[ cheers and applause ] good evening, everyone, and welcome to a historic night. cnn s democratic presidential town hall, equality in america. i m don lemon, thank you so much for being here. there was a time when people were afraid, and you know many still are. they re afraid to come out to their friends and their families for fear of the consequences. now it has been four years since the supreme court ruled same sex marriage is legal. it is a big step. but there is still a whole lot of work to do. tonight s cnn and the human rights campaign have been hosting an unprecedented event where members of the lgbtq community and their allies can ask the candidates questions that are important to them. we ll soon hear from senator amy klobuchar, julian castro, and businessman tom steyer. but first i want you to welcome to the stage now congressman beto o rourke. hey, everybody, good to see you. how you doing, congressman? good to see you. i saw you on the street and you introduced yourself. how many times have i interviewed you. i was like, beto, i know who you are. let s get right to the folks. we re here for them. i want to get to the questions, start with sabrina robinson who runs her own small business that works on the financial side of film and television industry. thank you. beto. hi. as you well know texas proportionately as as many lgbtq folks as any other state. thanks in no small part to austin. and yet the texas state legislature consistently leads the country in creating discriminatory laws against our own people. how do you change a state like texas to once and for all support human rights for all? thank you for the question. i want to acknowledge the truth of what you re saying, that it is still legal, although it is not okay, to be fired in texas for your sexual orientation. in texas a state that had 30,000 children in the foster care system and a child protective services agency that was so underfunded that some of those children were sleeping underneath and on top of the desks at cps offices you can still by law be too gay to adopt one of those children into your loving hoe. and in texas as you alluded to, debated a transgender bathroom bill in our state amidst an epidemic of violence against transgender americans, especially transwomen of color. texas unfortunately leads the country in violence against transwomen of color. i m thinking of italy marlo who was just murdered in houston, texas right now and other women who are killed with virtual impunity in the united states of america. but here s why we have cause for hope. there are grassroots organizations, like equality texas, who are standing up for the full civil rights of every american and stopped that bathroom bill in texas. there are voters across the state, republican, democrat and independent alike, who voted for me in record numbers last year, not despite, but because. i was talking about treating every single american with the respect and the dignity that they re owed. and because they support ideas like signing into law the equality act so that the full civil rights of every single american are going to be respected, or that we ensure that we make violence against transwomen, actually transwomen of color a national law enforcement priority. so though it defies our expectations and goes against the conventional political wisdom i think we re going to surprise the rest of the country when texas leads the way on human rights and civil rights for every single one of us. thank you for asking the question. this is from your lgbtq plan, this is what you write. freedom of religion is a fundamental right but it should not be used to discriminate. do you think religious institutions like colleges, churches, charities, should they lose their tax exempt status if they oppose same sex marriage? yes. there can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone or any institution, any organization in america that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us. and so as president we re going to make that a priority and we are going to stop those who are infringing upon the human rights of our fellow americans. congressman, thank you. to your left, this person is named chris king. thanks for being here. my friends drew and juan were shot at pulse nightclub in 2016. i would like to know what you would do differently to break the impasse on gun control because i ve had all the thoughts and prayers i can take. chris, thank you for asking the question. i am all the way with you on this. in addition to that hate crime, that act of terror in orlando, florida, as we know just on august 3rd of this year, 22 were killed in a walmart in el paso, texas. not an act of god. not by force of nature. not a random event. entirely predictable in america today. especially with a president who has sent a signal in the clearest terms, when he issues a transgender troop ban, when he denies the rights of our fellow americans because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, or who describes immigrants as rapists and criminals, and in a country that loses 40,000 of our fellow americans to gun violence every year, you have racism, intolerance and hatred, and it is more armed today than it ever was before. so what is our solution to that? in addition to all the things we talked about so far, in standing up against intolerance and hatred and homophobia, we also need to disarm it. that means universal background checks, red flag laws, someone who has a firearm and pose as danger to themselves or someone else is stopped before its too late, ending the sale of weapons designed exclusively for youths on a battlefield, ar-15s and ak-47s, in addition knowing there are 16 million ar-15s and ak-47s out there we must buy back each and every single one of them. they are potential instruments of terror. so we re going to do that. and, chris, please keep the faith and know that you have a champion in me. i will be that champion as your president. all right. thank you. thank you, congressman. there s tony valenzuela standing right there, an executive director of the foundation for the a.i.d.s. monument. tony? thank you, it s a pleasure to meet you. i m a latino gay man living with hiv for 26 years. our communities get closer to hiv eradication through treatment and prevention and yesterday americans living with hiv are subject to outat a timed and stigmatizing criminal laws will you support legislation calling for the review of all hiv criminal laws and take action to end the criminalization of americans based on hiv status? what other steps, if any, would you take to help reduce hiv a.i.d.s. stigma and discrimination in the united states? tony, thank you for the question and thank you for the work that you re doing. you re right that there is discrimination against our fellow americans. as well as discrimination against those who are coming into this country. asylum seekers, families separated based on the hiv status of a single family member. we don t do that for families who come here with the flu or other health care challenges right now in this country. we ve singled out a population in america. at the same time we have absolutely failed our fellow americans in making sure that we prevent the spread of hiv in america. though we know that truvada, the brand name for prep, has up to a 99% effectiveness rate in stopping the spread of hiv for those who are taking it of the 1.3 million of our fellow americans who are at risk today less than 10% are regularly taking truvada. though you and i as u.s. taxpayer invested in the research and development, the clinical trials, the purchase of those medications for those who are insured under medicare or medicaid or through federal health insurance plans we have the highest costs on the planet today, up to $2,000 per month for one person. which helps to explain why we have absolutely failed in making sure everyone gets that care. 40,000 new cases of hiv just last year in 2018. we can do something about this. and as president i will. we will bring down that cost. and if gilead fails to honor their commitment to the taxpayer, to our fellow americans we will take over that patent and we will make sure that prep is distributed to every person in america who needs that. and the discrimination against those who have hiv in america today. congressman, if you will, let me follow up on that. sure. in dozens of states in this country a person can be prosecuted for not revealing their hiv status. a person can face up to 15 years in prison for not disclosing their status. even if it means it s undetectable. should these laws be overturned? i think they should. i think the goal has to be equal treatment, which we ve been talking about here today, nondiscrimination in america and it also has to be on the public health needs of our fellow americans. instead of being focus on pen penalizing or punishing or incarcerating people with hiv, what if we focused on stopping the spread of hiv in the manner i just described, making sure prep is affordable and available and accessible to every american who needs to use it with more than 1.3 million at risk today and only 10% able to avail themselves of that life-saving drug right now. our next question, from the program manager for the transwellness center. ariana? first i want to say to everybody to open your hearts because immigration is also an lgbt issue. that s right. i came to this country seeking asylum 20 years ago. i m a survivor and a fighter. i became u.s. citizen last year, and i cannot be more proud to be able to vote. a better life, that was my only option to survive. there is the possibility right now that other asylum seekers will send back to the same country where they experienced persecution, harassment and even torture to wait for their asylum process. do you have a plan to deal with this crisis? absolutely. if ever there were a time to assert global leadership on the issue of human rights for the united states of america it is now. but unfortunately we re going in exactly the opposite direction. we no longer recognize this as a valid claim for asylum. though we know that when we turn people back to their country of origin where they face persecution they often face certain death. we ve got to make sure we welcome all those who have literally no other place to go to. and retake our place as the indispensable country in the world against setting the moral example so we can exert the moral leadership across the world and make this a cornerstone of our foreign policy. in fact, i m going to have a full-time person in the state department who works with other countries to advocate for the full human rights of their citizens as well but we won t wait on those countries to change. if someone needs to come here to seek shelter or asylum or refuge we are going to welcome them now. i was in a synagogue in new york not too long ago where they welcomed refugees and asylum seekers from around the world, predominantly from the lgbtq community. and what those asylum seekers told me really made an impact on me. in many cases they had to leave because their families had rejected them. they were not welcome back at home. they come to this country, strangers in a strange land, not speaking the language and a country that has seen record levels of intolerance and homophobia against their community. they need help right now. and as president i will make sure that we provide that help, that we treat asylum seekers with the dignity and respect that they deserve as human beings and no one is disqualified for being different. we bring everyone in, understand that is the foundation of our success, our strength and also our safety and our security. i m so glad that you re here. thank you. thank you, mariana. tamara hyde is here, a graduate student 12studying public polic at ucla. research supports that black transwomen are being killed at higher rates than anyone else in the lgbtq community. what would you do to have safeguards in place? i m going to listen to transwomen of color. they will be the guide on this issue. they will direct our policy. i m thinking in particular of ja niece point dexter a woman at a town hall in detroit, michigan said hey, beto, what are you going to do about it? we had a conversation. i asked if she would advise me on these issues, which she has, to make me smarter as a candidate and effective as a president. we will no longer allow transwomen of color to be killed with impunity in the united states of america. if local law enforcement won t make it a priority, the local da will not prosecute, we are going to involve our department of justice and our attorney general to look at these as civil rights violations and a matter of restoring the very fabric of america, equal treatment under the law, and equal justice for everyone. so we re going to make sure that the resources are there, but also, i think it s extraordinarily important for our president to speak in terms of pride and celebration of those who make this country great in the first place, to reject the service of transgender americans, who put their lives on the line for this country. who are willing to sacrifice their lives and in many cases have, saving the lives of countless americans. that has sent a signal to people in this country that both hatred and violence is okay, at least according to our current president. so i think it s really important, from the highest office in the land, to set the standard, to speak in the most positive terms, to overturn that transgender troop ban on day one, and to make stopping this epidemic of violence against transwomen a top priority for the united states of america. thank you for asking the question. and that s not just lip service. transwomen have been hearing that. there s not enough coverage for transwomen. how do you assure them it s not just lip service you re giving because they want to know that from the folks on this stage? absolutely. because i m talking about this, not just here in front of this audience, i m talking about it everywhere that i go across the country. i m convinced, because i believe in america, and the people of this country, that once they know what is happening in america, to a population that very often is not heard from, that does not have a seat at the table, whose story is not part of the national conversation, once they recognize what is happening, we are going to be able to enlist their help, their focus, our resources as a country to ending this epidemic. so the challenge here can be met by all of us. regardless of our background or where we are in the country. so i ll make sure that we lead on this. let s talk about something that also doesn t get enough coverage and it s controversial, talking about conversion therapy, a widely discredited practice that seeks to change a person s sexual orientation or possibly their gender identity. yeah. should this be illegal? and if it is illegal, what should the punishment be? it should be illegal. as president we will seek to outlaw it everywhere in this country. in my opinion this is tantamount to torture. torture that we re visiting on children who are absolutely defenseless. and so we re going to make sure that whatever the penalty is, it is steep enough to dissuade anybody from entering into this practice or being able to torture kids with the kind of impunity that we have seen so far. and we re also going to recognize that these kind of practices, in addition to the immediate torture that that child or that person feels also adds to other challenges that we have. when we look at homeless youth in america, 40% identify as lgbtq in america right now. when we look at those who age out of the foster care system right now, some of them subject to these conversion therapy practices, their outcomes in life are not what they should be in part because of the practices that we ve allowed so far. so yes, we will outlaw it and yes, we will ensure that there are penalties stiff enough and enforcement vigorous enough to make sure it does not continue. at the center of most of these issues is religion. so, you know, when you saw you re going to do laws, how do you change people s minds about religion? that s what s really telling people, preaching to young people that they re wrong, that what they are is an abomination, that they re not supposed to be the way god created them. what does that do to your head and your conception of yourself and what you think is possible for you in your life? when someone has labeled you as defective or less than? not only is that terrible for you, it is terrible for all of us in this country and the potential that we are losing out on. right now, i remember in the el paso city council, more than ten years ago, we wrote an ordinance, passed it, that offered health care benefits to the same sex partners of city employees, very controversial idea at the time. and your question about religion, i was born and raised a catholic, and there was a catholic priest at the lectern during the call to the public telling me what i was doing was welcoming an abomination to god and he and i really got into it at that podium. a very politically unpopular position for us to take in the council. it sparked recall elections, and citizen-driven petitions. but i knew it was the right thing to do, not just for those city employees but for any child who has read in the newspaper and watched tv, wanting to know what those in positions of power and public trust thought about them. what we were saying from the el paso city council is you re every bit as important, every bit as valuable, every bit as much an american and a human being as anyone else and treat you the same as everybody else. defying the religious condemnation i received from a catholic priest as a lifelong catholic, defying the polls and the politics of the moment, and just doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do. allow the politics to catch up. that s my philosophy. thank you, congressman. appreciate that. yeah. so trujillo is here, the mother of a transgender son. a human rights campaign, parents for transequality council, lizette and daniel go ahead. i want to take a moment to validate the pain of transgender siblings that demonstrated earlier, especially transwomen. let me tell you something, black transwomen are being killed in this country and cnn you have erased black transwomen for the last time. black transwomen are dying. our lives matter. i am an extraordinary black transwoman, and i deserve to be here. my black transsisters that are here. i am so tired of it s not just my black transwomen and black transbrothers too. i m going to say what i m going to say. come here. i want you to talk, what s your name? blossom c. brown. blossom, thank you, let me tell you something. don t come on the stage. and may i have the mic? may i have the mic? blossom, let me tell you something. the reason that we re here is to validate people like you. that is why we re giving that s why we re here. not one black transwoman has taken the mic tonight, or black transman. blossom, we can t hear you. your actions have to speak louder than words. guess what? not one black transwoman has taken the mic tonight. not one black transman has taken the mic tonight. show me. blossom, blossom thank you, i appreciate it. blossom, you re a black transwoman. you have the mic in your hand. i ve taken it and given it back to you. we want to hear from you. we ve had transpeople of color and you re welcome, but we are proud and happy that you re here. we re proud and happy that you re here. remember, we re under a time constraint. thank you, blossom and i appreciate it. that s how anti-blackness works, amongst people of color. that s what anti-blackness looks like, the erasure of black transpeople. we are here in this room, please give us that opportunity. blossom, appreciate it. thank you very much. yes, i got it. congressman, please address that. i d be happy to, yeah, yeah. thank you, blossom. just want to remind everyone that stonewall was led by transgender women of color and it s 15 years later and we re still failing you as a community, but there are mothers like me and other community members that are committed to change. and so thank you for allowing that. thank you. so many school districts are focusing on implementing age appropriate comprehensive medically accurate and inclusive sex education. we know that this curriculum reduces risks, creates informed communities and reduces incidents of bullying against lgbtq students like my child. these efforts are met with attacks by opponents and often times target transgender youth and their families. as president how do you plan to tackle this? thank you for being here and daniel, i m glad that you re here as well. two things. one, i want to make sure that we follow your lead. and we share with our fellow americans, who may not have a transgender child, just what it s like not to be the perpetrator of attacks, as many americans are made to fear. including what these transgender bathroom bills we saw in north carolina and recently in texas, but to acknowledge that transgender children are far more often the victims than they are the perpetrators of those attacks. if we include education in our public schools, in addition to traditional instruction the full social and emotional well-being of every child, regardless of who they are, not only is that child going to do better, that class is going to do better, that community is going to do better and we as a country are going to do better, and then i want to commend you because after blossom took the microphone from you, and then returned it after what she said, you acknowledged that she did not grab the mic to speak out against anybody, or to put down anybody, she grabbed the mic to stand up for herself and other transwomen of color. and transmen of color that she talked about as well. that s what democracy looks like in america and i love that you talked about stonewall 50 years ago, or i think about act up in the 1980s or 1990s or prep for all today in 2019, it s those activists who are willing to stand up like you are and blossom and daniel is right now, stand up to be counted and to make sure that all of us are counting them in. that s the only way we ve ever achieved change, civil rights and progress in america. so thank you were fgor being a leader in this. grateful. thank you very much. that was very emotional and it was real. it was real. thank you all very much. congressman beto o rourke, everyone. so thank you for being here, everyone. we have three more candidates left in this historic cnn democratic town hall. up next, senator amy klobuchar. now, it s like he has his own health entourage. he gets medicare s largest healthcare network, a free gym membership, vision, dental and more. there s so much to take advantage of. can t wait till i m 65. a few more chairs, please. unitedhealthcare medicare advantage plans, including the only plans with the aarp name. free dental care and eye exams, and free designer eyewear. go ahead, take advantage. keep being you. and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for hiv in certain adults. it s not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights hiv with three different medicines to help you get to undetectable. that means the amount of virus is so low it can t be measured in lab tests. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a build-up of lactic acid and liver problems. do not take biktarvy if you take dofetilide or rifampin. tell your doctor about all the medicines and supplements you take, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis. if you have hepatitis b, do not stop taking biktarvy without talking to your doctor. common side effects were diarrhea, nausea, and headache. if you re hiv-positive, keep loving who you are, inside and out. ask your doctor if biktarvy is right for you. do you recall, not long ago we would walk on the sidewalk all around the wind blows we would only hold on to let go blow a kiss into the sun we need someone to lean on blow a kiss into the sun we needed somebody to lean on all we need is someone to lean on aaddiction. how juuline hooked kids and ignited an public health crisis. other news outlets report- juul took $12.8 billion from big tobacco. markets e-cigarettes with kid friendly flavors and uses nicotine to addict them. 5 million kids use e-cigarettes. juul is following big tobacco s playbook. and now, juul is pushing prop c to overturn e-cigarette protections. vote no on juul. no on big tobacco. no on prop c.
deal with the messaging on the ukraine, on all the scandals going on. harris: josh kraushaar, political editor for the national journal. great to have you. thank you very much. i am harris. here is dana. dana: president trump said to speak any moment as the fight over impeachment hits a new level. hello, everyone. i m dana perino and this is the daily briefing. president trump is about to hold a joint news conference with the president of finland but the big focus right now obviously, impeachment. the president attacking what he s calling the do-nothing democrats, accusing them of wasting time and not focusing on other issues. president trump also going after the whistle-blower who reported on his july call with the ukrainian president. they come up with this impeachment nonsense and everyone knows. all based on one phone call that i had. there was no quid pro quo. the whistle-blower was so dishonest. the whistle-blower said terrible things about the call, but i then found out he was secondhand and thirdhand. these are bad people. these are dishonest people. when the american people find out what happened, it s going to be a great day. dana: all of that after house democrats threaten to subpoena the white house for documents on the president s dealings with ukraine. they say the white house has left them no choice. democrats also accusing the president of trying to intimidate the whistle-blower and other potential witnesses. they also say he s trying to change the focus. let s not make any mistake here. the president wants to make this all about the whistle-blower. people that come forward with evidence of his wrongdoing, are somehow treasonous. and should be treated as traitors and spies. this is a blatant effort to intimidate witnesses. dana: will have complete coverage this hour and as we wait for the president, let s begin. chief white house correspondent john roberts in the east room. we heard a lot from the president but this is a formal press conference where they are sure to be more. number of times president trump has done this. he goes into the oval office with a leader, in this case the finish president sauli niinisto then takes more questions. sometimes during the press conferences, fewer questions than they took in the oval office but there s no question, data, that the president really is hot under the collar about this whistle-blower and despite the fact that his own acting director of national intelligence, joe maguire, believes that the inspector general of the intelligence community s acting properly by protecting the identity of the whistle-blower. president trump wants to know who he is or she is. also wants to know who gave that person the information, saying that what was included in the transcript of the telephone call was completely different than what the whistle-blower wrote in their complaint. the president wondering if the person is a whistle-blower at all or simply a leaker. listen to what he said in the oval office a short time ago. the whistle-blower wrote not that conversation. he wrote a vicious conversation. in other words, he either got it totally wrong and made it up or the person giving the information to the whistle-blower was dishonest and this country has to find out who that person was. that person is a spy. in the oval office with the finish president, the president saying that never in a million years did anyone think you would actually release the transcript of that telephone call when you remember, dana, after the transcript came out, then many democrats it said it reinforced their worst fears about what the president spoke with volodymyr zelensky about. president trump ten choice words for house intelligence committee chairman adam shift after schiff after the opening statement wite director joe maguire basically giving his own interpretation of what the whistle-blower complaint said really adding his own adam schiff embellishment. here s the criticism the president had for him today. he should be forced to resign from congress, adam schiff. he s a lowlife. he should be forced to resign. he took that conversation which was perfect, he said i can t read this. so he made up a conversation and he reported it and set it to congress and to the american people. it was more about he said. and that was supposed to be coming from me. but it was all fabricated. he should resign from office in disgrace and frankly they should look at him for treason. president trump also ripping schiff for criticizing secretary of state mike pompeo because pompeii was on the call was latimer zalewski. democrats in congress calling him a fact witness in the very fact that pompeo, i don t want to say he s stonewalling but slow walking the idea to get people to congress for depositions. democrats are saying because he s a fact witness, anything he does to try to slow walk access to congress to members of the state department would be seen as obstruction of congress and in intimidating witnesses. the president saying to schiff, how can he criticize somebody like my pompeo, first of his class at west point. the president going so far as to say that adam schiff could not hold pompeo s blank-strap. dana: i m going to try to figure out what that is during the commercial break. i don t think you have to try too hard. dana: the white house is no stranger to subpoenas from congress for documents or information or witness testimony. they haven t always complied. why would that be different this time? well, i don t think it will be different. that s one of the questions that you want to ask the president. during the mueller investigation, the president was really bragging on the idea that the white house was being completely transparent and cooperative and document production and making people available for interviews with mueller s team. don t forget that was an intraexecutive branch investigation. this crosses branches. it s an article one investigation of an article to a branch. the president might not be so inclined to cooperate as he did during the mueller investigation but certainly a line of inquiry we will pursue this afternoon when the president and the president show up. dana: looks like they are going to be there any moment. let s bring in martha maccallum, anchor of the story and juan williams, cohost of the five. we await the president and the finnish prime minister. it s easy for the foreign leader there with a president dealing with a domestic issue. they have issues or talk about. chinese telecoms, huawei, the arctic. but this story really is sucking up all the oxygen. martha: i kind of felt sorry for him in the prior appearance, the president of finland sitting next to the president as he gets a barrage of questions. at one point the president turned to him and said i guess they are not that interested in finland. i m very interested but the reporters are not. a story that s crossing now from the new york times moments ago, it says the whistle-blower originally given early version of his complaint to a house aid to adam schiff. this cia officer wanted to pass along this information to this congressional aide who is with adam schiff, that they didn t see the actual full transcript or his notes or complaint. according to this report, they advised him to go through the process and fill out a form and make his whistle-blower complaint, go through the formal process. nonetheless, this is going to raise questions obviously. it s interesting that nancy pelosi in her 60 minutes interview, criticism towards her was that she went ahead with this impeachment process before she had seen the call. during that examines interview, she said we had already seen it which is a little bit odd. i don t know she got her timeline messed up. it raises questions about dana: it does. thank you for checking the wire wires. joe maguire, acting director of national intelligence, when he testified in front of congress last week, he said he believed the whistle-blower and the inspector general had followed the process to the letter of the law. i don t know if that s inappropriate to talk to a house aid. maybe it s the right thing to do, then for the house aid to say you ve got to go through the process. juan, any thoughts about that or the news that we had that the house democrats plan to subpoena the white house documents and officials and those of the state department. juan: i think what john roberts that is important here, you have a difference in terms of the nature of the investigations. previously it was, as john described, an intraagency activity because mueller technically was appointed from the justice department. the president is in charge of the justice department. now you have the congress of the united states engaged in impeachment and it changes the way that the court system would view a subpoena. it makes it far more dana: interesting and a good point because progressive democrats would want at this process to get underway sooner were frustrated, saying we would be able to get more information quickly if nancy pelosi would go ahead and pull the trigger. now that trigger has been pulled. i think it s pretty interesting if you look at the room, the president has the bully pulpit but he also has the pageantry. you have the white house, they are in the east room. i wonder about the president focusing on something bill clinton did which helped bill clinton which was to focus on the fact that i m just here trying to do my job for the american people. he has labeled them the do-nothing democrats. we ve heard do-nothing congress before but do-nothing democrats. if you say it enough times, he could stick? juan: i think it sticks with republicans, with his base. i don t see much erosion in terms of the polling but i don t because working with most people who are tremendously concerned about the nature of the phone call and the idea that he of course would be putting pressure on a foreign leader based on u.s. military aid to stop russian incursions into the ukraine. dana: speaker pelosi and her comment said i think i think she s aware being labeled the do-nothing congress doesn t help her politically either. she even says we are willing to work with the president on lowering drug prices. she brought up infrastructure. she wants to give it another go. martha: it s going to be interesting to see if they feel the pressure to get something done. to prove they can get something done during this process. perhaps usmca is able to get through this situation because really they democrats are going to need we didn t put the brakes on everything. we got some important things done. that may ironically open a pathway to a few things, perhaps drug prices as well. dana: yesterday it was reported that nancy pelosi wants a narrow focus on impeachment, on this ukraine call. but chuck schumer in the senate to say no way. broaden it. make it bigger. if they are not on the same page, why does it mean in terms of democrats and unity of message? juan: if and pelosi clearly needs to narrow and specify the focus. you had several committee chairman who wanted jurisdiction here. i think she settled pretty much on adam schiff in the intelligence committee versus going to jerry nadler and judiciary or even finance committee, maxine water and the like. i think that s the nature of her challenge. the challenge in the senate is a little different. you heard senate majority leader mitch mcconnell said he would have no choice but to proceed with a trial if, in fact, the house goes ahead and impeach as the president. the challenge areas is the senate majority leader a republican who has been very loyal to the president, trying to limit the scope in order to speed it through and make it seem like it was a pro forma process. schumer on the other hand wants to broaden it. it s a different arena. dana: martha, what about the congressional republicans who you have some of the president s supporters out there or defending but there s a lot they don t know. there seems to be some hesitation and letting the president take the lead as he seems happy to do or willing to do, seems like the safer bet. martha: you ve got that situation on both sides of the equation. democrats and trump districts and on the republican side with people who might be forced to take a vote that might be more difficult for them and perhaps because of their electorate they re going to be more cautious. on the senate side, cory gardner, thom tillis, martha mcsally, susan collins all in very difficult races as they look ahead. just one thing, if i may, going back to what you are asking about nancy pelosi s focus. i think she s focusing on the one element of the conversation that i think a lot of people agree is problematic. she doesn t want to lose focus on that because i think in the president s words when you break it down in terms of potential liability, most of the phone call was what he calls perfect but when you get to the part about joe biden and rudy giuliani s involvement in the process, i think that s the avenue for them where they see that as abuse of power with regard to the election. it s behavior that s easier to explain to people. martha: weeded out panel last night with a group of young people. dana: i loved it. martha: thank you. it was very eye-opening. they were bright and up on what s going on and they didn t really focus on exactly what the issue is. well, if people are unhappy they should be able to impeach the president. that s where this is going to end up. most people are not going to be able to tell you. dana: as we keep reminding people, impeachment is a political decision. there is no legal definition. martha and juan, if you will stick with me, we will wait for the president trump press conference. the state department, inspector general holding an urgent meeting in this next our briefing staffers from key committees in the house and senate about ukraine. she congressional correspondent mike emanuel is live on capitol hill. if you could catch us up on that while we wait for the press conference to get underway. in addition to congressional correspondent the briefing, there are a number of faces that we expect who are invited to appear on capitol hill in the days ahead. let s show them to you. special envoy for ukraine kurt volker expected to give an interview to several committees. monday deputy assistant secretary of state george ken s. tuesday a counselor. thursday, ambassador gordon sumlin, american investor to the e.u. former ambassador recalled from ukraine in may expected to appear a week from friday though it s not entirely clear how many will show up, we know secretary of state mike pompeo is fighting some of it. stay tuned. we will let you know who appears on capitol hill. speaker nancy pelosi earlier today said she s trying to be fair to the president in this impeachment inquiry process but some republicans counter that they think she s trying to be fast and not fair. dana: what about the threats to subpoena the white house? is that in the realm of fair? there you go. we expect the oversight chairman, elijah cummings, of baltimore, maryland, saying that he is prepared to subpoena the white house on friday saying the white house s flagrant disregard of multiple voluntary request for documents combined with stark and urgent warnings from the inspector general about the gravity of these allegations have left us with no choice but to issue this subpoena. t national security republican told us he thinks it s a fishing expedition. democrats will never be satisfied but all indications are this will be battled out in the courts. dana: mike emanuel, keep us updated. we will want to know more. bringing back martha maccallum and juan williams, as martha was gracious to be checking and bringing us the news, the new york times just reporting that apparently according to this report adam schiff, chairman of the intel committee, had seen a copy of the whistle-blower s initial complaints days before the whistle-blower filed with the cia, the actual form. the question about the whistle-blower now is at the top of everybody s mind. the president saying the identity should be revealed. democrats saying that s intimidating a witness a whistle-blower. this new york times report turns out to be true, it adds more of a wrinkle. martha: it raises the question of how politically motivated and it is to remind everyone, even