls with president zelensky and he disregards all the talking points prepared for him on corruption by the national security council. second, investigations of the bidens and he debunked a conspiracy theory about the 2016 election were not supported by official u.s. policy. and third, congress authorized military aid to ukraine. ukraine passed all the checks that the united states established to ensure that it was taking appropriate actions to fight corruption and there was unanimous consent amongst the state department, national defense, national security council that the president should release the military aid ukraine critically needed to fight russian aggression. mr. goldman, between the time that president trump put a hold on military aid to ukraine and then release the aid, the president never conducted an actual review or assessment on ukraine, did he? that was corrected no witness testified there was any review or investigation of any sort related to the ukraine and aid. is it true that the defense department determined not to conduct a review on ukraine after the president froze the military aid because ukraine had already met all of the corruption benchmarks in may of 2019? yes, and everyone involved in ukraine policy believed that they were on the right path and president zelensky in particular. in addition to ukraine having satisfied all the relevant corruption assessment prior to u.s. military aid being withheld, there is significant testimony that both the state department and the ukrainian embassy actually advised that a white house meeting with president zelensky would help further anticorruption agenda, correct? both the anticorruption agenda and the aggression, fighting the aggression from russia. in fact, president trump s budget fights down the cuts fighting for corruption in ukraine. mr. castor argued that he held up military aid because he was skeptical of foreign assistance in general. in both 2014 and didn t he release aid without any complaint about corruption? that s correct. mr. goldman, the president was perfectly fine with giving aid in 2017 and 2018 but not in 2019 pick what changed? joe biden started running for president. vice president started running. and i would add these peanut report came out, it did not charge the president typically did to his campaign and welcoming the assistance from russia and utilizing it. the sequence of events and corroborating evidence makes it crystal clear that president trump didn t care about corruption at all. as he told us himself on national television, he simply cared about his own politically motivated investigations into his political rival. and you saw the clip where ambassador sondland picked up the phone, called president trump and then mr. holmes asked him, what the president thought about ukraine and quickly what was mr. simon s answer? mr. simon said the president doesn t give a bleep about just the investigation mr. giuliani was pushing. that was direct between president trump and ambassador sondland that day. we know what president trump was interested in based on his words, his actions, and witness testimony. the president of the united states wanted ukraine to announce an investigation into a political rival for his own personal political benefit to interfere in our election, and he was willing to use u.s. military aid, which is taxpayer dollars and an essential white house meeting as leverage. that is unacceptable and a grave abuse of power. i yield back. the gentleman from pennsylvania is recognized for . thank you. let me give everybody the bottom line. we are here because democrats are terrified that president trump is going to win reelection. that s really what it comes down to. let me get into the specifics. we are here dealing with impeachment because democrats don t want to talk about the red-hot trump economy. they do not want to talk about the fact that we have the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. we are dealing with impeachment because democrats don t want to talk about how the president has worked to protect american companies from chinese aggression. how he s a really good negotiating renegotiating trade deals. he s eliminated burdensome regulations that hurt the economy. and help job creators. congressional democrats don t want to be reminded that the american people, the democratic agenda includes such laughable ideas like banding airplanes, giving illegal immigrants taxpayer-funded health care, taking private health insurance away from the american people. that s really why we are here. this whole process is just a distraction. it s an attempt to hide the far left radical agenda. so let s talk about the facts. schiff support claims it administration froze military aid for your crane without explanation. the facts are president trump gave more military aid to your crane than president obama. president obama gave your crane well wishes and blankets president trump gave the ukrainians javelin missiles. those are the differences and those are the facts. house democrats want to claim it s a conspiracy that ukraine officials attempted to interfere with the 2016 election. yet ukrainian attempts to interfere with the 2016 election are well documented by politico, by financial times, and they held there was an attempt to influence our elections, and that s troubling and that s why president trump brought it to the attention of president zielinski. again, those are the facts. at the end of the day, those facts don t seem to matter to my democrat colleagues. house democrats don t care that president zelensky has repeatedly said that there was no pressure. it s not important in the call transcript was the best evidence we have. it is the best evidence we have. it s the actual primary documentary that transcript because there was no quid pro quo, no bribery. it s an old latin phrase that did not pull well and he democrat focus group. my democrats colleagues seem to care about focus groups and polling, but again they don t care about the facts. the fact is the democrats are calling about impeachment before this investigation even began. representatives tlalib said impeach the mother represented green said that, i m concerned if we don t impeach this president, he will get reelected. these proceedings the entire process is nothing more than a political hit job. unlike my democrat colleagues, i do care about the facts that s why i m troubled the committee not to hear from a single fact that witness this entire time. we should be hearing from hunter biden. we should be hearing from schiff s staff. we know that schiff is a staff quoted with the whistle-blower. again, we need to hear from the whistle-blower print last week, i offered a motion to subpoena the whistle-blower to testify in executive session, meaning he or she can testify behind closed doors but my democrat colleagues voted my motion down in a partisan fashion. mr. castor, can you walk us through the inaccuracies in the whistle-blower s complaint? the first thing about the complaint that troubles us is clearly from an outsider who received information secondhand. the information presented in the complaint is clearly distorted. it s from a person who seems to be making a case, like an advocate, about what happened on the call. there whistle-blower references a number of individuals inside the white house and that the state department, that he or she has spoken to to form the basis of a complaint. we have not been able to piece together all those people and talking to all those people is important. and there is a lot of them, running out of time here. but there is a reference to lushenko when others have told us it s likely shokin. vindman and morrison s reason they went to the lawyers from a very different reason the gentleman s time has expired. i recognize the gentlewoman from florida for 5 minutes. mr. goldman, as a director of the intelligence committee, i specifically and first-hand evidence that president trump conditioned our military aid on ukraine, announced investigations into the 2016 election into the bidens, and betrayed our national security interests in the process. for example, ambassador sondland told us that once the ukrainians found out about the aid being withheld, it was made, and i quote, abundantly clear to them that if they wanted the aid, and i quote that they were going to have to make these statements. mr. goldman, beginning on and around the tent 25th of july call through december, would you agree that consistent with the testimony be revealed, ukraine was made aware that to receive our military aid and white house visit, they would have to make a statement announcing the investigations? not only where they made aware, they were made aware either by president trump s proxy rudy giuliani or from president trump himself through ambassador sondland who spoke to president zelensky and andre are yermak that the aide was conditioned o on the investigations. by the end, president zelensky committed to making that statement on cnn. was i correct? finally president zelensky relented after months of what he called the domestic u.s. political process and ultimately recognizing that he had no choice to break the stalemate as ambassador sondland told them that