the dni, when he went through this process and spoke in front of congress, said there was an indication that there was a political bias on the part of the whistle-blower but that given what was in his report, he felt it was irrelevant and that they should move forward based on the content of his report. all of this is obviously going to give a republican republicans and supporters of the president more fuel to the fire that this is cooked up in some sense by people who are inside the white house, connected to the cia agent who was old so working there and passing it along to the whistle-blower who gives information to a house aide in adam schiff s office. dana: fuel for president trump supporters but with the president s comments about the whistle-blower giving fuel to the democrats? juan: yeah, his line which has been pretty hot. on the one hand, people sort of marking. talking about traitors and spies and you know how things happen with treason. when you think of it seriously, you think about the president mounting a defense that amounts to these people are out to get me. they don t like me and they don t like my supporters. and it s intended to rally his base and secure support. to get back to what martha had reported earlier and that you mentioned, the new york times story, i think the idea to keep in mind here is that adam schiff is head of intelligence in the house and so one of his aides would be someone who might be in touch with the intelligence community and intelligence actors. dana: it s curious to me. i worked at the justice department. i never had a reason to be a whistle-blower or anything but you go through the training or you get your initiation, your they are. you re told that if you have a problem, then you go to the inspector general. there s a process to do it. to me it s a little bit curious and i don t know why the whistle-blower may not have gone directly to the inspector general. maybe they are friends or neighbors or something. it s washington, d.c. that s curious. the other thing is president trump brought up a couple times, the whistle-blower says this is secondhand information so the president has focused in on who is telling the whistle-blower this information and to me that person could arguably still be working in the situation room or the white house. i imagine it s a tense atmosphere there. martha: think about the prior phone calls released in the beginning of the administration, the australian president and one author whose calls were released during those early stages. it s a white house that has been on tenterhooks about leaks. that s the reason they say they ve been putting some of these conversations into this more secure environment. it s absolutely true that that person could still be there, as you say, dana. concerned about this and for whatever reason juan: didn t they say there were multiple people who spoke with the whistle-blower so there s multiple people. dana: that was one of the reasons the dni in the inspector general said this looks like something they should push forward. i wonder about it. you need everybody to be focused on the security of the country and not worried about other concerns. we are waiting for the president to come out with the president of finland. they will be having they had a great meeting in the oval office and the president took a lot of questions. they have a lot of issues talk about foreign policywise. we are waiting for them. they re going to be here any moment and we are going to pause for one moment to let our fox stations join us. i m dana perino in new york. president trump is about to hold a joint news conference with the president of finland that the big issue right now is still impeachment as democrats continue to plow ahead with their investigations of president trump s july phone call with the president of ukraine. the president a short time ago telling reporters there was nothing wrong with the call. he blasted the whistle-blower who reported it and democrats for going forward on impeachment. earlier today democrats threatened to subpoena the white house for records of the call. house intelligence committee chairman adam schiff said democrats were not fooling around. house speaker nancy pelosi called drums after the assault on the constitution. will bring in martha maccallum and juan williams of the fox news channel to help to figure all this out. the meeting the president is having today, when world leaders come to the white house, it s always an important meeting. in this case, they were certainly talking about 5g and the concerns about china aggression and technology. also about the arctic circle. we can expect that the president might make a little bit of news on that but the american press, we know them well. they re going to ask about impeachment and the president is already fired up about it today. martha: dana, you know better than anyone that perhaps the delay here is preparation for this and the communications discussions about how many questions that are going to take, on which side, to try to give the president of finland a little bit of breathing room so he can also answer questions relevant to some of the issues that you bring up but that the president is so incensed about what is going on. i think we have not seen him as fired up as he is now. tweet storms coming out pretty much every few minutes on this story. using the b.s. word spelled out as he has done before, we should point out come in his response to what s going on this morning. this is an extraordinarily hot situation right now and it s not looking like it s going to cool down anytime soon with these subpoenas flying around. dana: juan, you have been a reporter in a room like that. what s the strategy amongst the white house press corps? i know they talk a little bit amongst each other. what are the questions that we want to get asked. you can have a ruger border that screws everything off. juan: the thing is and this is the question for dana perino. i think the relationship with the white house press office is very important here in traditionally in situations that i ve been in, there s been conversations about not only were a red dress like dana has honked to get the president s attention but let s try to figure out, here s where the press office dana: what are the questions today that they would really want how is the president planning to respond to the subpoena. juan: i don t think this white house communications team has the same relationship team with the mainstream media reporters that previous administrations had. when it comes to the questions, i think the number one news topic of the day would be the subpoenas. how the white house intends to deal with it and how if, in fact, the congress presses ahead that this white house feels they would be on strong ground going to the courts to say this is an overreach and an abuse of congressional responsibility and oversight. the second area i think is the president himself talking to the president about going after the whistle-blower, that if you have a whistle-blower statute as was approved by this congress and the congress says we will protect that person s identity so as not to provide a disincentive for future whistle-blowers, how does the president understand? dana: i want to bring in ron fournier. former washington bureau chief at the associated press. he covered the clinton impeachment in the 1990s and broke the story that clinton would admit to the grand jury that had been lying all along. good to have you here. when you broke that story, there wasn t social media, there wasn t a 24/7 news cycle per se although it was getting going. what did you learn back then the reporters might think about today? when i was sitting in the front seat they are of the white house, i always tried to think what is the simplest question i can ask and not try to be too complicated. for example, i was the one who asked president bush, do you trust this man, pointing to putin? bush was kind of flabbergasted by such a simple question. the president of the united states. dana: i will hold you there there. thank you. president trump and president sauli niinisto, marking 100 years of diplomatic relations between our two countries. let s listen in. president trump: look at all the press you attract. do you believe it? they are not after me. [laughter] president trump: i hope not. you re lucky. thank you very much. today is my honor to welcome president niinisto of finland to the white house and mr. president, it s wonderful to host you once again in washington. we ve got to know each other over the last period of time then it s been a great experience. the president and i have just concluded very productive discussions on a number of exciting opportunities for our two nations. before going further, i want to express our deep condolences over the horrific stabbing attack that took place yesterday at a college in finland. america is praying for the victims and their families and we send our unwavering love and support. the american unfinished people are linked by an abiding commitment to self-government, individual rights, democracy and the rule of law. this past may, our countries celebrated the 100th anniversary of america s recognition of the independent nation of finland in 1919. as president wilson wrote at the time our recognition was prompted by the sympathies for a cost similar to that which caused our own declaration of independence in 1776. a century after we established diplomatic relations, the united states and finland remained united by those same cherished values. central to this effort as our nations close cooperation on matters of security and defense, although finland is not a member of nato. save a lot of money. finland participates in many nato missions and exercises and i m pleased that finland is substantially increasing its military budget. america and finland are also working together to advance stability, freedom of navigation and respect for national sovereignty and the arctic. both of our nations are committed to a secure arctic region free from external intrusion, interference, and coercion. simply put, we believe that the affairs of the arctic should be governed by the actual nations of the arctic, and as you know, there are other people coming into the arctic and we don t like it. we can t let it happen. we won t let it happen. the united states and finland are likewise partnering to ensure the security of 5g networks. it is critical that we use safe and trustworthy technology providers, components, and supply chains. we welcome the establishment of the innovation center in finlan finland. they ve done a fantastic job with that. this innovation center will greatly expand american and finnish businesses and cooperation in 5g. we are also glad that the finnish company, nokia, great company, global leader in 5g technology, developing its cutting edge products right here in the united states at bell labs in new jersey. of course united states foreign direct investment from finland totals over $10 billion. each year, finnish-owned companies invest more than $120 million in research and development in america and expand our exports by more than $1 billion. just today, finnish tires opened a new manufacturing plant in dayton, tennessee. a $360 million investment that s creating hundreds of brand-new beautiful jobs for a great state, tennessee. we love tennessee. they made a wise choice. you never lose when you go to tennessee. i encourage other finnish companies to increase their investments in the united states. there hasn t been ever been a better time to do business in america. we have passed the largest tax cuts and reform and also regulation cuts in the history of our country. we slashed business tax and we are fueling job growth through our record-setting campaign to abolish all of those really terrible, unnecessary regulations. we have plenty of regulations but many of them we didn t need. we got rid of them. the american economy is booming. wages are rising. incomes are soaring, and unemployment has hit its lowest level in more than half a century. we want finnish companies to join in america s extruder economic revival. so many countries are coming in, it s a hot place. we have the hottest economy of the world and it s the hot place to be. they ll want to be here. the president and i are also working on a way to improve international trade based on the principle of fairness and my favorite word, reciprocity. i hope that finland which now holds the rotating presidency of the e.u. council will support our efforts to achieve a mutually beneficial agreement with the european union. we are going to have to start doing something with the european union because they have not been treating this country right for many, many years and i tell them and they know it and they know it. america s trade deficit with the e.u. has been averaging $160 billion a year for many, many years. achieving more balance and robust trade flows would greatly benefit both finland and the united states. we also appreciate finland s strong partnership in combating predatory trade practices worldwide including the theft of intellectual property. from trade to security, from travel to commerce, we are immensely grateful for close and deeply valued french with the people of finland. great people. we are working on a deal to sell a large number of airplanes, fighter jets hopefully, to finland. see how that works out. we make the greatest jets in the world. we make the greatest missiles had military equipment anywhere in the world. nobody s even close. mr. president, i want to thank you for visiting the white house. the history of our two nations is a profound testament to our resolve. i look forward to continuing to work alongside of you. as we safeguard our precious sovereignty and build a future of hope, harmony, and peace for the american and finnish people. thank you very much for being with us at the white house and the oval office. we had a very special number of hours. appreciate it very much. thank you, sir. thank you, mr. president. first of all, i will live through your deliver your yor condolences to the finnish people. before meeting, i had some spare time so i visited a couple museums here. museum of american history, museum of african history and museum of american indian history. in addition to that, i had a possibility of attending a ceremony in arlington. mr. president , you have here great democracy. keep it going on. we had a very good discussion with the president, like you mentioned. our diplomatic relations are 10. during that time, we have developed our cooperation not only in official meetings like this but american and finnish people, scientists for example, meet each other, cooperating, working together. we have quite a lot of cooperation and security sector also, in defense. because i think we share the feeling that the most important thing for the nation is to guarantee security to its citizens. that is the starting point for finland also, this cooperation. i wanted to take up with the president the importance of transatlantic cooperation. well, we all know europe needs usa. but i say that usa needs also europe. we know the price of everything. we should recognize also the value of everything. we share the same values, democracy, human rights. in that we are very similar. europe has, in a way, awakened during the couple last years to understand also more about the security point of view. i just wanted tell you that in my opinion, the stronger europe we have, the stronger partner you have. the arctic area, you know finland is very north, is becoming more and more interesting, like the president said. we both come alongside with six countries from the arctic council. we are working heavily. there are surely possibilities, like the maritime roots are being opened. maybe there are also resources. but there are huge risks. one of them is that we should keep the low tension we are used to having there. that is what we have been discussing. i do appreciate the president s position to emphasize that it s not a place for military. but an even greater challenge is the environment and a very glad that we have started to talk two years ago in this very house about black hole. it s not maybe the worst which causes climate problems but everybody can understand that the black comes down in ice and snow. when the sun meets it, it melts down. melting of sea ice in arctic is very crucial. i used to say that if we lose the arctic, we lose the globe. we have a couple of words that are very important on arms control. some of us remember the first years of the cold war in the 1960s. there was no agreement at all, just cold war. we can t let the situation return no agreement at all about arms control. that s why it s important to try to negotiate new agreements and continue the new start agreement. that will be of good new start for international cooperation. you referred to 5g. the issues as a whole, we are very proud to have the excellence of center of excellence in helsinki. usa has been very helpful in that. very many countries are working there together to fight against the future nature of hybrid warfare. when it comes to providers in that area, i m not very willing to point out any country or company. we are maybe a bit late from usa making the risk assessment. it will be prepared in one or two weeks time. after that, we are in a place that we have to choose the tools to perfect us. mr. president, i want to thank you very much for having a possibility of meeting you here. it s very valuable. i found the discussions very open, very interesting. thank you, sir. president trump: before we take questions, something happened that s been going on for many decades and we came to a conclusion. can i ask ambassador pence to explain the importance of what just took place. it s been going on for many, many years. this is ambassador pence, no relationship to our great vice president. hard to believe. nobody believes that but it s true. i have been in produced as his father, cousin, brother, uncle. we are friends. good afternoon. when i arrived in helsinki about a year and half ago, there was a stack of papers on the desk. one of which concerned indigenous peoples from the southwestern united states, arizona, colorado. i refer to them generically as hopi indians. they were one of a group. in 1895, a lot of their remains had been excavated and removed along with 500 artifacts to finland. there they have remained despite a lot of activity to get them back. i will jump to the end and say due to the good offices of our state department and in particular president niinisto and his entire team, we have secured a mutual agreement whereby all of those remains including a number of petrified bodies will be going back to be put back where they were buried. it s special to us. i think it s probably special to indigenous peoples everywhere around the globe, that we are all concerned about paying appropriate respect to those who have departed before us. thank you, thanks to both presidents for supporting it. president trump: thank you. that s a good job. that s been going on for many, many decades. so i just want to thank you. john roberts. mr. president, thank you. president niinisto. if i could, i have two questions to ask. maybe i could ask them separately to get a fresh answer from each one. the three house intelligence cs looking into the impeachment inquiry gave notice that they will be sending a subpoena to the white house for documents and other materials. will you cooperate with them subpoenas? president trump: i always cooperate. this is a hoax, the greatest hoax. it s a continuation of what s been playing out, john, for the last since my election i would say. probably will find out soon but probably even before my election. this is a fraudulent crime on the american people. we will work together with shifty schiff on pelosi and all of them and we ll see what happens because we did absolutely i had a great call with the president of ukraine. 