he ultimately agreed to go on television before president trump got caught and released the aid of. i d like to direct your attention to the screen in front of you. that headline said, trump tried to force ukraine to metal in the 2020 elections and the article reports that president trump, and i quote, attempting to force zelensky launching and investigating in the leading democrat joe biden. he s not soliciting help with the president shall campaign campaign, he s using united states military aid the country needs and attend to extort it. am i correct to mr. goldman, allegations by president trump use military aid to pressure your crane to announce investigations is being widely reported? i m sorry, by what date? september fifth. welcome he has been widely reported. certainly the aid being withheld was widely reported. by september 9th, our committee formally announced a congressional investigation into the president about these issues. and, mr. goldman the, what they did president trump release the military aid? two days after the investigations were announced and two days after the ig, the inspector general, told the intelligence committee that there was a complaint that it was being withheld. am i correct that as the timeline in the screen in front of you shows, it wasn t until the whistle-blower complaint, after the washington post report, and after congress launched the investigation that president trump finally released the aid? that s right. and i would add one thing briefly to the congressman s point, it is true that president trump has given more military assistance than president obama. one would wonder if he does support military assistance so much, why then is he holding it up then for more than two months. as a matter of fact, the tendon colonel vindman testified that people at the end as he discussed that congress investigation might have the effect of releasing the hold on your crane s military aid because we would potentially be politically challenging justifying the aide. is that correct? that is correct. in other words, the aid was released after the president got caught. what makes me angry is that this president, president trump, thinks he can get away with this. but he got caught. and he tried to cover it up. but we won t let him do that. and we thank god, mr. goldman, for the true courageous public servants who came forward and spite of intimidation and obstruction from the white house. you see, everybody counts. but everybody is accountable. up to and including the president of the united states. thank you. and i yelled back. thank you. the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas, mr. correa. i m sorry, california. thank you, madam chair. mr. goldman, my colleagues keep talking about the fact that the president apparently said, and i quote, no quid pro quo on september 7th in a call with ambassador sondland. mr. goldman, did you receive testimony about this september 7 call? yes, we received testimony from three witnesses about it and it gets a little complicat complicated. but that was a consistent refrain through all of the witnesses is the president did say no quid pro quo. mr. morrison that same date? mr. morrison then reported to master taylor, correct? that s correct, yes. both mr. morrison and ambassador taylor took most of those instructions, yes question marks because they did. whether notes or the nose produceto the commi? they were not, that set of notes was blocked consistent with the president s direction? smith correct. ambassador sondland said that president trump himself brought up the words quid pro quo? that s right. ambassador sondland also said that too. mr. goldman, what did the committee make of this fact? it was quite odd the president would volunteer in response to nothing about a quid pro quo that there was no. quid pro quo. what was more important immediately after that was which is effectively conduct that amounts to the quid pro quo. there is no quid pro quo but you have to go to the microphone to make the announcement. what did the committee make about the fact that according to ambassador taylor and mr. morrison right after president trump said no quid pro quo, president trump then told ambassador sondland that ukrainian president zelensky would have to go to the microphone and announce the investigations of biden and the 20 section election interference, and that president zelensky should want to do that himself? that s right. we had a number of different accounts on this. they are up on the boards here. i see this. ambassador taylor said that mr. morrison said something similar, their understandings of that conversation was there was a clear directive that there was a quid pro quo factually from the conduct, from the actions. we talk a lot today about the words and zelensky said no pressure, trump had no pressure no quid pro quo. as an investigator, as a prosecutor, you need to look at the actions to understand what those words mean, and that s why this call in particular is so important. let s go further further. as we discussed, multiple individuals reacted with concern to president trump s call with ambassador sondland. do you recall mr. morrison s reaction? mr. morrison said that he was shocked, i think. sinking feeling? thinking feeling, correct. he went and talked to the lawyers at the direction of ambassador bolton. correct. and mr. goldman, ambassador taylor also testified that he concluded that the military aid was conditioned on the zelensky announcing the investigations and he testified that this was illogical, crazy, and wrong. is that right? that s what ambassador taylor testified to, yes. my colleagues have also pointed out that on september 9th, a text message from sondland, crystal clear that there is no quid pro quo. mr. goldman, am i correct in that ambassador sondland has now testified that prior to sending his text, he himself came to believe that the aide was conditioned on the announcement of investigations? yes. ambassador sondland s testimony revealed two things that were precisely false, that were not true in the text message, including that there was no quid pro quo of any kind when he testified and we saw the video earlier that they are absolutely assuredly was as it related to the white house meeting. this september 7 call andy september 9th text occurred after the press reports, that is after the press reports that president trump is conditioning military aid on investigations of his political rivals, is that correct? yes. this text occurred after ambassador sondland relayed the message to president zelensky. mr. goldman, the investigative committee receive any other evidence relevant to the credibility of the president s assertion that there was no quid pro quo? received a lot of evidence and all of the evidence points to the fact that there was a quid pro quo. thank you. i yield. mr. chairman, i have unanimous consent request. can you please hold it until i do my questions? it ll be very brief it it s just unanimous consent. i recognize myself for 5 minutes. mr. goldman, you talked about actions speaking louder than words, so i want to focus on why it was an abuse of power for president trump to use the american government to pressure the ukraine president to benefit his reelection campaign. let s look at what the president said in his july 25th call to the president of ukraine. it wasn t a friendly request, it was really a demand. why did he say the president s favor was a demand? because the power disparity between the united states as the greatest power in the world and ukraine, which is so dependent on the united states not just for the military assistance but for all of its support made such a request effectively a demand because president zelensky could not in reality say no. is this vast power disparity in part because ukraine has been at war with russia since russia invaded five years ago, and over 13,000 of the ukraine have died? yes, and the only has the u.s. provided its military budget but a critical ally and rallying other countries to support ukraine. europe actually gives i think four times as much money as the united states over all to ukraine. president trump knew the ukrainian president s back was against the wall and president zelensky needed u.s. validation and support, is that right? writes. according to the u.s. investor to ukraine and we have ambassador taylor s testimony there, it wasn t until ambassador sondland told the ukrainians that there would be , but zelensky agreed to the investigations president trump was demanding, correct? that s right, yes. furthermore the committee heard testimonies that they felt they had no choice but to comply with president trump s demands. correct? yes, even after the aide was released. in fact, when asked of president trump in september whether he felt pressured, presidents lenski said, quote , i m sorry, i do not want to be involved in the elections of the usa. is that right? that sounds right if you are reading the quote. the president and some of his defenders here have tried to excuse his misconduct by pointing to statements from the ukraine president that he was not under pressure to give into president trump s demand. did your investigated committees consider those statements by president zelensky? we did. and we found the statements of what is effectively an extortion victim are not particularly relevant to the actual truth of the matter because president zelensky cannot for the same reasons he integrated integrated that will potentially upset president trump and they are so dependent on the relationship with president trump and the united states. one could say it s similar to a hostage testifying under duress. the rest would be a good word so when the president made these statements and up including today his country was still under attack by russia, still had not got a meeting at the white house, still needed aid from the united states. that s right, and david holmes testified very persuasively about the importance of the white house meeting and of the relationship to ukraine even after the speech 26 was lifted, including pointing to today when president trump and president zelensky mehta discussed the war in the east. the evidence knew that he had the power to enforce ukraine s hand and took advantage of that desperation and abuse his office using our taxpayer dollars to use what he wanted, right? it has to be cleared and clarified that the president, the evidence showed that the president directly said to ambassador sondland that there was a quid pro quo with the security systems. there has been some debate and some discussion about that, but that is one thing the evidence shows based on the morrison testimony, the taylor testimony the silent testimony, what we want to say about hearsay, that s direct evidence. that s the type of the trail that our founders sought to prevent. i will recognize the congressman from virginia. you indicated to me that you would allow me to make my uniform consent after you had asked your question. i asked for your form consent excuse me, unanimous consent. the settlement will suspend. who is seeking what are you seeking unanimous consent? mr. chairman, i have two letters addressed to you december 2019. thank you, mr. chairman. i have a brief pulmonary inquiry regarding scheduling. the gentleman from virginia is recognize. i mr. chairman, i m particularly reminded of your quote, there must never be narrowly voted impeachment or impeachment subtended by our major beluga parties and largely opposed by the other. such impeachment would lack would call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions. you made that statement back in 1998. i m glad we are moving on to presenting the evidence gathered in this report. not to hear from direct fact witnesses, but a 300 page report that s built largely on largely on hearsay and speculation. i m outraged that the purported author schiff is not here to answer our questions today. now that we have the report and discuss the facts within our lack thereof, there will be arguments that will never change. both president trump and president zelensky says there s no pressure. plus there is no conditionality between aid and investigation. ukrainians were not aware that aid was withheld, and ukraine did not open investigation but still received a meeting with president trump. i want to mr. castor, did the democrats impeachment report rely on hearsay to support their assertions? yes, it did. how many times were you able to find assertions based on hearsay. we went through time over 50 instances. they had time to make their case? a lot of the details investor sondland was making , it was about one, two steps rd from the actual facts. that s the problem with hearsay, it s a whisper down the lane situation. some of the people doing the whispering have predisposed not like president trump, what they re whispering down the lane becomes even more distorted. did you also find instances where the democrats report use whispers and speculation? this has become the big daddy of the hearing, sondland presuming the aide was tied to the investigations. he engaged in the back and forth with mr. turner nobody on the planet told him that that was the case. mr. castor, i want to move on to policy and some of the president was abusing foreign policy. repeatedly witnesses came before the intelligence committee and talked about how the president is operating outside the bounds of the process. where does he derive that power? the constitution. article two section two. taking issue with the directions and choices? within a building had prepared the call passage and was physically deflated when he realized that his call notes that the call notes were not being listed by the presidents. the officials became sad that the president did not revere their policymaking apparatus. would you be out for these goals like rooting out corruption and ukraine? i think the president is skeptical of the inner agency bureaucracy. that may be why he relied on secretary perry and ambassador volker ambassador sondland and others? by the way, all three of those officials are not that far outside the chain of the u.s. government. would be appropriate in any investigation of corruption in ukraine to exempt or removed, say, a political supporter? it would be. would it be inappropriate to remove a political opponent questioning that s correct me out. would it be inappropriate to rose this all goes to the heart of bias. thank you for those answers. mr. chairman, i go back to what you said about the facts being undisputed. i would argue the facts are in fact are disputed. what you contend are facts are in fact not appear there with this presumption s, hearsay, and speculation. the facts here are in the fact that this is the shortest impeachment in u.s. history based on the narrowest grounds. mr. chairman, this impeachment process is a farce and a stain on his committee and the house of representatives, and i yelled back. the gentleman yields back. ms. garcia. thank you, mr. chairman. we just heard that the supporters are relying on hearsay and they have failed to obtain first-hand accounts of the president s conduct. i m a former judge and you, mr. goldman, a former prosecutor my republican colleague suggested there is no per direct evidence. is that true? there is a lot of direct evidence and a lot of the evidence they say is hearsay is not actually hearsay. indeed, it is not true print i do not want to relive a law school evidence class, but i want to go over examples with you. at least with me, whether it s indirect or direct evidence. ambassador sondland and mr. volker both testified that in 2019, president trump told him to talk to rudy about ukraine. is that direct evidence? speak yes, technically. well, not technically. but yes. and we have the memorandum of the july 25th call between president trump and president zelinski. is that direct evidence? yes, that is. we know that president trump as president zelensky to look into the investigations and for u.s. officials to talk to his personal attorney about the investigations, correct? yes. if i could jump in here, on the july 25th call because these four facts we keep hearing about that are not in dispute, three of them are completely wrong. one of them happens to be that there is no quid pro quo mentioned in the july 25th call. there is absolutely a quid pro quo when president zelensky says i want to thank you for your invitation. and on the other hand i want to ensure that we will be very serious about the case and work on the investigation. that s the quid pro quo that president zelensky was informed of before the call. that s wrong. it s also wrong that no ukrainians knew about the aide being withheld, even though that does not matter. finally, there was no white house meeting ever provided. so the third or fourth fact, i do think that needs to be clarified particularly as we are focusing on what direct evidence is. let s give more examples. three of the individuals participated in the july 25th call, is there a testimony direct evidence and what happened during that call? yes, although i think the call record is better evidence than there. the day after that call, devon holmes testified that juld ambassador sondland, is that direct evidence? that s direct evidence. speaker after the july 25th ca call, ukraine would investigate the bidens. is that direct evidence? yes. his own words but seems to me like there is a lot of direct evidence. is there are the direct evidence the committee relied on in addition to these? there is a lot of evidence that i would call direct evidence because it s not hearsay. if any of the people involved in this scheme are talking to each other and then relay what someone else said, that is not hearsay. that would be in court a coconspirator statement that would be admissible but let s not talk too far about it s very important because anything mr. giuliani says, anything ambassador sondland says, anything these people say is not hearsay and would be permitted under the federal rules of evidence. of course, we don t follow the federal rules of evidence here. we keep it more lenient. that s an important point. is there anything wrong, goldman, drawing inferences from circumstances? courts tell juries to draw inferences every single day in everything the court room. that is how you determine what the evidence shows. so when ambassador sondland draws inferences from the fact that there is no estimation