100%. you have the transcript. and then schiff went up as the chairman of the committee and related a call they didn t take place. he made up that language. hard to believe. nobody s ever seen this. i think he had some kind of a mental breakdown. but he went up to the microphone and he read a statement from the president of the united states as if i were on the call, because what happened is when he looked at the sheet which was an exact transcript of my call done by very talented people that do this, exact, word for word. he said wow. he didn t do anything wrong. so he made it up. he went up to a microphone and in front of the american people and in congress he went out and he gave a whole presentation of words that the president of the united states never said. it has to be a criminal act. it has to be. he should resign. some people even say it was treason. but it was a very sad thing. just so you know, the call was perfect. the real call, the call i made. many people were on the line. i knew that because usually when i speak to foreign country leaders, you can name any one of them, but when i speak on the phone that i know that we have many people listening from various intelligence agencies. our knowledge, i know all about it. so this isn t something like gee, i m on the line. let s talk about a big secret. many people on the line. i don t know how many. we ll find out i guess. many people, mike pompeo was on the line. he didn t say anything. because they listen for knowledge and for security reasons and for a lot of reasons. the president of ukraine at the united nations the other day and previous to that, he announced through spokesperson, said there was absolutely no pressure put on him. there was no quid pro quo. at all. if you look at this whistle-blowers i have a lot of respect for whistle-blowers but only when they are real. his report of the phone call was totally different than the fact. but what got them was they never thought i was going to release the call because i don t like doing that. i hope i don t have to do it again. release phone calls to foreign dignitaries to foreign leaders. i don t want to do that, john. i don t want to do it again. but i did it with the permission of the ukrainian government to become permission. we called up their representatives and ask them would be okay? otherwise i couldn t of done it. and if i wouldn t have done it, i would ve been exposed to ally because the whistle-blower report didn t he say seven or eight times i said quid pro quo. in other words, you re going to do this or you re not going to get money. in all fairness, bite and it. he s on tape. in all fairness, you have at least four united states senators, democrats, who set it and they said it a lot stronger than even schiff and his made up story said it. obama when he was dealing with the president of russia, not putin. he said hey, hey tell vladimir i can do a lot more after the election. you remember that? everybody thought isn t that cute western monkeys that cute? my talk and my responsibility. instagram said i never knew you were that nice. he said it loud and clear. it was perfect. it was perfect. that a thing wrong with it. to impeach a president over father was committed by other people that want to win and election in 2020 which they won t, it s incredible. this is the greatest hoax. it s gone on for a long time. we had the mueller collusion delusion, okay? that point on for years. and that s finally done. no collusion, no obstruction, no nothing. it was a joke. everyone knows it. it was from the day one. no i get three days of peace and i m walking into the united nations, going to meet with the biggest leaders in the world, and i hear about the word impeachment. i said what did i do now? it was a doubt a beautiful conversation that i had just remember, the ukrainian new president, fine man, said i don t know what you re talking about. there was no pressure. he cited a number of times. what s your second question? you shouldn t be asking two questions. do me a favor. ask oneesident. can i come back to you? president trump: we ll talk later. let me see if i like the question. go ahead. maybe for the first time in three years i ll have a good question and i will love it. there s a report that came out before you and president niinisto walked out here that the whistle-blower met with a staff member of adam schiff. president trump: i love that question. it shows that schiff is a fraud. thank you, john. can i finish asking it? president trump: there s nothing to finish. the whistle-blower accordance the report met with members of adam schiff s staff. president trump: i hate to say it s the new york times. i can t believe they wrote it. maybe they re getting better. your response to the fact that that happened and that schiff may have learned with the whistle-blower new? president trump: i think he probably helped write it. i give a lot of respect for the new york times for putting it out. it happened as i m walking appear, they handed it to me and i said to mike. i said whoa, that is something. that is big stuff. he knew long before. he helped right it. it s a scam. it s a scam. to finish on it, i appreciate it, i love the second question by the way. should ve asked it first. but let me say the whole thing is a scam. the mueller deal was a scam. the russian collusion was a scam. you can ask putin. nobody s been rough around russia then donald trump. okay? with that being said, it would be great to get along with russia and we will get along with russia because it s smart. nobody spent tougher on russia. ask one please. you had a conversation with president trump about 5g and how the nokia, finland s big company, could fill in the space and you met with chinese president xi during the summer. you renewed the ties of friendship between the nations. do you believe countries, western countries, can put huawei equipment and their 5g cores are at risk of national security? thank you. like i told already, and europe, the situation as may a bit different from that here because the main company you mentioned is inside europe. what european union is now doing is making a risk assessment, asking each country what kind of experience, what you have seen and found out. that will be in a few weeks time and after that we have to decide together in the european union what kind of tools we need to protect ourselves. you refer to my discussions with the president xi. we didn t talk about 5g when meeting and we know that nokia is a major factor in this area. they will answer for themselves. thank you. president trump: picked somebody who s really nice. a really nice person. i think they re all nice and finland. are there finnish reporters? reporter: i have one question for president trump and one question for president niinisto. mr. trump, how will this political storm affect the u.s. foreign policy especially its relationship with finland? second, for president niinisto, because it s a big issue here at the moment, have to ask what kind of favors has mr. trump asked from you? president trump: or the other way around, you mean. of favors i asked? both ways? okay. president trump: the political storm, i have lived with that from the day got elected. i ve done more in this administration has done more than any administration in history of this country in the first two and a half years. i am used to it. for me it s like putting on a suit in the morning. people say to me how does he handle it? rush limbaugh said i don t know of any man in america that could handle it. sean hannity said the same thing. others have said the same thing. i don t know any other man in america. because it s all a fraud. because of that and because i know i m right and because i m doing a great job for the american people, i m very, very happy living the way i m living. i thought i would finish off the first term without the threat of people making false claims. but this one turned out to be incredible. all because they didn t know that i had a transcript done by very, very talented people word for word. done by people who do it for a living. we had an exact transcript. when we produced that transcript, they died because you look at the whistle-blower statement and its vicious, vicious. the whistle-blower, there s no question in my mind that bad things have gone on and i think we ll get to the bottom of it. i think it s going to be a total reversal. but i ve lived with us. i have lived with this cloud now for almost three years, more than that. probably started even before. i think nobody has done what i ve done when you look at tax cuts and regulation cuts and rebuilding our military and right to try, right to try. that means people that are terminally ill and very sick, the right to use our medicines, are great medicines, because we re so far ahead of every other country. so many things that we don t. our vets are taking care of. we have choice. nobody thought we could ever get a choice. that s when you have to wait on line as a vet. you go outside, you get a doctor and we pay the bill. you not to wait for three weeks to see a doctor if your event. we cherish our vets. at least this administration does. for many years they didn t. i take care of the vets. no administration has done and i ve lived with that from the dan got elected. so i m fine with it. we had conversation and discussion on an equal basis which i really appreciate. i had one request specifically. i wanted the president to take more notice, transatlantic relations. i consider it s useful both for usa and europe. we were discussing trading. i told the president was that what we are doing will be finished in two years time. and we have five candidates. three from europe and two from united states. he answered that ours is best. reporter: thank you. mr. president, i would like to ask about your use of the word treason. you ve used it repeatedly in the last few days. do you consider anyone who opposes you treasonous? president trump: no, i consider when they live. when they stand before our great body and our great chamber and they make up a story that s fiction, like schiff did. he took that perfect conversation i had with the ukrainian president and he made it into a total lie. it was a total fabrication. you do admit that. it was a total fabrication. he said this is what and the only ones that don t like my conversations are the ones that never read it but they heard shifty schiff. that s what i call a lie and because of the fact that he is lying about the president of the united states as to what the president says. believe it or not, i watch my words very carefully. there are those who think i m a very stable genius, okay? i watch my words very, very closely and to have somebody get up and totally fabricated conversation that i had with another leader and make it sound so bad, it was so evil. now i see this that just out minutes ago where he met at a time that was impossible to have done unless there is corruption involved. just so you know, we ve been investigating on a personal basis through rudy and others, lawyers, corruption in the 2016 election. we ve been investigating corruption because i probably will. i was going to definitely but i probably will be bringing a lot of litigation against a lot of people having to do with the corrupt investigation having to do with the 2016 election. i have every right to do that. the way they have treated me and other people, they have destroyed people, they have destroyed their lives with a phony charge that never existed and that was collusion, never existed. and you had 18 people who hated donald trump and you have bob mueller who hated donald trump and in the end that, they couldn t find one damn thing about donald trump having to do with collusion. this after two years and spending $42 million. i have been looking at that long and hard for a long period of time. how it started, why it started. it should never happen to another president ever. i ve been talking about it from the standpoint of bringing a major lawsuit and i ve been talking about it for long time. we ve been investigating the corruption having to do with what they did to my people. they destroyed many people. they came down to washington to do a great job and they left home. they left washington dark. they were dark. they came down here. i say bright eyed and bushytailed. they wanted to do a great job for the people. they wanted to do a great job. we won the election. then they get served with subpoenas, all the subpoenas. look at nancy pelosi. nancy pelosi hands out subpoenas she has to approve it. she hands out subpoenas like their cookies. you want to subpoena? here you go. take them. like they are cookies. ryan wouldn t give anyone a subpoena. mark meadows, jim jordan, devin nunes. i m not saying wrong or right. but paul ryan, no, let s talk about it. that s a big thing to give a subpoena. let s talk about it. two weeks later they are still talking. they want subpoenas to investigate the corrupt democrats in the corrupt people on the other side. paul ryan would not give subpoenas. nancy pelosi come here you go, take it. who wants a subpoena? every day you get subpoenas. paul ryan was actually right probably. because they should never, ever allow thing like this to happen to our country again. thank you very much. reporter: can you make clear right here what do you or what did you want president zelensky to do with regard to joe and hunter biden? president trump: you look at what he said. he brought it up. i think he brought up the name rudy giuliani. what i want is the following and i have said this loud and clear. we have our investors here. we have mike pence here. why are we the only ones they give the big money to the ukraine? we give money to ukraine and it s bothered me from day one and you have plenty of people here. i say how come it s so easy. united states gets ripped.
truth will always matter, that journalism and journalist will . i m shepard smith. goodbye. greg: wow. i m neil cavuto and like you have a little stunned and a little heartbroken. i don t know what to say. shepard smith, as i said, just a few days ago on this very network. a decent human being, a heart as big as texas. i didn t say texas at the time. just lower manhattan. it wow. a better newsman you probably cannot find. again, a bigger more emotionally connected to humankind, you cannot find. shepherd, i don t know what the heck you are planning to do or where you will go but i just know you will be great at doing it and you deserve the best that life has to offer. i m sorry if i m a little shell-shocked here but i m going to miss my buddy. all right. onto the news at hand as shepard would say because breaking news does change everything and we have a lot of it going on right now including stocks that are just taking off. it s the word right now, the tentative deal is to leave the dial up about 300 plus planes, although it had been up more than 500 points at one point. the president is in the oval office. he has with the vice-premier of china. he is also with his treasury secretary, trade investor, they are all gathered in their taking questions from reporters about all of this on a day where the markets seem to think that a truce is better than nothing and this looks like a substantial truce at that. i want to get to read from john roberts at the white house on all this. john, and publicize of being a little shell-shocked. take it away sir. i ve just been trying to compile my thoughts as well. neil i walked out did a hit and suddenly got hit by a subway train. holy mackerel. let s try to get to the news at hand as i do just news that we just heard. completely shocking. the president with leo, the chinese vice-premier and the oval office, yesterday the president seemed to indicate things were going well in terms of trade and talks with china. whether treasury secretary treasury secretary mnuchin was in the briefing just a while ago. he was saying that things were looking good and there you see leo coming over from the trade representative office to the white house. i asked secretary mnuchin, i said the stock market seems to like what it s cheering and he said the stock market is always right. you pointed out the stock market was up about a hundred points higher than it is so maybe they were expecting more than what we seemed to be staying out of the oval office. or maybe this is just a temporary expectation. we don t know. but the president did see, as you can hear the helicopters landing behind me, he said we have come to a very substantial phase one deal, the deal was getting ready. it ll take three to five weeks to do. they come to a deal on intellectual property which was one of the three big pillars here in terms of getting a new deal with china. they have also come to a new deal on financial services as well as currency, china apparently is going to buy some 40 to $50 billion in agricultural products which may be either 20 or 30 million metric tons of soybeans, also buying pork. getting conflicting figures on the number of tons. not as much of they bought in 2016 but more than they bought in 2017 and 2018. this thing is all just it s in the works right now. we will hear more from the president coming out in just a few minutes from not recording getting handed off to the pool but on the surface at least, this does not look like the grand bargain that the president was looking for initially. he talked and alluded to earlier this week the idea that they might get some sort of a partial deal in place. he said it s not his preference but he wants to get a big deal. but china internal has blinked a little bit. they were on the crushing, punishing weight of their sanctions. they have rest stomach asked for it sanctions that were scheduled to go into effect on october 15h which were originally going to be post on october 1st but the president gave pause because of china s 70th anniversary. those tariffs will now and not go into effect on tuesday. we do not know about the other tariffs that are expected to go into play on december but for the moment it looks like the temperature is coming down in this trade war. it s off of a rolling boil. it s now down to a simmer and now it may be getting too cool further from here. we have to wait to hear from the playback to hear what exactly was said in that meeting. neil: thank you very much john roberts. before i gauge reaction from i guess you are, i can ignore the element in the room and the elephant leaving the room, shepard smith leaving the network. he s one of the originals as i m i ve had he just didn t age but i did. he didn t get a pound, i gained maybe 5 pounds. why are you laughing? so i m with you, little shell-shocked. i apologize if i m not my normal cells but let s get reaction. i m just a little bit bummed. all right. kelly jane torrence, susan leave. susan, i begin with you. on the markets may be reassessing this trade deal? it s still a very big amount. we have been up over 500 points. what are they sort of turning over? they are turning over the details. the devil is in the details in any agreement and this is a feel-good path because it s been that they are looking for but it s better than what it was and tariffs don t go up this month, don t go up in december, and you have some sort of agreement. once again giving more market access to financial firms and the fact that they are starting with a better foundation i think is positive going into the nem here? the oval office and the advice from here, china, so we will get a better idea. an optimistic this is substantial deal and obviously, many were waiting for this, the better part of a year and a half wanted to see we are headed in the holiday season come about the fact that a lot of chinese toys coming to the u.s. but that is something that affects every household. i think the pressure is on to get a deal. we have to keep in mind with the agriculture this is something that if there is relief, they can do it in the farm bill. but i think the politics here are pretty important. neil: just to be clear, i know these are new developments but that tariffs are delayed now and will take effect next tuesday so that stage off would have been higher tariffs on $250 billion of goods. and in december, $350 billion worth of goods. but now, the question becomes the trust to verify the reagan line and whatever china does, we have to have proof. and i guess a means by which we can hold them accountable. what do you think? well, that is a great point, neil, i m feeling your pain. many will miss shepard smith when he s gone, but the devil is in the details and after that, will those details actually take effect? remember, we were talking a few weeks ago because donald trump said he is only going to make a big deal with china, in other words, a deal that included intellectual property, currency manipulation, all