for the aid, the fact the white house meeting has artie been held up because of the investigations, and determines that s the reason why security assistance has also been held up, that s a natural logical instance that every jury draws across the country. i agree with you and disappointed that rather than to respond to the serious, factual direct and evidence before us, my colleagues make unfounded comments about the process but what president trump did here is wrong, unconstitutional, if anybody else did this, they would be held accountable. i urge all my colleagues to face these evidence and up oiled the oath, to protect our constitution. our democracy ensures us that not anybody, including the president, is above the law. gentlelady yields back. mr. neguse. i want to think post mr. castro mr. goldman for being here. a lot of discussion whether or not the facts of the matter are contested. i believe they are not contested. so i would like to level set here and give you both an opportunity to address some of the facts that i believe are not in dispute. i want to begin by addressing something i think we all know for certain. that is that russia interfered in our 2016 election. mr. goldman, after two years of investigation, the special council concluded that the interfered sweeping and systemic fashion. is that right question mike yes. speaker mr. castor, is that right? yes. public agencies state that ukraine attacked in 2016. that s right. i do not think that any government interfered. i think this is based off a couple of news articles. mr. castro, correct? the president had good faith belief that there were individuals and i believe you. i guess i m asking you, and there are no intelligence agencies in the united states that said they attacked our elections but you are testifying to that? correct. in fact, trump s foreign security advisor tom moser said that ukraine hacking the dnc server was not included a conspiracy theory, it s completely debunked. that s president trump s homeland security advisor that said those words. is that right, mr. goldman? yes, i saw that interview. mr. castor, he saw the interview? i m aware of it. isn t it true that none of the witnesses that appear before your committee testified in support of the theory that ukraine somehow interviewed intervened inour election? that is absolutely correct. mr. castor? that s correct thank you. i reclaim my time. no witnesses testified in support of that theory before your committee. mr. gorman, isn t it also true that your committee in fact recy indicating that there is evidene that russia is impart perpetrating this false theory that ukraine interfered because russia wants to deflect flame domain blame for its own involvement? that is correct. we have evidence of that and we have to know what is evidence and what is your media reports for speculation, because there is no evidence in our investigation that ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. in fact, i liked what some of the testimony that i believe you may be referencing, mr. goldman, in the screen in front of you, both in front of mr. holmes as well as dr. fiona hill. i m confident on the analysis that i ve done, and i don t want to start getting to intelligence matters, that the ukraine government did not interfere in our election in 2016. this is a fictional narrative that s being propagated by the russia security forces themselves. do you recall that, mr. goldman? i do and in addition to officials and made disparaging comments about president trump, there are officials from countries all around the world who also made disparaging comments about president trump and as dr. hill said, their military assistance was not put on hold. given your testimony and there are four uncontested facts preferred, russia attacked our 2016 elections. several agencies confirm that this is true. secondly, ukraine did not attack our 2016 elections. absently no evidence of this basis conspiracy theory. third, there is evidence russia perpetrated the allegations that ukraine interfered in our 2016 elections. and finally, russia benefits from the u.s. and the skin ukraine which was made clear through public testimony before your committee. is it fair that they agree with these four conclusions? the intelligence community agrees with one anticorporate dr. hill agrees with three and the statement from putin, and the witness literalists, and president it begs the case why would president trump perpetuate this conspiracy theory already disproven by the entirety of the intelligence community that actually helps our adversary, a country that s attacking our elections in real time. with that, i yield. the gentleman yields back. mr. brief parliamentary inquiry about the schedule. already recognized, he has the time. are you going to recognize him about his parliamentary? i m going to answer that schedule shortly. democrats want the rules to apply when it benefits them and not to apply when republicans invoke them. nine hours ago now, mr. burke, hired gun for the democrats go at 30 minutes to spread his partisan rhetoric and 37 minutes to examine witnesses for that s 27 minutes more than most of these in the committee that was elected by their constituents. a politically biased consultant who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal elections to the like of pac blue, hillary clinton, and obama, and biden. i wonder why he has an ax to grind. brags about getting new york lawyers, and getting insider trading charges. mr. burke able to say whatever he wanted to say without swearing an oath to his testimony, that it would be truthful. so he could sit before this committee not as a fact witness and directly lie to the american people without any threat of criminal prosecution. makes sense. he s a white collar criminal defense lawyer. i m sure he did not want to incriminate himself. this is a mr. berke who offered reports two years ago on his opinion to whether president trump obstructed justice, and colluded with. also rebrande represented bill de blasio the federal investigation of bill de blasio s a part of said new york lawyer with written bias against president trump who gave thousands to hillary clinton s presidential campaign. all of the spectacle, all of it, not a single fact which wetness hasappeared in front ofe committee but we heard for a minority hearing date. let s talk about the fact we do have before us. we heard from mueller, no evidence that there no obstruction of justice. after denying republicans from calling all of their in closed-door cds, denying the president s counsel, the facts are this. did the president tell you about any preconditions for anything? his answer, no. for the aid be refused? no. a white house meeting? no. to morrison when questioned, there was no quid pro quo answered, correct. the aide was released, four fax never change for both president trump and president zelensky say there is no pressure. the call says there is no conditionality between aid. ukraine did and opened an investigation but still received aid and a meeting with president trump. mr. castro, has any committee heard from the whistle-blower in any closed-door hearings? no. did chairman schiff state that he would call the whistle-blower to testify? yes. isn t going to occur? i would hope so. has other countries aid also been held up? yes. on october 2nd, the new york times reported that the whistle-blower approached the house intelligence committee and with his concerns about president trump. are his concerns accurate? say it again? on october 2nd, the new york times reported that a house intelligence i think it was ablower is a s concerns are from the did the whistle-blower approach let me ask a different way. have you had any communications with the whistle-blower? as i said, i m not going to get into you are refusing to say if i got into the communication with the whistle-blower? he did not he s absolutely relevant. the whistle-blower s complaints for the reasons mr. castro said, they allegations are not included in our report because they have been outstripped by the 70 witnesses that we have had come into testify directly about the conduct that the whistle-blower. as of today do you know the identity of the whistle-blower? i refuse to talk about the identity of the whistle-blower that s my time, not yours. has any other staff on the intel committee have medications with the whistle-blower? sir the american people want to know about those answers. time, mr. chairman. i have unanimous consent. the time of the gentleman has expired. the gentleman will state his unanimous and send. i want to submit the document, ukrainian efforts if you give it to our staff, we ll take a look at it. a motion to insert instead, mr. chairman? before i recognize ms. mcbath, i want to announce with respect to scheduling that this hearing will proceed until the votes are called. it may and neck before votes are called to the which would be nice. we would recess for the votes and will reconvene here as soon as the votes on the floor are over. it s going to be a close call. we will see. i will further announce that i m not prepared to say anything further about the schedule of the committee beyond today s hearing. point of order, mr. chairman excuse who seeks recognition for point of order? it is i. for purposes