of those things. i started worrying the last week or so, he was backing off of that. we still don t know how big this deal is. he said substantially become apparently, but he also said it was phase one. it is to include intellectual property and on manipulation so you are right, these are huge things that china has been reluctant to do anything on. basically since the communist regime took power and opened up its economy. so i think we do need to verify for sure. and i will say i m glad that donald trump is a little anxious to make a deal, take some heat offer they the impeachment and have people talking about something good especially going into 2020. the trade war is really the only big negative and the economy. i was worried that he would get a quick deal, anything he could get. so i m happy to hear it is intellectual property that is a part of this. the trade deficit, we d know it doesn t matter much but we know chinese companies using american technology because of chinese government has either stolen it or forced american companies to handed over. neil: all right, guys, i want to thank you and we are waiting for the president, still talking to the oval office about some of the things he is saying, china is responding on a currency pack and committed to buying more farm goods. he didn t say how many more farm goods or get back to the levels before we had this trade war bubbled up almost a year and a half ago. he talked about the fact that they did discuss hong kong, but great progress is being made in hong kong and the chinese have toned it down a bit. this would be beneficial to the economy as well. the president saying i think it will be tremendous for china what we have been doing well. and i think we will do better. on top of that, waiting to hear from the president. and we hear fox is still trying to assess one of the best and brightest going on to bigger things, happier things, personally more rewarding things. i can only wish shepard smith best for the 23 years a quarter of a center we have known each other. it is a pleasure and an honor. we will have more. (vo) with fair, transparent value for every trade-in. enterprise makes it easy. oh, wow. you two are going to have such a great trip. thanks to you, we will. this is why voya helps reach today s goals. .all while helping you to and through retirement. can you help with these? we re more of the plan, invest and protect kind of help. voya. helping you to and through retirement. i can twhat? ve it. that our new house is haunted by casper the friendly ghost? hey jill! hey kurt! movies? i ll get snacks! no, i can t believe how easy it was to save hundreds of dollars on our car insurance with geico. i got snacks! ohhh, i got popcorn, i got caramel corn, i got kettle corn. am i chewing too loud? believe it! geico could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. neil: a couple of things on capitol hill today on impeachment problem. in the middle of that, mike. neil, good afternoon former ambassador marie is eager to talk to, and arrived on capitol hill six hours ago, career diplomat spending 33 year in foreign service and her opening statement obtained by fox news, marie yovanovitch said i was incredulous that the u.s. government chose to remove an investor as best as i can tell on unfounded and false claims by people who clearly with questionable motives. earlier house intelligence said she was biased against president trump. this was somebody not just supporting clinton s when clinton s running, but telling clinton was going to win, prognosticating about it but also wants to trump one was badmouthing the trump administration in ukraine to ukrainians and state department staff. so she s got a lot to answer for. we are looking forward to questioning her this morning. also today u.s. appeals record court for the financial records and the president s team trying to block the accounting firm to hand over the situation the information. 2-1 and d.c. saying it is a victory for the democracy. as the courts reaffirm congress authority and responsibility with oversight and consider legislation on behalf of the american people. pelosi said congress will continue to protect our democracy, neil. neil: thank you very much. so where does this go right now, the president could take this all the way to the supreme court of the united states. joining us now the former prosecutor professor lowell at quinnipiac. what do you think? where does this go? well, i think the president is in trouble. this decision, judge, this is court appeals for washington, d.c., the d.c. circle. the same court found in the watergate hearings the senate committee investigating the watergate could not enforce a very similar kind of subpoena. however, they did say that the house of representatives is now investigating the president for wrongdoing and it s cold impeachment. i think what happens with this, neil, nancy pelosi prompts the house to take an official vote to empower the judiciary and officially investigate for impeachment. if a subpoena it would get enforced and he would have to turn his records over and you and i talked about before it s all about the southern district and never about mueller. to be when saying everyone with the mueller probe he had so much more to worry about. the former governor of new jersey agreed with you in the southern district probe. the southern district once the stuff, right, the southern district, back-and-forth, get stop. are you saying that if you have a formal probe or inquiry launched by the house, this supersedes them and they have to hand these over to the house committee? i think right here, it came out today, and i think the dissent has it right. which is, legislature has the power to issue a subpoena for the purpose of furthering the legislative function to create laws. so we have the power to issue subpoenas, however, this court said over 20 years ago, my decade is wrong, and the context of potential wrongdoing by the president. if you want to look into that commit is the house as responsibility and it has to be within the context of impeachment. in that case my think what happens if they are mack is the judiciary committee offers the s enforce but this case going to the supreme court has to take i, and it s going to be another monumental neil: why do they need the tax records again? essentially it was to cross reference payments made and the white house said it was a very spacious argument. that is exactly right. how does this further the legislative function and the judge and his dissent, that is the question he asked. i think that is the right question by the way. if this goes on appeal to the supreme court, my sense the dynamics of the court today, the court asked the same question and it comes out the same way. neil: which is what? there is no legislative function here. neil: but different with impeachment. now come at the same time i would not be surprised if they say look, the wrong committee issued the subpoena so let s assume the judiciary and the context of impeachment investigation tomorrow issue the same subpoena. i could see the court saying the first one was wrong. the first one that got upheld here, but the one that got subsequently issued by the judiciary, they will uphold that one and he will have to turn over his records. that is where going back five months ago and we talked about this with governor christie, i think there is enough of a danger they are mack. the other thing i will say, what is going on with the indictments against the two associates of rudy giuliani, there is practice, folks who know how to manage the rules of impeachment. but the senate needs to go on defensive here. i don t know that his legal team neil: you mention going on defensive, we have from the white house, this tape to wrap up speaking with reporters. he has argued that he s not going to cooperate with the second. if they call if nancy pelosi calls for that, does that change things? look my think he will end up handing over the documents. neil: the tax documents, well, that gets leaked out. let s go to another segment. he s getting impeached. there is no two ways about it. neil: in the house. then it will go over to the senate. ceremonially they will walk them over and then the senator will try him as chief justice. neil: but you need two-thirds. when he two-thirds and you and i had this conversation, trump was more like clinton then nixon. nixon really faced criminal charges and the threat of going to jail. that was not clinton, he was never going to jail. trump, when we talk nine months ago i said he s more clinton then nixon. as we sit here today he somewhere in between and moving more towards nixon. that is where his record that came out of michael cohen s office and everyone in the southern district, that is what he needs to worry about, real criminal exposure. which then the other side incredible leverage and that is where he becomes more like nixon then clinton. neil: the eight years in question, obviously, that is what they are looking for in that time frame. okay. so who knows what s in there. neil: john, you pressed in on a lot of stuff but again i remember coming and adjusting the focus on the mueller stuff but focus on what is happening in the southern district of new york. that is coming true and a nightmare for the president. he just wrapped up speaking with reporters a while ago to talk up a trade deal in hopes no doubt people will focus on and not so much as impeachment development. president trump: there is nothing bigger than what we are doing with china. i think it is important these are the questions that are asked. and generally, we have the premier of china, one of the most respected men in all of china in the world for all that matter. we have great respect for him and a great friendship with him. and we have come to a very substantial phase 1 deal and i will go through some of the points. and then i will ask the vice-premier to say a few words. in any comments that he may have. we have come to a deal pretty much subject to getting it written. it will take probably three weeks, four weeks, or five weeks as you know we will be in chile together at the big summit. and maybe it will be then or maybe it will be sometime around then. but we ve come to a deal on intellectual property. financial services, a tremendous deal for the farmers, a purchase of $40 billion to $50 billion of agricultural products. just to show you how big that is, that would be 2.5, three times what china purchased at its highest point so far. so they will purchase 16 or $17 billion at the highest point, and that will be brought up to $40 billion to $50 billion so i suggest the farmers go immediately by more land and get bigger tractors. they will be available at john deere and other great distributors. but we will take the purchase of agricultural products from $40 billion to $50 billion meaning in that neighborhood $40 billion to $50 billion and i believe what they have been doing is about $8 million right now. and so the other thing that i will say, over the last two weeks, a lot of purchases have started going back to the farmers. and doing a lot of business with us which we appreciate very much. but it really started a few weeks ago. but they intend to go up ultimately once the agreement is signed from $40 billion to $50 billion. really, that was from a base of probably $16 billion and right now, it is $8 billion and the $8 billion was lower than $8 billion. they got up to $8 billion because they were purchasing quite a bit the last week. so we also have the agricultural structural issues. we have some incredible progress on the structure and structural issues. and perhaps, you could discuss that on agricultural and explained the importance of the structural issues that we have saw. i would say probably as important as the purchases is the fact we have corrected a variety of spf sanitary files, sanitary issues corrected, biotechnology used, and it will be much easier now for american farmers to be able to ship to china. we have made some corrections on our side too that will help the chinese side. president trump: and that has been completed pretty much done. that is correct. president trump: and other big issue have come to conclusion on is currency, foreign exchange and steve, do you want to explain that please? we ve had good discussions with the governor, of china, the central bank. we have also had extensive discussions on financial services opening up their markets to our financial services firm. so we have pretty much almost a complete agreement on both of those issues. as you know, mr. president, currency has been a big concern of years since the campaign. and we have an agreement, transparency into the foreign exchange markets and free markets. we are very pleased with that. president trump: we ve also made good progress on technology transfer. and we will put some of technology transfer in phase 1. phase 2 will start negotiations almost immediately after we have concluded phase 1. and i think phase 1 should happen pretty quickly. so intellectual property, we have an agreement on intellectual property. financial services, the banks and all of the financial services companies will be very, very happy with what we have been able to get. i think johnny is going to be happy china is going to be happy because they will be served by these institutions tht go into china. it will be a tremendous thing for banks and for financial service companies. agricultural, structural issues, tremendous for the farmers as steve said, that is almost as good as which i disagree with him on that but almost as good as going from a billion dollars and ten to $16 billion, which was their all-time high at $240 billion to $50 billion so we will be up to 40 to $50 billion of agricultural purchases, which means the farmers are going to have to work a lot of overtime to produce that much. that is the largest order in the history of agricultural by far by two and a half times. in technology will have some technology transfer in the agreement. but technology transfer will largely be done here and also in phase 2. so we are going to start negotiating phase 2 after phase 1 is completed and signed. and then there may be a phase 3 where we may get it done in phase 2, so either two or three phases. we are very happy and we have great respect for china and president xi. and i want to tell you that i watched the 70th anniversary in great detail. it was an incredible event. congratulations on the 70th, everyone, that was really something. it was amazing to watch. he has done a terrific job in all of my team has done a fantastic job. and i just want to thank you for being here with your team. you are a tough negotiator, congratulations. it is something that we realized from the beginning. important not only for china but the u.s. and the world. and every time there is adue, tn incredible. every time the market is good news, the market would go up incredibly. and then other news that was very big, the market just didn t really care. just seem to care about the deal with the usa and china. and that is okay with me. so we have had a tremendous relay, negotiation, very complex negotiation. but something that s going to be great for both countries. mr. vice premier, would you like to say something? first on behalf of the chinese government we would like to extend our thanks to president trump for your congratulatory message to the 70th anniversary of the founding of the people s republic of china. [speaking in native language] we very much agreed to get to the china u.s. economic relationship right, it is something good for china or for the united states and for the whole world. we are making progress towards a positive direction. [speaking in native language] within a day, i have had very good communication with both ambassador light kaiser and senator manoj him. and mr. president, we have made substantial progress in many fields. we are very happy about it. we will continue to make efforts. and thank you for this opportunity for me and all of my colleagues. president trump: thank you very much. it is a great honor. i think that the currency foreign exchange agreement that we made where we made tremendous benefit both in terms of the magnitude of it and the simplicity of what we are able to do. so make a very complicated process much simpler and that in and of itself, i see something we have been looking for. yes, chris. president trump: thank you very much, can i see that? thank you very much. yes, yes, this is for guys like john who are not good with chinese. we will have that magnified so fast, your head will spin. well, a tremendous message and thank you very much. and i have read this and i appreciate it very much. this is from president xi. and we knew that we were going to have a very successful phase 1. it took us a long time to get here, but it is something that is going to be great for china and great for the usa. we appreciate it very much. please congratulate president xi. thank you very much. thank you. president trump: please. the the vice-premier has requested and the president approved while going through the process of documenting, we will not implement increase of tariffs scheduled to go in place 25% to 30%. that is correct. that is correct. president trump: including the other ones. on behalf of i think we are very close. i think this is an important phase and a lot of things, the agriculture will be completed because when we bring it up to $50 billion, a project that will be the number. i don t know that, there is a question whether the farmers can produce that much. i think they can, but they are literally. i said it jokingly but i mean it, they have to buy more land. which is okay. it would be a good time to own land in iowa, nebraska and a lot of other good states. they are very happy about it. but we are taking it from $8 million which it is now and it was about $2 billion to $3 billion, but if you take the highest that it ever was was $16 billion, and we are bringing that t to $250 billion, so from $16 billion to $15 billion so anywhere between $40 billion to $50 billion. they actually started purchasing a lot from the farmers. we just got messages from the midwest. the $20 billion. , 20 million tons. tremendous amount of soybeans. that was over the last couple of weeks. we got word of, you know, we notice it quickly because you see the price go up a little bit. it is incredible the way the market works. yes. [inaudible] president trump: that is right. we are working enforcement right now. that is largely agreed to and that is one of the things. we have an enforcement provision. and they are working out the final aspects of that enforcement position and i think that is something, bob, you wanted to say something about that? so we are going to have a very elaborate confrontation consultation and various areas of difficulties to be resolved,h parties have allocated and assigned various people with a structure under it. and we are down to the final details of what will happen if there is not a resolution. that is kind of the final issue we are putting together. but both sides agreed, absolutely have to have it. a workable dispute settlement mechanism. we are very close to that. the u.s./china relations right now, what kind of u.s. u.s./china be working at? i think it is great. the relationship may be better than it s ever been. we are very tough with negotiation and never been in negotiation like this but i give china tremendous credit because for 25 or 30 years, they have done very well with the u.s. and now, we are doing something jointly. we are doing it in a fair manner. i give china credit what they have done over the last 30 years. tremendous credit, i don t blame china but the people representing the country. now, we have a deal and ultimately, i think it will be fantastic for china and fantastic for the united states. could you clarify if this is an actual deal or progress towards a deal? president trump: it is subject to everything getting paper. we have agreed in principle to just about everything i mentioned, all of the differences and now we are getting it paper to. i don t think it should be a problem getting it papered. china wants it badly and so we wanted also. we should be able to get that done over the next four weeks. we are going to be in chilly in five weeks so we will see in terms of signing when it happens. we will do a formal signing with president xi