special each year, or being given her own production unit like an curry. so let me about ink in another reporter who has been digging around, lloyd grove, an editor at large, an authority on all things media. lloyd, thanks for joining me. pleasure. do you think diane sawyer is leaving of her own choice? i think these discussions have been going on for months. diane is 68, so obviously they had they needed to look at a generational change. on the other hand she s done very well for abc news, she s beat brian williams in the all-important 25 to 54 age demo on which advertising is sold, so they ll be very respectful to her. if they brought it up first, i m sure she agreed, and if she agreed, i m sure it was with a lot of sweeteners and her new gig will be pretty wonderful for her, i would suspect. that s where i m skeptical. she doesn t seem to have a dedicated job, she s have an anchor title, but not a staff or things like that. tom brokaw when he stepped down ten years ago, i think he had a ten-year contract and a special correspondent title. so are you as skeptical as i am that she will in fact have a clear role at abc? i am not as skeptical as you are, but you might be right. who knows, it s a crazy business. she comes from the era of the rune arledge tenure. and she is not somebody that s to sort of take anything she doesn t like laying down. plus they have great respect for her. she s the last quarter she beat brian williams in the demo for the first time in six years, so they re going to treat her with great respect and deference. people at abc says she s going to do the biggest interviews in the country, do the biggest specials, those will be the goals for her going forward. jeffrey toobin was thankfully filling in for me. he talked to dan rather about the idea of the evening news fading away. here s what dan rather said. what young mr. muir has inherited is an honor and a great opportunity, but in the great scheme of television and television news, it is now a diminished medallion, that the principal medallion goes to the main anchor of the morning news, which in this case is george stephanopoulos. another person said to me he s a blank slate. would you agree? i don t think so. in terms of the numbers he draws when he subs for diane, he sometimes improves on those numbers. his weekend news anchoring, he has healthy numbers. and he has, you know, a young guy, only 40, and he has a rather distinguished reporting career. so he s no dan rather. he doesn t have the sort of larger than life movie star personality that anchors like dan and diane have had, but, you know, he s a young guy, and it s a long game, and we ll see how it develops. i was struck by the fact when you wrote about the announcement, your headline was about george stephanopoulos, that he wins abc s chief anchor crown. you are focusing on that part of the news than the evening news. why was that? this is a whole new configuration. usually or always on these broadcasts the person who has the evening broadcast is the lead askor, and gets the big interviews, askors all the big news reports. here s a case where they split the baby, essentially. david muir gets the anchor of the evening news, and does i assume, some interviews, but george has first crack at everything. interview with his president obama, election night, inauguration, and breaking news stories. if there s another school shooting, george gets first crack. that s very unusual. there s a rivalry forming? my sense from the last ten days is there s been a camp for george and there s a camp for david, each of them saying different things about how involved the other guy is going to be. i don t think there s a personal rivalry, at least not yet between george and david, certainly not the kind of personal rivalry as between diane and barbara walters, but definitely the camps are working it hard. i ve had heard from both camps myse myself, the muir camp thinks that george s role has been exaggerated in the press and, you know, george s camp thinks that, yeah, i m the late anchor, or he s the lead anchor. what does that tell you about how abc tried to split this baby? is it something that s destined for failure? i wouldn t say it s destined for failure. it does create creative tension, but this was a condition of george s for a reupping on his contract. he came with a position of strength. for the past two years, good morning american, his principal job, and robin roberts have beat the today show almost every week for the past two years. so they don t want to lose this guy. so i suspect that george wanted to have the david muir slot, with all the trimmings, they didn t give him that. instead he got this title and the first crack at all the breaks news. you mentioned personal rivalry between barbara walters and diane sawyer. now we see both of them stepping aside, barbara walters officially retiring, though she recently came back with that interview of the father of the santa barbara shooter, and diane sawyer, we don t know exactly what she ll be doing. what about the new leadership at abc, the new news president, james goldsen, and the new head of the division, are these guys who come in and aren t as willing to or as interested in protecting the status quo? you can t protect the status quo. you can t protect anything in this business. you have to be future forward and you have to sort of what are we going to be doing five years from now? and horrid how are we going to win? at this business, a ratings point, that could be worth $100 million in revenue. so these guys are in a business and they re business people. there sen a compose dulles of talent from abc, we saw several people come over here to cnn in the past year or two, and now george and david both having two jobs. i wonder if this just says something about the end of the star anchor, that maybe abc believes it can make do with just a couple big heavy hitters in george and david? yeah, i think so. by the way, george has three jobs, because he also anchors the this week program a sundays. right. it mite say something about that, but you ve got to say these people are getting star salaries everything i here is he has a 1 or 10 in front of his salary. that s not bad from a guy i met 20 years ago when he was a young compare aide for bill clinton. what does it saying for the aspiring, the folks in a local market, who want that job in 20 years? does this say something about the ladder and how it s going to change in the next 20 years? i don t know what things will look like, whether we ll all by watching television news on our mobile devices, or maybe have devices implanted. that s a refreshingly honest answer, we don t know the past anymore. you re asking me an impossible question, brian. shame on you. that s a perfect place to leave it, then. thanks for joining me. a pleasure. they continue to battle for first place. in my contacts at abc they say that david muir is even more competitive about this than diane sawyer, even more determined to beat nbc, so i do think a new ratings war is about to kick off. when we come back here, this week s horrible news for president obama, but is he really the worst president we ve seen since world war ii? i ll try to fix the wrong headlines and talk to historic who can really sort it out for us, next. really. so our business can be on at&t s network for $175 dollars a month? yup. all five of you for $175. our clients need a lot of attention. there s unlimited talk and text. we re working deals all day. you get 10 gigabytes of data to share. what about expansion potential? 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[ female announcer ] stay strong, stay active with boost. grandpa! are the largest targets in the world, for every hacker, crook and nuisance in the world. but systems policed by hp s cyber security team are constantly monitored for threats. outside and in. that s why hp reports and helps neutralize more intrusions than anyone. in the world. if hp security solutions can help keep the world s largest organizations safe, they can keep yours safe, too. make it matter. dramatic headlines about the president s popularity. worst president since 1945, with an approval rating in the 30s. did you think i was talking about this week s poll? this is a headline from a 2006 story about a quinnipiac poll judging george w. bush, eerily similar to these headlines from this week s poll judges barack obama. look at that, story after story, saying obama is the worst president since world war ii, even though 33% of the people surveyed said so. i ve got to say i think all the hyping of this poll was a big media foul this week. all these headlines seemed determined to get clicks, but not provide context. the press should know better. here s our reliable sources policy question. are we actually learning anything? let s brill in julian zellezer, a professor at princeton. he s in new york this morning. thanks for joining me. thanks for having me. i think sometimes headlines are too good to be true. and in this case it was too bad or too good, depending on your view of the president. what effect do you think all these inflationed stories have? i think the biggest effect is the it will create some political problems for him potentially as people make these comparisons, but i don t think it tells us much about his presidency or how his presidency compares to those who came before him. i hope you can read the headline on scribe why america just voted obama the worth president in seven years. that s factually inaccurate. that didn t happen. i wonner if there s some response on the pollsters to not ask the question in a way that s going to get warped by the press. is that crazy? in all on the press? i think both are accurate. in the end the pollsters give them the material and know the media environment in which they re operating so they have to be very careful to explain both what they re asking and what the findings are. here it s a small percentage who answered it. republicans are the wujz who, not surprisingly feel this way right now. what it says to me is presidents are judged so did you havely in the moment than later on. has that always been true? always true. the representation of a president changes over time, very dramatically. there is no presidential reputation or presidential legacy. it will erove, but the way in which presidents leave office is very different from how we remember them. harry truman was very unpopular when he left office in 1952, now often considered one of the great presidents. ronald reagan was not doing so well. many conservatives thought he was doing a horrible job, but now he s revered as one of the great presidents and one of the leaders of the right. we see thinks kinds of changes all the time and the way we make these comparisons is not static. what causes people to generally only remember the good and not the bad? well, it did go the reverse, but i do think the more we learn about what happened during an administration from the archives, the more we have time to get away from the heat of the moment sometimes we start to appreciate the different environment, or we start to see the effect of some of their policies, which isn t clear at the moment, but takes some time, and then, you know, there s nostalgia. that s the bad part. sometimes we forget the bad stuff and only remember the virtues, and the nostalgia in some ways down the line is as dangerous as these kinds of polls which we have at the moment. interesting. tell me more about that. why is that? even with ronald reagan, we remember how he made peace with soviet leader mikhail gorbachev, but we forget the iran-contra hear hearings, and i think we re so frustrated with the gridlock, we re so frustrated with the partisanship, so we try to tease out the best parts of the past. we remember how reagan and tip olympic kneel, the speaker of the house liked to have a beer after work, because it reminds us maybe things could be a little better. i do wonder if this poll by the way an organization usually very well respected that i have relied on for years, i wonder if it does tell us something about the current political climate. abc news did a similar poll when bill clinton would you say in office. when it did its surveys it found nixon to be number one, then reagan, then clinton at 16%, so the sitting president was considered one of the worst, but near lieutenant to the extent obama is currently. i guess the difference is about double. it s always dangerous to compare two different polls like this, but does it say something about our politics? i think there s something to that. the fact he s rated worse than nixon is very telling, and i do think there s something about this that indicates how polarize our judgmenting are good everything. let me play a clip from fox s cover a coverage. what s devastating for the white house is this is a nonpartisan, highly respected poll in terms of quinnipiac. interesting, quinnipiac also asked what do you think if mitt romney had been elected instead of president obama being reelected. 45% said in this poll the nation would be better off. what that says to me, and tell me if i m wrong, is romney voters still prefer romney. should we surprised by a finding like that? not at all. we re in the final years of a presidency. even some of obama supporters are frustrated, the economy is weak. it s not surprising. people who supported romney would still want romney in office. others might wonder would things have been better in but it s not a shocking piece of information to hearing that. julian, thank you for joining me. thank you. my advice to reporters in 2022, don t fall for the poll that says president clinton, bush or paul is the worst. i m reading your comments right after the show. and speaking of facebook, that site came under fire this week for the mood manipulation study, but the trust is, they toy with us every every day. my next guests tell us how, after the break. in keeping the denture clean. dentures are very different to real teeth. they re about 10 times softer and may have surface pores where bacteria can multiply. polident is designed to clean dentures daily. its unique micro-clean formula kills 99.99% of odor causing bacteria and helps dissolve stains, cleaning in a better way than brushing with toothpaste. that s why i recommend using polident. 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[ male announcer ] polident. at every ford dealership, you ll find the works! it s a complete checkup of the services your vehicle needs. so prepare your car for any road trip by taking it to an expert ford technician. because no matter your destination good maintenance helps you save at the pump. get our multi-point inspection with a synthetic blend oil change, tire rotation, brake inspection and more for $29.95 or less. get a complete vehicle checkup only at your ford dealer. the last four hours have seen. one child fail to get to the air sickness bag in time. another left his shoes on the plane. his shoes! and a third simply doesn t want to be here. until now. until right booking now. planet earth s number one accomodation site booking.com booking.yeah! welcome back to reliability sources. let s now turn to facebook. the news this week that had users outraged. the social media giant revealed for one week back in january 2012, it allowed researchers to manipulates almost 700,000 news feeds. and the experiment worked. the people who saw more positive news seemed happier in their own facebook posts. facebook sort of apologized this week, but not totally. but the story is so much bigger than that one experiment. i m intrigued by the loarger, long-term, can they influence who you vote for or what kind of news you see during a big political decision? joining me to discussing that in austin texas a researcher and associate at the university of texas. and zanev as unc chapel hills. welcome to you both. i want to hear from both of you first. were you outraged? surprised at all? zanev? i wasn t. this is not the first study facebook has published, showing its enormous power. it s one of many this is the first one that caught the imagination. i think this is the tip of the iceberg. why do you think this is the one that caught the imagination? because i think it was involved with emotions, the way the study abstract sound that it created an emotional cajun, i think made people realize facebook is a primary way in which they interact with their friends, a lot of people get news around the world. the idea that they re the product that facebook is manipulating to make sure they come back to facebook, this idea hadn t been very public before, i think it was the first realization that facebook does experiment with them, and there s all thinks algorithms that filter what they say and what they don t see. i think it made people step back and said, wait, what else is facebook doing? what else and why am i seeing that post? and not the other one? those are very good questions. should we be more bothered by this than, for example, how advertisers manipulate emotions? i don t think so. there are certainly legitimate concerns. i agree with zeynep, that you hear people talking about manipulating emotions, and it seems like a potential dangerous thing, but you have to remember that advertisers have been doing this kind of thing more or less for decades. when you go to the supermarket, there s a reason why the chocolates are by the checkout and flowers are not. but that s not as effective. the advertiser doesn t come between you and your friends. that posted chocolate doesn t know that much about you. facebook knows your personal type, facebook knows whether you re a republican or democrat. facebook knows which of your friends you like, so the kind of power it has, when you see the chocolate so blatantly placed, you react against it. that s why advertisements don t work that well, whereas when there s stealth, when you don t know to have your defenses up, that s when you re so vulnerable. this isn t just facebook, this isn t just this study. that s why sort of the internet platform s power to change how we feel is very important. that voting study that brian talked about, that s very important. it was actually a very interesting study. for viewers at home, tell me what it found. so the study found that facebook can make people vote. it had different voting message. one was a social message. it was