myself, but this is just something that is very exciting. i m very excited, actually, we cover more territory with agriculture. i m very excited for the farmer. there s never been a deal for this magnitude for the american farmer. > president trump: bob you were talking about it? i m sorry the question is in this agreement, we are not dealing specifically with wall way, it is a separate process. hunter biden spew to where is hunter, by the way? we are going to discuss where is hunter because i will stop at the helicopter, but right now, in respect to china and we will only ask questions [inaudible] president trump: i have not brought up joe biden. china can do whatever they want with respect to the bidens. and china can do whatever they want with respect and they have $1 billion going to somebody, that is up to china. but we do have to look into corruption but no, that has not been brought up. a deal over the next three, four, five weeks won t fall apart. president trump: anything can happen. that can happen, but i don t think it will. we know each other pretty well. we have negotiated this for a long time. there is a possibility, of course, on unable to get paper to. but i ve been doing this for a long time. the vice-premier has been doing it for a long time. many other deals for many, many other years for both of us. his people are very professional s, great professionals, and so am i. the likelihood of it falling apart is not so good. what do you think, steve, what would you say? we have a fundamental understanding on the key issues. we have gone through significant amount of paper, but there is more work to do. we will not sign an agreement unless we get and can tell the president that this is on paper. i know the vice-premier needs to go back to do some work with his team, but we have made a lot of progress the last two days. president trump: and most of this is known by the people in china by president xi. he has been following it closely. mr. president, you have been working together over a year and a half. can you comment on the progress in the middle east? president trump: are you from china? yes. president trump: the people of china have to be very proud of your team. they are unrelenting. i say that in a positive way. they are unrelenting. they are tough, they are smart, and they have negotiated a great deal. but i think the people of china should be very proud of this team, starting with the vice-premier, a very good man. we ve gotten to know each other well. and everybody on my team respects your team. so i think they have handled themselves incredibly well. mr. president president trump: they increase from 25% to 30%, that will be suspended. we will be paying 25%, but not increasing to 30%. and then you might want to mention the additional the additional tariffs, the second half, that is scheduled to go into effect december 15. and the president has not made a final decision on that, but there was plenty of time to make that decision. that is certainly part of this process with the chinese. we are working our way through it. so the first one has been suspended. the second one is subject to the president making a final decision, but the way that this works out, that will be well in advance of that day. [inaudible] president trump: students? no, no, no, no. we are going to be very good to chinese students. nope, i ve heard this question many times before, including from our own security people. we want all the people that want to come over from china, the greatest university system in the world. we keep it that way. one of the reasons, a lot of students from china. we are not going to make it tough. we are going to make it great for everybody else. mr. president president trump: i think that is important. i think, steve, it is very important. our universities are available. the world comes into use our universities. we have the greatest system in the world. and china will not be treated any differently. i think it is important for you to say that to the people of china. our system is open. people get in based on merit. we have incredible talent coming in from china. they occupy a big space in the universities. and we want to keep it that way, okay? there was a false rumors going around that we were going to close, disclose just close to china and that is so false. i have already exchanged an opinion. mr. president, i think you have been clear in your directive all along through trade negotiations in your view on universities. we will follow-up. president trump: i can give them my word that i want him coming here. want the greatest talent in the world coming to the universities, harvard, yale, princeton, the school of finance, stanford from all of these great schools. we want them coming here. and that is what we have. that is one of the reasons we have this great system. there have been discussions about that but not by me. i want you to know why end those discussions quickly. mr. president, extending we will be making a decision on that and evaluating although i would comment assuming we close the agreement and we have the assurances, that will be a big step in the right direction for our evaluation. mr. president, [inaudible] president trump: we do, we do a lot of business with chinese companies. we have two be with certain companies careful and we have to pay very close attention. but tremendous business with chinese and chinese businesses. it has tailed off. we have tailed it off and we purposely tailed it off, but that will start building up quickly again. we expect that to build up to a much bigger extent than even before. when you talk about a strained deal with china, president trump: this is phase 1 and that s a big part of it. the farmers, the intellectual property, a lot of areas are covered here. frankly, in great shape, intellectual property, financial services will be a massive move to the banks and credit card companies and all of these companies, including ownership interests. before, you had to do certain things that made it difficult for banks and institutions to really go into china. china has really been opened up now for the first time to financial services into the big banks and credit card companies and other types of financial services. so that is a tremendous thing. i think we have complete agreement on that. intellectual property come a lot of agreement, but we will have some of that included in phase 2. agricultural should be done. and signed a big deal with japan. that was a very big deal. a lot of that had to do with agricultural. so the farmers are doing well. currency, foreign exchange, we are set on that. that we ve been able to do and only through simplification but the importance of it, it is very important. technology transfer. so we will have some technology transfer here. some will be in days too. we will be able to include with phase 2 but it may be phase 2, phase three. what about a phase 1? you said earlier this week you wanted one big deal. president trump: because it is such a big deal. and it covers so much territory. that doing it in sections and phases, i think, is really better. and we are talking about very big. don t forget, we covered fully agricultural even in terms of agricultural structure issues. in terms of $50 billion of agriculture so that will be covered in its entirety. currency, foreign exchange will be covered in entirety. financial services, i think will be covered in its entirety. so the banks and lending institutions, all institutions are covered. some of technology transfer, large part of intellectual property will be covered. so i think it actually works out to be a unique package. and we can focus on phase 2. [inaudible] president trump: whatever it is. [inaudible] president trump: only good things and bad things. i think we have a lot of good things right now. [inaudible] president trump: what we are doing, we will start you on right away to get this papered right now. it is already partially papered. much of this has already been completed from the standpoint of paper. but we think it will take four weeks, five weeks, something like that. we happen to be together in chile and that can be a point or maybe not. president xi will be there and i will be there at the big summit. in the oval office, you said you are about four weeks away. [inaudible] president trump: i think we got to know each other a lot better. there s been a lot of back and forth since that happened. we thought we had a deal and perhaps they didn t. but it didn t work out that way. this deal is a bigger deal than the last deal, relatively speaking. we are talking about big parts of it, financial services and agricultural. when we talk about $50 billion in agriculture, we never had that in mind in the first year. we were thinking about $20 billion come anywhere from $16 billion to $20 billion but now we are talking about $50 billion. so this is actually a much bigger deal. a big chunk of it but a much bigger deal than we had in mind. certainly in terms of, i would say, steve, financial services is bigger and more complete. intellectual property will be in both phases of the deal. are including it in this deal. because a lot of things have happened over the course of the last year. so i think this is actually, when you add it up, a more important deal, a bigger deal and more precise. the currency president trump: the currency foreign exchange is included. the foreign-exchange aspect of it is much more complete now than it would have been under the other system. don t forget come a lot of things have happened with currency and foreign exchange. we were not talking about a year ago. from china. when and where? president trump: we will find that out. that will be up to the vice-premier and president xi. so we will find that out. [inaudible] president trump: the united states has been doing very well. china might think, this will be tremendously positive. this is going to be tremendous thing for china. we have been doing well, and i think we will do better. we have been doing very well. we have been leading the world in many aspects of what we are talking about. i think we will do even better, and i think china will do tremendously well with this. this is a great deal for china and a great deal for us. is that annual or will it rise, that figure? president trump: do you want to define that? it will scale up to an annual figure, yes. within the second year. president trump: less than two years. hong kong president trump: we discussed hong kong and progress has been made by china and hong kong. i ve been watching, and i actually told the vice-premier, it has toned down a lot from the initial days of a number of months ago when i saw a lot of people and i see far fewer now. we were discussing it. and i think that is going to take care of it so. i think this too was a great deal for the people of hong kong to see what happened. i think this is a very positive thing for hong kong, but it really has come at the escalation really has deescalated a lot from the beginning. and we were discussing that. the chinese company president trump: we will look at the black list, and we will be making a determination which companies would be on that list. [inaudible] president trump: yeah, i do, i do. i think the federal reserve should cut rates regardless of this deal. we are higher than other nations. germany is loaning money and has to be paid back, they get paid, okay? it is ridiculous. and i think the federal reserve should cut rates regardless of how good this is. we have a great economy, but we have a federal reserve that is not in step with the rest of the world. so i think they ought to get in step. and if they were in step, regardless of the china deal, the china deal is much more important than the interest rates, but this has to do with more than trade. this has to do with world peace. this has to do with getting along. this has to do with the rest of the world. this is not just a deal on trade. this has to deal with a lot of friction and bad things happening in the world. so this is far more important than the federal reserve and interest rates. but the federal reserve should cut interest rates, absolutely. in the process for the ability president trump: i think it is help me because yesterday the biggest crowd, we broke a stadium record. we broke the record in minnesota. nobody has ever seen anything like that. you saw it and you understand it too. my poll numbers are going way up. the impeachment is a hoax. we didn t discuss it, but i will tell you, it is a hoax done by people who are losing. they want to try to use it on the election. i don t think it will happen and i don t think china believes it will happen because if they did, they would rather deal with a sleepy joe biden. he s not going to make it anyway but whoever does emerge from the other side, probably they would be better off waiting. but they also know that when i win, the deal gets even tougher. it gets even tougher. they expect that i will win. otherwise they would not sign a deal. it is very simple. mr. president, do you like terrace? president trump: i do like tariffs. [inaudible] president trump: we will have a deal that is a great deal beyond tariffs. it is an important deal for china and an important deal for the world and an important deal for the united states. this is a deal beyond tariffs. i really mean that. i think that world peace. there was a lot of friction between the united states and china. and now, it is a love fest. that is a good thing. that is good for china, and it is good for us but it s good for the world. the vice-premier said the same thing. he said it better than anybody could have said. he said this is a great thing for the world. he didn t say china or us, he said it s a great thing for the world. he s absolutely right. perhaps you would like to comment. the whole world is watching. president trump: the whole world is watching. it is amazing. but we want to provide peace and prosperity for the whole world. it is very, very much peace and prosperity. president trump: it s beyond the trade deal. rhetoric was getting tough, and we have ships and they have ships and we have planes and they have planes. you know, bad things can happen. stupid things can happen, but this is a great, a great thing that is taking place. we have a very good bonding relationship. and i have very little doubt that we will be able to get this thing finalized. it is not overly complex. then they will start phase 2. but this is important for a lot of reasons. thank you very much. i hear a helicopter. i hear a helicopter. i m going down to louisiana. they have a sold-out crowd in louisiana and hopefully, the governor of louisiana is not doing a very good job in louisiana. hopefully, he will get the 50% of runoff. have a nice new republican governor of louisiana. and i hope a lot of you will join us. are you joining us, john? did you watch last night? did you enjoy it? it was good to watch. president trump: a lot of people enjoyed it, john. have a good time, everyone. they cothank you. thank you very much. thank you. president trump: we will talk about that later. the president is leaving now. thank you. thank you, press, speech to the president has made it clear. we have the g.o.p. strategist, and at democratic strategist. this idea that it s going to be a trust but verify thing to use line from ronald reagan. if they do, it s a big deal, isn t it? markets have obviously rallied as a result of the framework of the deal. the deal itself as prompt described isn t a terrible deal. but the only reason why trump needed the installation of the first place was because of the threat he posted on twitter a couple weeks ago. the key here will be trump is not putting his foot in his mouth virtually on the internet and blowing up negotiations as they committed into writing. it could prove to be a major victory for the trump administration of amanda manifest itself we do it depends on what the chinese do. working with u.s. companies. charged with stealing information. that s the detailed part of it. lauren, how do you think it goes? i think we are going to have to wait and see how much is put on paper, what the actual agreement looks like once it s finalized. i agree i think it s a really good first step. trump, with the threat of the additional 5% on tariffs, it was a good pause. they made china blink a little bit to make progress in the trade negotiations. i was surprised to hear trump insinuates that could have been planes and ships and other things, insinuating there might ve been some escalation militarily if this had not gone through. i think it might ve been a stretch. neil: scared me a little bit. just wondering, the president was hoping this would take attention away. it s an achievement if it comes to pass but the impeachment bugs are still crawling around in here. the pursuit of his tax records and other testifying whether the president wants them to or not. you have these concurrent crises. i don t think this will totally take the limelight off the impeachment and all the other crises he has going on. in many ways it s an accomplishment for the president may be where we are not quite there yet obviously and there s a lot that can happen the next several weeks. depending on the president s actions. i think he saw the crisis he created by creating the chain te war with china. on the flip side, the democrats say we can move forward with an impeachment inquiry and still get things done. it s good it. it s good to see we are still moving forward with an important negotiation of the china and other important policies that impact our economy at home. neil: all this other noise around the impeachment stuff and everything else, we have a guest here saying at least in the house it looks like he could still be impeached. it might not go anywhere in the senate but it s interesting how this could all capitol hill with landmark trade deals to hear the president-elect and democrats landmark impeachment moves. yeah. i totally agree. it s really interesting to see how this is all going on, not just with trade deals. you have impeachment stuff happening but there is significant back channeling with the white house and an earnest way with the democrats in the house on drug pricing. i think they have shown a willingness to work together but you never know. when the impeachment stuff comes to a head, he is the decider. there are conversations going on the number of different issues between staff at least. neil: i want to thank you all very, very much. of final few words if i made the last 30 seconds. my friend and colleague of some 23 years, shepard smith, leaving this network. he defined this network in the early days. reporting is second-to-none and a journalist who always tried to get the story right and hold truth to power. there s always the back and forth between those conservatives do get upset, liberals who want to know more. we politicize everything. i can only talk from the human being perspective. damn good one. we will miss you. here is the five. jesse: i m jesse watters with kd, juan, dana, greg. it s 5:00 in new york city and this is the five. president trump unleashing on democrats and pummeling joe biden during a fiery campaign rally. it was his first since the democrats launch their inquiry. the president wasted no time going on the attack. president trump: democrats are on a crusade to destroy our democracy. that s what s happening. the wretched washington swamp