very neutral, it was partisan. the other send go vote more in an informational sense. and since facebook knows whether you re a rep or democrat without even asking you, because it has so much information about you, it doesn t have to asking to know they see things, you can imagine a scenario in which facebook and other big internet platforms could throw an election by nudging the right kind of people to go vote in those few swing states. is she overstating the situation? no, i more or less agree to that. one, there wasn t anything unusual about the study. so in some sense it s relieving to see that people weren t aware and they do care, but i hope the takeaway message is not, look, facebook is one bad actor, they ll change their terms of use, problem solved. the broader issue is do we need new legislation to protect consumer data and what companies like facebook can do? and google and twitter, many others. exactly. i agreed that facebook. we got the one study in facebook in our crosshairs, but that is not the only question here. if you as a person are worried about this one study, i read the study. i mean, it s okay, in the sense that there should broadband better consent procedures, but it s likely you didn t see that much of a change. that s the gull news, but the bad news is this is the tip of the iceberg of what s called ab testing, in which online platforms test you all the time to make sure you come back. remember, you re the product they re selling to advertisers, your eyeballs is what s being sold. i want to read another quote, dana boyd wrote on a personal level i hate the fact that facebook thinks it s better than me deciding which friends posts i can see. i hate that i have no meaningful control on the site. the idea that this supposed to be curated, when in reality it s not that good a summary of the world. do you athinksh do you think that facebook is aware of and is working on? it s curated to keep you engaged. it s curated to keep you coming back to it. inned constitutiony that the study we re talking abouts there s an interesting line. they found that neutral posts don t get as much other people posting. that might be why your facebook feed is full of drama, because drama, good or bad, seems to keep people engaged. that s a finding i thought was interesting, that neutral posts are not getting people engaged, might be why they re suppressing some of the neutral at a counterpoint to that, i think it s very easy it feels right. it feels like i would like all these different settings i can adjust and play with, but in some sense that s the whole point of ab testing so ultimately you could argue the reason you end up where you end up is precisely because people do like the settings they like. a billion people don t like the same thing. a billion people don t like the same thing. that s true. maybe what we like, even if what you say is true, it should be transparent and say we re showing you highly emotive content, is this what you want? i would like as an adult a little more say. i have family all over the world and they re on facebook. i would like to hear from my quieter rely tis and friends. you do have that control, actually. there are options when you can explicitly say that. i have tried. but you know it s not transparent. i m not arguing that facebook couldn t do better, but i think they test precisely this kind of stuff all the time. these are i think certainly you can always argue reasonably there should be more transparency. if nothing else, it should be the ability to opt out, but the defaults i think are actually biand large people don t actually mind, they actually like them. what they don t like is the realization after the fact that hey, this is what s going on. what we have to ask ourselves is, it s a trade. on some level you accepted you re going to give up some control, and the question is where do we draw the line between wait, i didn t know you were going to do this, and i really like my shopping experience on amazon, and i like the interface on facebook. you have to keep in mind that facebook s customers aren t us, it s the advertisers, that s the important realization, is that facebook isn t necessarily giving us this power, because what if we don t do something and it s not as suitable to the advertisers, so that is a tension that facebook has to come to terms with. they re in the business of getting money from the advertisers and not from us before we do, since we ve had a week of public debate, what s the worst possible outcome? what s the best possible outcome? imts i think the worst is people come away thinking this is a problem specifically about facebook and now facebook will address this by tweaking some of the terms and dassa use policy and we ll forget in a week, and six months later something will happen similar to this and the cycle will go on on. the best possibility outcome, there has been a conversation and we have to say we need to decide collectively how much do we give up? do we have to pass new laws that regulate this kind of stuff? or do we want to trust facebook to do the right thing? i completely agree. the worst possible situation would be facebook comes up and says we teak tweaked the terms and stops publishing. all that happens, is they ll keep doing it, but just won t tell us. thank you both for joining me. thank you for inviting us. the supreme court delivered one of the its most controversial rulings this week, a huge difference in how that news was reported in our weekly look of red news/blue news, right after this. ups is a global company, but most of our employees live in the same communities that we serve. people here know that our operations have an impact locally. we re using more natural gas vehicles than ever before. the trucks are reliable, that s good for business. but they also reduce emissions, and that s good for everyone. it makes me feel very good about the future of our company. you want to save money on car insurance? no problem. you want to save money on rv insurance? no problem. you want to save money on motorcycle insurance? no problem. you want to find a place to park all these things? fuggedaboud it. this is new york. hey little guy, wake up! aw, come off it mate! geico. saving people money on more than just car insurance. . there are demonstrators who support the mandate. they say that companies should be required to provide comprehensive health care coverage of birth control for its employees, and then the demonstrators behind me who say that religious liberty rights should trump that. the rule that ruled that closely held companies can t be required to pay for all contraception if they claim it, on msnbc the mood afterward was grim i6789 the contest this an all-outassault. so doesn t it just put the government between you and your doctor? if you re a woman? and isn t this just a huge issue of discrimination? watching all this coverage, you probably would have missed a crucial piece of context. hobby lobby was not resisting the government man dade. it was objecting to only a few contraceptive drugs and devices, the ones they say are tantamount to abores. that s why some were blocking here s deroy murdock, listing the forms that they do cover, before writing this. liberals are living in a cartoon of their own making. on the right meantime, there was a focus on one thing, one word abortion. the obama administration wants all corporations to fudged things like the morning-after bills, which many believe is an abortion-inducing medicine. the disturbing part of the opinion is the four liberal justices apparently believe that american taxpayers should fund abortions. when o reilly says abortions, what he s talking about the medication known as plan b, the morning-after pill. frankly these are issues best left to scientists, not cable news upon continue indicators. now, i can t conclude this red news/blue news without a little let me show you a rush limbaugh sound bite from wednesday afternoon. he apparently is still bothered by the 2011 contraception man dade. pregnancy is something that you have to do to cause. it doesn t just happen to you while you re walking down the street, except in the case of sexual abuse, but in the normal everyday flow of events, pregnancy requires action that has consequences. and yet we treat it as a great imposition that women need to be protected from. it s a sickness, it s a disease, and there s got to be a pill for it, and yet they wouldn t have the problem if they didn t do a certain thing. if they didn t do a certain thing. rush, the wore you re tiptoeing around is sex, and it takes two, buddy. it s not a they thing, it s a we think. i know i m due to the broadcasting business, rush, but i think you should tread lightly. yes, americans are divided about abortion, but they re not divided about sex. i can t think of any bigger audience turnoff than sounding anti-sex. so now that i m turning alternates rumsfeld here, we ll end red news/blue news, but stay with me. i have a story you just have to hear to believe. an incredible story with a reporter right here in washington, d.c., who was too close to the story. he was addicted to drugs himself. he s here with me in studio, next. 