was one of the largest allegations? i believe it was the largest national delegation. included in that delegation was secretary perry. secretary perry, ambassador sondland, myself, ron johnson was there, and at the u.s. embassy at the time joe pennington. we have talked a little bit this morning, but the president zelensky s inauguration came together quickly? did. we had three days notice in which to put the delegation together. there has been discussion whether the vice president was going to lead that effort and as it turned out, he was not able to lead it. do you have any information where the vice president was unable to join? i don t. mr. morrison, do you have any information as to why the vice president was unable to participate in the delegation? no. ambassador volker, you testified during your deposition that aid in fact gets held up from time to time for a whole assortment of reasons, is that your understanding? that is true. sometimes the holdups are rooted in something at omb, sometimes it is the defense department, sometimes it is at the state department, sometimes it is on the hill, correct? that is correct. so when it was held up her 55 days for the ukraine, that did not in it of itself strike you as uncommon? no, it is something that had happened in my career in the past. i d seen holdups as assistance. i just assumed it was a part of the decision-making process. if somebody had an objection and we had to overcome it. in fact, there were concerns that perhaps president zelensky was not going to be the reformer that he campaigned on? that was a supposition that i made because of the meeting with the president on may 23rd, i thought that could be what was behind it. in fact the aide was lifted shortly after he was able to convene a parliament? i believe he let me get the date straight. yes, he was able to convene the parliament around the 1st of september, and i believe the aide was released on the 11th of september. when he was able to convene a parliament, he pushed through anticorruption initiatives? that began with a parliament seated on that day, a 24-hour session but then it continued for some time. that was an encouraging sign? it started off in a very encouraging way. yes. other than these things going on in the background with the pause in the aide, the u.s. regulations with the ukraine, you testified, you stated it was about as good as he would want them to be? can you repeat the question, i m sorry. you testified at your deposition that once the aide was lifted despite all of the things in the background that u.s.-ukrainian relations were strong and as good as you will want them to be? yes. you reference to that the security sector assistance was lifted, any hold on that that there was a positive meeting in new york? that s correct. was momentum putting pressure? that is correct. in your deposition you made it clear that president trump had a deep-rooted negative view on the ukraine in the corruption environment? yes. and you are first aware of his views back in september of 2017? that is correct. can you tell us about that? yes, and september 2017, i was invited by secretary tillerson to do a debrief with president trump before his meeting with president protege can go, i did the prebrief, and then i took part in the bilateral meeting. long before president zelensky was elected, president trump had a negative view of yes, a very strongly negative view. back in 2017 can you remember anything he said or did they gave you a feeling that he had these negative views? yes. i want to be very careful here, because this was a bilateral meeting between the two presidents. i don t want to stray and to classified material, i can tell you my impression was that he had a very strongly negative view of ukraine at the time. fair enough. he described the president s skepticism at your deposition as a reasonable position? yes. and i believe that you said most people who know anything about ukraine would possibly think that. yes. and you viewed it as your role to change his mind, that president zelensky was a former, not running for office for self enrichment, that he was indeed a good person? that is correct. during the may 23rd meeting with the president and the oval office, can you relate to us the concerns that president articulated about ukraine? yes, the president came into the meeting and immediately started speaking, he had just a string of comments that ukraine is a terrible place. they are all corrupt, they are terrible people. they tried to take me down. i tried to explain along with the others that were there, each of us took turns speaking, i tried to explain that president zelensky agrees with you. that he was elected because of that situation in ukraine and that he has a strong mandate from the people of ukraine to change it. that s why it is important that we actually show him very strong support now. but the president was not convinced, and he said that zelensky is no different. that he has terrible people around him. you know, it is not what i hear about ukraine, but we are telling him, but i hear that nothing has changed. talk to rudy, that kind of dialogue as i described. when the president said that ukrainians tried to take them down, did you have any idea what he was referring to? i did. i believe that he was referring to the rumors of efforts to interfere in the 2016 election by providing damaging information about the president or about paul manafort to the hillary clinton campaign. that was one of the rumors that had been out there and had gotten some support from the ukrainian prosecutor general. to the best of your knowledge, the president actually believe that? i believe that he was concerned about it. i don t know what he actually believed, but he brought it up. and mr. morrison, you are also aware of the president skeptical view of foreign aid, generally? yes. that there was an initiative that he was looking at foreign aid pretty broadly? yes. i m trying to scrutinize and make sure that the u.s. taxpayers were getting their money s worth? yes. the president was also interested in better understanding opportunities for increased burden sharing among the europeans? yes. what can you tell us about that? the president was concerned that the united states seem to bear the exclusive brunt of security assistance to the ukraine. he wanted to see the europeans step up and contribute more security assistance. was there any interagency activity whether it was with the state department or the defense department, coordination by this national security council to look into that for the president? we were surveying the data to understand who was contributing what and sort of and what categories. and so the president expressed concerns of the inner agency trying to address them? yes. and by late august, as we just discussed with administer volker was there some hope that president zelensky will pushed through some of the forms? yes. did you hope throughout this period that eventually zelensky will be able to demonstrate his bona fides and would subsequently be able to get the president to lift the aide? yes. in fact, you traveled with ambassador bolden to the ukraine right around labor day weekend, correct? yes. and met with president zelensky on august 29th? ambassador bolden had a meeting in a staff that meeting. and that s right around when they met through and pushed through the forms? as i recalled, the meeting between ambassador bolden and zelensky was the first day of the new product. and they were named to prosecutor? a brand-new persecutor general, a brand-new cabinet, yes. pushing through some legos dominic legislation yes, immunity. and i believe that you provided some color into this meeting and experience, and he said that the ukrainians had been up all night working on some of these legislative initiatives. yes, the ukrainians with whom we met were by all appearances exhausted from the activity. was ambassador bolden encouraged by the activity? yes, he was. was a meeting altogether favorable? quite. at that point in time after the meeting, ambassador bolden, did he head off to warsaw with the vice president? or did he just, i know that you went to warsaw? we had a few stops between ukraine and poland, but yes. ambassador bolden proceeded to warsaw where we were expecting to ensure everything was staged properly for the president s arrival. did you have an opportunity to brief the vice president? i did not. did ambassador bolden? he did. did what do you remember with what ambassador bolden shared about those zelensky meeting? i was not there. the issue i remember most starkly was ambassador bolden was quite annoyed that sondland crashed. but the ambassador at everything he needed to ensure that the president or the vice president were well prepared. did you brief ambassador bolden before he had an opportunity to meet with the vice president? i do not need to. ambassador bolden was there. but as far as you know, ambassador bolden communicated to the vice president that the goings-on in ukraine were positive? that is my understanding. with president zelensky, and at this time ambassador bolden was advocated for the lifting of the aide? he had been for some time, yes. did you participate in the warsaw meetings? we had a reduced schedule from what had been arranged for the present and in the vice president, but the vice president met with president duda of poland, then he met with president zelensky and i participated in both meetings. what do you remember from the meeting with president zelensky? it seemed very positive. what was the message? president zelensky raise the issue of the aide? correct. and how did the vice president respond? he represented his support of the aide and the strong commitment of the united states to the ukraine, and explained that president trump because this is after the politico article had come out that made clear that there was a hold, he explained what we were doing was the united states government and the inner agency was examining what more europe could do in the security space, and taking a look at how ukraine was performing what has been a history of corruption. was there any discussion during the meeting with president zelensky on the part of vice president about any of these investigations we have come to talk about? no. so burisma was not raised? no. the 2016 election was not raised? no. in the president did not mention any investigations at all, did he? no. you mention the august 28th politico article, was that the first time that you believe that the ukrainians may have had a real sense that the aide was on hold? yes. from the 55-day period spinning july 18th through september 11th, it did not really become public until august 28th? that is correct. ambassador taylor and i had a number of phone calls where we in fact talked about did the ukrainians know yet, because we both felt very strongly that it was important that we ensure that the president was able to make the decision to release the aide before they ever found out about it. ambassador volker, is that also your recollection? yes, it is. it was not until the politico article that is correct, i received a text message from one of my counterparts on august 29th forwarding that article, that s a first they raised it with me. can you share a little bit about your communications during that time period about the aide? i did not have any communications with the ukrainians about the hold on eight until after they raised it with me for the same reason that tim just gave, the hope that we could get it taken care of ourselves before it became something that they became aware of. inside the u.s. government, i was aware that the hold was placed. i was aware of that on july 18th. it was referenced at an inner agency meeting, and i got to read out from that meeting from one of my assistance. i then immediately spoke with several people when the administration to object. i thought that this was a bad decision, or a bad hold. maybe not a decision, but a process, and i wanted to make sure that all of the arguments were marshaled to get it lifted. so i spoke with the pentagon. cooper, i spoke with the assistant secretary of affairs at the state department who would represent the state department at the next higher meeting. i spoke with officials in the european borough, national security council staff. so i was actively trying to convey that this needed to be lifted. and i wanted them to be able to use my name in doing so, because i felt that the best prospect for positioning ourselves for negotiations with russia is the strongest defense capability for ukraine. and during this time period, did you come to believe that any of these investigations were part of the hold up in the aide? no, i did not. backtracking just a little bit on july 3rd, you met in tehran, with president zelensky. and there has been some you know, ambassador taylor and mr. kent provided some testimony that they had some apprehension that part of this irregular channel that ambassador taylor referenced would rear its head in toronto. i m just wondering if you can tell us whether that in fact happen? yes, thank you. i can only tell you what i know. [laughs] there may have been other conversations or other things. but i know that we had a conversation, bill taylor, and i believe gordon sondland and i around the 28th of june that later connected to i believe a conversation with president zelensky. i may not have been a part of the latter. that being said, i was convinced after that conversation that we had gotten nowhere. we had our white house briefing of president trump on may 23rd, he signed a letter inviting president zelensky to the white house on may 29th. and for several weeks, we were just temporizing with the ukrainians saying we are working on it. it is a scheduling issue. we will get there, don t worry. and i told bill and gordon that i was going to see president zelensky in toronto, and i feel an obligation to tell them the truth, that we have a problem here and we are not getting a date scheduled. here is what i think the problem is. it is the negative information flow from mayor giuliani. and that he would, also that i would advise him that he should call president trump personally. because he needed to renew that personal relationship and be able to convey to president trump that he was serious about fighting corruption and investigating things that happened in the past and so forth. i did all of that with president zelensky in a public side after a formal bilateral meeting. during that meeting in toronto, or the series of meetings, there was no discussion of preconditions, investigations or anything? no. no. you were there with mr. kent? yes, i believe so. did you have any discussions with him about preconditions or investigations? not at that time. later on these things came up we were talking about a statement, whether there were investigations. but i believe at this time toronto it was more referring to investigations generically that that is how you go about fighting corruption and that president zelensky should reaffirm his commitment to president trump in a direct phone. at any point in time had mr. kent raised any concerns to you about any of this? not at that time. next event i want to cover is the july 10th meeting. in ambassador bolden s office. we talked about it a little bit this morning. i don t know if you caught the coverage, but there was a testimony that at some point mr. sondland mentioned investigations and reportedly the meeting ended abruptly, what can you tell us about that? thank you. and let me answer that question first, i would like to come back to your prior question if i may. but on the july 10th meeting, this was a meeting that we had arranged between alex to nelly oak who was the national head of security defense counsel, and national security advisors bolden attending the meeting was also secretary perry, ambassador sondland, myself, i believe fiona hill, and zermak. it wa was a counterpart visit. i thought that this would be the best opportunity, the first high-level meeting we were having in washington with a senior u.s. official to ambassador bolden after president zelensky s inauguration. i thought it would be an opportunity for the ukrainians to make their case that they are the new team in town, real deal about fighting corruption. i was disappointed with the meeting. as it transpired, it struck me as down in the weeds. talking about reform of national security structures in ukraine, legislation that they were working on coming in at the big picture and now the bilateral relationships. so i was a bit disappointed by that. at the end of the meeting, i do recall having seen some of the other testimony, i believe ambassador sondland raised the point of investigations in a generic way. this was after the meeting was already wrapping up and i think all of us thought it was inappropriate. and the conversation did not pick up from there. it was the meeting was over. we all went outside and we had a picture taken in front of the white house, and then all of us except ambassador bolden went down to wardrobe to talk follow-up on how we follow up to keep up the momentum and to the relationship. we broke up into several small groups. i remember having a conversation with secretary perry and one of his assistants about energy reform as part of that. i don t recall other conversations following up on investigations of burisma. went to the best of your knowledge there certainly was no precondition discussed, right? no. no. again, the issue, the security assistance was one where i thought that this was really related to a general negative view about ukraine. there was nothing specific ever communicated to me about it or the reasons why it was held. and we certainly did not want to talk about it with the ukrainians. we wanted to fix it. okay. a couple of weeks later, the july 25th call happens, and you were headed to ukraine during that time period? yes, i was already on my way to ukraine two days prior to that. and he received readouts both from the u.s. side and the ukrainian side, can you tell us about that? yes, so i was not on the phone call. i had arrived in ukraine and i had had that lunch with mr. yermak s that we saw on the day of the phone call. i d been pushing for the phone call, because i thought it was important to renew the personal connection between the two leaders and to congratulate president zelensky on the parliamentary election. the readout that i received from mr. yermak and also the u.s. side, even though i m not exactly sure who it was from on the u.s. side, but there was a u.s.