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call today for a low price on speeds up to 150mbps. and find out more about our two-year price guarantee. comcast business. built for business. welcome back to reliable sources. my next guest has a shocking story to tell. he was a national newspaper reporter who, for years, led a dangerous double life. his name is reuben castaneda, he covered d.c. for the washington post during the turbulence of the early 90s when a crack cocaine epidemic plagued the city. rival gangs fought over territory, mere blocks from the studio. at the time d.c. was run by the original crack-smoking mayor, who was famously caught on camera in an fbi sting operation in 1990. as reuben reported on drugs and the carnage, he was a crack addict himself. he tells the story of addiction and redemption in a fascinating new book s street rising. welcome. thank you for having me. you write about first trying the drug. it was when i was working in los angeles for the herald examiner. i was in a pretty rough neighborhood on the western edge of downtown for an assignment having to do with an immigration story, so i was out looking for interview central american immigrants, and a very attractive young lady, who was standing under an awning in front of a motel, smiled at me and kind of beckened me, so i put my reporting on hold and crossed the street to flirt with her. you say at this point you had a substance abuse problem, the substance being alcohol, and that went on for years as well. yes, i was at that point in my life, i was 27, i was already drinking heavily. i had been for a couple years. at the post, you were coring the crack epidemic. tell me what happened in those years when you were both covering and using. as i arrived in washington in september 1989, and i really was determined to stop using, because i didn t think it would be a good idea for a post crime reporter to take the chance of being caught by police. i would say no. holding or buying crack. my pledge lasted about four days. i got drunk on a saturday, went out to explore in my neighborhood, and rather than be summoned by an attractive lady, this time i puck up an attractive lady who i sensed was a crack user. it turned out i was right. she directed me to s street west. we developed a routine. and a good portion is about s street and how it changed over the years. tell me how a person is able to do both. how were you ability to function as a reporter day to day. well, i compartmentalized my life as best i could. when i was at the post and even when i was on my work shifts, even when i wasn t working, as a young night crime reporter, you re always thinking about the job, and calling people, making contacts. so i was very focused on doing as good a job as i could, and i rationalized to myself that what i did during my off hours, on my weekends, going out for a couple hours, getting drunk, making crack buys, using crack with these, you know, young women who traded sex for crack, was recreational. your editor started to get involved in 1991. at one point one of them cooking to rehab? that s right the four days before christmas 1991, milton coleman who at the time was the post s ame, assistant managing editor for the metro staff, the man who had hired me, he and an eap counselor confronted me when i came in for my work shift, and they told me they had made arrangements for me to go to the rehab unit at suburban hospital in bethesda. milton drove me in his black toyota suv. we made a quick stop at my apartment so i could get a few things, change of clothes, toothbrush, and he drove me to suburban hospital. about as generous as i can imagine a boss being? yeah, milton d. i m convinced that my life would have been at risk if i had been left out on my own for another week or two. i was just using more and more and using at unpredictable times. at that point i was no longe just using on my weekend. i was using on days i was supposed to work, before work. so it was affecting work? oh, yes. it s a progressive condition. do you think you are ever betrayed your audience then? only be the sense that by the summer of 1991, el began missing days of work. because i used drugs, and in some instances i drank alcohol before i started my shift. so there was some. well, assuming you survive it. i have a much better greater what happens distressed city neighborhoods. so let see a typically reporter. may not have. the bike is styled s street rising. thanks for being here. thanks for having me. i have a store that you would probably never hear, especially here on cnn, it s about what the owner of fox news may have in store for us. stay tuned. dentures are very different to real teeth. they re about 10 times softer and may have surface pores where bacteria can multiply. polident kills 99.99% of odor causing bacteria and helps dissolve stains. that s why i recommend polident. 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[ male announcer ] cleaner, from safety. to fuel economy. to quality. today s chevrolet has it all. and it s a great time to buy. during the chevy 72 hour sale, you ll get 0% apr for 72 months. plus no monthly payments for the rest of the summer. 0% apr for 72 months plus no monthly payments for the rest of the summer. hurry, the chevy 72 hour sale ends monday. find new roads at your local chevy dealer. with the top speedou compare of comcast the top speed of business dsl from the internet. phone company well, there s really no comparison. why pay more for less? call today for a low price on speeds up to 150mbps. and find out more about our two-year price guarantee. comcast business. built for business. and, finally this morning, could fox news owner robert murdoch some day own cnn? it s a wild thought but it s being talked about because murdoch is in hunting mode again, possibly looking to acquire a big content family like cnn. why you may hear more about this in the days ahead. first take a step back. we re in the middle of a wave of tv distributor consolidation. comecast is merge iing with tim warner cable and directv is merging with at&t. those are the companies that make the tv shows and movies you watch, as opposed to the comp y companies distribute them to your smart phone or living room. how might the content guys respond? naturally, they might want more muscle, too. wall street analysts think more consolidation is coming, this time on the content side. see this wall street headline a few days ago, entertainment companiesmergers. a lot of this is speculative. but it s heating up because media mogul summer camp is coming up this week. yes, summer camp. an annual conference in sun valley, idaho, that tracts people like murdoch and others. describing murdoch s interest in time warner. quote, he still covets the owner of hbo, among other potential targets, according to a former news corp. employee, told by executives recently about m. rdoch s interest. the source did not know if murdoch made an approach. can you imagine that? the empire that ted turner built? many people shoulder at that thought. on the other hand, many people, myself included, admire murdoch s business judgment and his ability to surprise and survive in this cutthroat media world. time warner and fox have declined to comment on this or any other potential merger or consolidation. a very, very big if, i think he would have to divest cnn. i will eat my remote control. no. better. i will eat my copy of the new york post if murdoch becomes the owner of cnn. that s all for this televised edition of our reliable sources. we continue on the blog on cnn.com. record world cup ratings and much more. we ll see you right back here next week, next sunday at 11:00 am eastern time. if you can t join us live, set your dvr and catch up with us later in the week. news update follow bid state of the union with candy crowley. hello. i m alexandra field. terrifying moment caught on camera as a swimmer is bitten by a great white shark. [ bleep ] he got bit. that s not [ bleep ]. he got bit. fishing line was being reeled in when the swimmer swam right into it. the man was bit across the torso, pulled out of the water, rushed to the hospital. he was released and is recovering at home today. we ll talk to him about the terrifying moment coming up at 2:00 pm eastern. the american teenager beaten in jerusalem allegedly by israeli security forces is speaking out. he tells cnn he tried run away but was attacked. he was released from custody today but is under house arrest for nine days. it s unclear why he is being investigated. meanwhile, israel says it s arrested several israeli suspects in connection with the abduction of his cousin. two wimbledon champions meeting right now in the wimbledon final. novak djokovic won his only wimbledon crown three years ago. they re in centre court. djokovic leads two sets to one. state of the union with candy crowley starts right now. fear and desperation along the u.s./mexican border. angst and defines on a city s main streets. today, live from the texas front lines, congressman pleading, demanding solutions for the thousands of childrens and teens caught in the political crosshairs of america s immigration struggle and we re not going to stand for it. that s just how it is. murietta mayor, alan long, joins us from city hall. >