-ukrainian readout that was largely the same. it was a good call. it was a congratulatory phone call for the president s win in the parliamentary election. president zelensky did reiterate his commitment to reform and fighting corruption in the ukraine. in president trump did reiterate his invitation for president zelensky to visit him in the white house. that s exactly what i thought the phone call would be, so i was not surprised as getting that as the readout. did you have any discussions about ambassador taylor about this? at that time. we were together in ukraine at that time, we went the next day to visit the conflict zone. and i m sure that he heard the same readout that i did. and you had a meeting with president zelensky on the 26th? yes, we had a meeting the day after in the morning before heading to the conference. >a some witnesses have raised about the call in the meeting with president zelensky? only the very bare-bones readout that i had received that was also how it was discussed in the meeting with president zelensky. so to the extent there is been assertions that president zelensky was concerned about demands president trump had made? i don t recall that. you do not recall that? let me turn that around and say, he was very positive about the phone call. i don t recall him saying anything about demands, but he was very up beat about the phone call. there was no discussion on part of president zelensky about how to navigate the various i do not recall that. concerns that people have articulated? i do not remember that. and mr. zelda nasty on the deposition that in no way, shape, or form in either readouts from the united states or ukraine did you receive any indication whatsoever or anything that resembles a quid pro quo, is that correct? that is correct. the same with what would go for this new allegation of bribery? i only saw an allegation of bribery in the last week. it is the same common set of facts. instead of quid pro quo, now it is bribery. i was never involved in anything that i consider to be bribery at all. or extortion? or extortion. okay. mr. castor, may i just two specific points? of course. one is that i am reminded that the meeting with ambassador bolden took place on july 10th, and i did not become aware of the security assistance until july 18th, that is another reason why that did not come up. at that point in time you did not know that the potential pause in the security assistance was brewing? i did not. i heard about it for the first time on the 18th as well. and a second observation? absolutely. i remember seeing some of the testimony from mr. kent, a conversation where he had asked me about the conspiracy theories that were out there in the ukraine. i don t remember the date of this conversation. in my view was if there are things like that, then why not investigate them? i don t believe that there is anything to them. if there is, 2016 election interference but i was thinking of, we will want to know about that. but i do not believe that there was anything there to begin with. you deposition testified in your deposition that it was perfectly appropriate in your mind? correct. that is been u.s. policy for years. so certain ukrainians involved with burisma company that i think is the only possible thing to look at, as i said. i don t think it is plausible or figure that vice president biden would be taken in his duties, but the ukrainians in the society that we know ukraine has been for decades trying to act in a corrupt way or to buy influence, that is possible. secretary kent last wednesday told us that there was an investigation into burisma trying to recruit millions of taxpayer dollars and the ukrainians were pursuing an investigation, there was a bribe paid, where you tracking that? i was aware of those kind of things. i could not give you those kinds of details. i just know that there was a reputation around the company. okay. subsequent to those facts and the bribe being paid, the burisma company wanted to improve their image and added some folks to their board including the president of poland, and hunter biden, are you familiar? that s what i understand. and to the point that the ukrainians worked with the folks of burisma emma hired those people to their board where protection purposes so that they could engage in misdeeds. if that was a fact worth investigating, you certainly would be supportive of ukrainians trying to get to the bottom of that, right? i cannot speculate any of the specifics of what was motivating burisma or not. ukrainian government authorities investigating possible corruption by ukrainian citizens is a perfectly appropriate thing for them to do. mr. morrison, i want to turn our attention back to the july 25th call, you are in the room. did anything concern you on the call? no. after the call ended, you will like colonel than men, one of your next steps was to engage the nfc lawyers, and your reasons for doing that were slightly different than colonel vinmen s. you went over three concerns. do you want to share them with us or would you rather i do it? i think i articulated two concerns, if i m forgetting one, please remind me. but the two that i had were one, i did not see representatives of se regal on the call, so i want to make sure that the legal adviser and his deputy were aware of the call, and i was also concerned about taking steps to protect the limited disclosure for fear of the consequences of it leaking. you were concerned about it leaking because you are worried about how it will play out in washington s polarized political environment, correct? yes. you were also worried how that would lead to the bipartisan support here in congress of towards the ukraine, right? yes. you were also concerned that it might affect the ukrainians perception negatively? yes. in fact all three of those things have played out, haven t they? yes. you did not ask the lawyers to put it on the code word system, correct? i want to be precise about the lexicon here. i did not ask for it to be moved to a compartment and system. you just wanted the transcript to be controlled. i wanted access to be restricted. okay. when you learn that the transcript had been stored on the department server, you believe that was a mistake, correct? it was represented to me that it was a mistake. i was trying to pull up that man can t, because we were in the process of pulling together ambassador bolden s materials and the presidents materials for what was a planned by lat between potus and president zelensky, and when i went to do that, i could not pull up the package in our system. and i did not understand why. i spoke with the nfc secretary of state staff, asked him why, they did their research and told me that it had been moved to the direction of john eisenberg, whn i asked why? that was the judgment he made, that s not necessarily mind a question, but i did not understand it. and he essentially told me i gave them such direction, he did his own inquiry and represented back to me that it was his understanding that it was kind of an administrative error. when he also gave direction to restrict access, the executive secretary of staff understood that as an apprehension that there was something in the content of the men con that could not exist on the lower classification system. so to the best of your knowledge there is no malicious intent in moving the transcript to the compartment and server correct. to your knowledge anybody on the nsc staff that needed the transcript for their official duties always was able to access it, correct? people that had a need to know i need to access it. once it was moved? yes. the memcon of the july 25th call was in your experience prepared normally? yes. there is not an exact transcription of what is set on the call, correct? correct. that is no takers in the situation room, and they prepare a draft. it is circulated around relevant parties? essentially. yes. you had a responsibility for coordinating any evidence? yes. we look at the shorthand, we will call it a transcript, but the memorandum of conversation. and we make sure that the transcription is as close to accurate as possible given our requirements on what the president act. it was testified that he thought it was very accurate, did you as well? i view it as complete and accurate. colonel vin mended say that he wanted a couple of burisma s inserted, i think it was on page country in one of the sections where president zelensky was ta, were you aware of that edit request? i understand that he said in either this proceeding where the deposition that he wanted that request, yes. at the time did you understand that he asked for that? i don t recall that. it was my practice. if i waved and edit accurately representing the call, i would edit it. if he did not exist in my notes, i would not have made the edit. he just on page 4 wanted to swap out the word company for burisma. and when that edit from colonel vindman was not installed, did he give you any negative feedback that it was crucial that that edit get in the document? not that i can recall. did he raise any concerns to you about the accuracy of the transcript? not that i can recall. did he ever raise any concerns you generally about the call? when we were discussing the track changes version of the memcon, he had some concerns about the call. we agreed that we wanted that more full throated embrace of president zelensky and his reform agenda. and we did not get it. okay. you indicated in your deposition that when you took over the portfolio of poor dr. hill, julo potential issues in colonel vindman s judgment? yes. did she relay anything specifically to you? why she thought that? not as such. it was more of an overarching statement from her and her deputy who became my deputy that they had concerns about judgme judgment. did any other nsc personnel raise concerns with you or colonel vindman? yes. what were some of the concerns that were brought to your attention? i m sorry, i m going to instruct you not to answer. i m going to instruct him not to answer. because i think it is beyond the scope of what you are asking for. these concerns mr. castor, predated any involvement in with the ukrainian sector assistance. well, during the deposition i asked mr. morrison whether others raised a concern that colonel vindman may have leaked information. you did ask that, yes. and your answer was? others have represented that, yes. i asked whether you were concerned colonel vindman did not keep you in the loop at all times with his official duties? yes. and in fact when he went to the national security council lawyers following the july 25th call, he did not first come to you, is that correct? correct. and you were his supervisor, correct? correct. do you wish that he had come to your first before going to the lawyers? yes. and why is that? if he had concerns about something on the contents of a call, that is something i would have been notified of. just as a matter of practice, since we both went to the lawyers, he did not necessarily both need to, and economy of effort may have prevailed. at any point subsequently did he become frustrated that he felt cut out of some of the ukraine portfolio? yes. what was the nature of his concerns? well, the easiest way to say it was he was concerned with the ukraine trip that he was not he did not go. he asked me why it is my practice to have a number of the conversations with ambassador taylor one-on-one. and there were certain other matters. okay. and did you ever get the sense that you resolve these concerns? or did they linger? i explained to him my thinking. and that was that. okay. before my time expires, investors volker, i want to turn quickly to what ambassador taylor describes as the irregular channel. he was a participant with you and ambassador sondland hundreds of text messages, correct? correct. did he ever raise concerns about what was going on during the time period of the early august time period? only has he are reflected in the text messages themselves, where he said is this now linkage or are we doing this? he had a concerned about in general rudy giuliani, which i think a lot of us had, but he said what you do about it? about the role that he is playing? and as you note, we were in frequent contact, near daily cont that on in charge of, and one was an irregular channel? yes. i don t agree with his characterization of that, because i have been in my role for a couple of years, i have been the lead on u.s.-ukraine negotiations and negotiating with russia and the inner agency, work and work with our allies. and we had a secretary of energy who is a cabinet official, and i think having the support from the various u.s. officials for strengthening our engagement with ukraine, i view it as a very positive thing. and if the concern is not us so much, because we are all u.s. officials, but mayor rudy giuliani, i don t view that as a channel at all, because he is not a represent of the u.s. government pretty is a private citizen. he was a useful barometer in understanding what could be helpful communication from the ukrainian government, but not someone in a position to represent the u.s. government at all. okay, thank you. why don t we take a five or ten minute break. if i could ask the audience to allow the witnesses to leave the room first. we are in recess. welcome to the five, taking a break in the second impeachment proceeding. kurt volker and national security official to morrison testifying this afternoon, at it for about two and a half hours, taking a 5-10 minute break, we will use that time wisely to get some commentary for the five, greg, why don t we start with you and your overall impressions of the day. greg: what an absolute tremendous waste of time for everyone who watches this. this is not a hearing. it is a human resources meeting, okay. anybody who has been on both sides of the coin, right? either you have been in charge of a project, or an incoming boss. understands what you are seeing. it works like this, you are in charge of a department, a new boss comes in, he needs to establish a new way, his stamp, your priorities don t jive, there is a tug-of-war between sides, the boss always wins. here s the great news about th this, the priorities that the person leaving often remains the custodian is gone. but the struggle is necessary to prove the viability of the existing structure, right? they say we need this for the ukraine. and trump is like, i don t know. it comes together. this is not impeachment. this is what happens in the office. the irony is the people who work for a living are not here to watch this to laugh at this. the media thinks it is important, because they have never been at a workplace situation. they have never managed anything. they have never been an incoming boss. so they are tricked into thinking that this is something important when this is something that happens every single day in everyone s business. it s a freaking joke. dana: jesse, let s get some thoughts from you. volker did say that he changed that sondland who testifies tomorrow, he already amended his testimony. volker did that today. he did not know burisma equaled an investigation into the bide bidens. jesse: volker, sondland, and burisma. i turn on the television and cbs is on. they have a hearing. i watch, take a break. i go out, i come back. and a soap opera is on. cbs jumps out of it. and i m thinking, what is the difference between this and a soap opera? it is a bunch of cliques of people talking about their feelings. they have opinions. they have concerns. you know at the bottom line was today? they asked straight up, was there a bribe? no. did anybody ask you to bribe anyone? no. was there extortion? no. and they understand why a schiff lead with the witnesses he did. he leads with the small ballplayers, the smaller bureaucrats who did not know anything. they were not involved in anything that complained about everything, and then when you get to the bigger guys like these guys and the guys that we will see in the next few days, all of the big dog say, yeah, it was not a problem. you cannot have a phone call that everybody listens to, and everybody on the phone call, at least most of them say, yeah, it is fine. and then one guy freaks out and goes to and talks to the whistle-blower and then you get to the juicy stuff. the guys vindman talks to the whistle-blower and schiff shuts it down. and the media does not even care. you have the big juicy nugget sitting out right there, and the media does not even want to talk about it. that s how you know this thing is rigged. dana: if you guys can prepare the sound bite to numbeo get katie in here and juan. this is about the political climate and something that i thought was notable about lieutenant colonel vindman said earlier. as i stated during my deposition, i feared at the time of the call on july 25th how its disclosure would play in washington s political climate. my fears have been realized. after this call, did you ever hear from any ukrainians either in the united states or the ukraine about any pressure that they felt to do these investigations that president trump demanded? not that i can recall. dana: all right, katie, those were two pieces. katie: backing up with the president of ukraine has been saying for months on end that adam schiff has been questioning almost calling the present and if you can a liar for saying that there has been no pressure. i think the democrats brought him in saying that he would provide some substance of what he was saying. he was on the call with firsthand information, but he did the opposite. adam schiff tried to jump in and protect the whistle-blower, but exposed that vindman had actually talked to the whistle-blower who had secondhand information about the phone call. vindman also blew out of the water and other point that they have been saying that the phone call was put onto the secure server as a way to cover up the call, well, vindman who is on the call says we put it there, because we are afraid of leaks and a number of witnesses who back that up. so when it comes to the person that we have first hand information. which we do too, because we have the transcript. there was nothing damaging when it comes to bolstering the narrative, the democrats despite being on the phone. dana: if you have in the control room the volker sound bite that was just from a little bit ago, we will get one to reply to that. in hand site i know that they saw the corruption involving the company burisma as to vice president biden, so that is very different. it was remarkable, the latter being unacceptable. in retrospect, i should ve seen that differently. had i done so, whatever is my own objections. dana: that was part of his revising of remarks from earlier. juan: what we have learned today specifically is that we have a much clearer picture now that when people say, well, this is about the president seeking to look into corruption in a corrupt state, the ukraine, this is pretty clear today from the testimony we have heard that it is about joe biden. he was not interested in the larger aspect of corruption in the ukraine, he was interested in joe biden that there was a server they are really was involved in the 2016 campaign interference another work of the russians. we have heard that today from people saying that is not the case. the other side of this comes from the very start, dana, when we heard devin nunes who is the lead republican on the house intelligence committee impeachment panel here, and what he said was about the media. this will pick up on what we re hearing, the media has blown this out of proportion and the media is making something out of it, but you watch the hearing and you see the media and you say, this is mind-blowing testimony, i don t hear anything like that, says devin nunes. it is a bunch of scams. and then there were the questions about dual loyalty for vindman, were you offered a job by the ukrainian? it keeps going. it s like they have, they are looking for any issue or anything to take away from the idea that we are talking about impeachment of president trump, not impeaching joe biden. dana: can i ask you something about looking ahead? greg: i would love to look ahead. dana: tomorrow night is yet another democratic debate, ten or 11 of the candidates will be on stage. i m going to make a prediction, but i will let you talk about your prediction. i don t think they will talk about this. greg: i don t think you can, what can you talk about? i feel like this is a human resource discussion, remember that this is supposed to be politically motivated. the phone call. who is a benefiting? if they found nothing on joe biden, that would benefit him. if they found bad stuff on by then, that would benefit the democrats because you get the loser out of the race. so this is beneficial for the democrats. i would stay away from this, because half the people eyelids, they are turning this off. dana: do you think tomorrow night in that debate that the question is about impeachment and the president? what you think candidates would do of that? will there be any candidate that says impeachment is not what we need to do? jesse: that is a bold answer to distinguish yourself from the rest of these people, but i don t think anybody will say that tomorrow. and i don t think any of the moderators are going to have sort of any strong aggressive follow-ups when joe biden says look the other way. you have testimony here that the former ambassador to ukraine called for an investigation into burisma. you have testimony under oath saying that to lobbyists of the burisma went to the state department and try to get this prosecutor fired. biden is on the phone three times with the president of ukraine, a corrupt guy that left the country with billions of dollars right after the prosecutor replied. why don t we know what is on that phone call? i would like to see the transcript of that. there is so much damaging information on joe biden and on his son, and the media has no interest in it whatsoever, the american people are looking at the dense, boring testimony. the ratings are going to go down and down day after day, and at the end of the day, this is about impeaching a president. and there is no clear crime. if there was a clear and impeachable high crime misdemeanor, it would be right in front of everybody s face. but because there isn t, half of the washington people think this guy should be locked up, the other half think it is a scam and the american people have had enough. if you look at the poll that just came out today, independents are now opposing impeachment 10% more. this is not working well with the american people, especially independents. dana: is that because it does not feel overwhelming day after day on this? juan: the numbers are pretty overwhelming. dana: i meant evidence. juan: the fox poll has 49% impeaching him or move. but when you talk about tomorrow s debate, that s where you want to take this, dana. i think that there is a lot going on. and democrats are again pretty clearly in support of impeachment and removal, i don t think that is too contentious an issue for tomorrow s debate. i think the issues are what is going on with elizabeth warren s campaign, number one. which looks to be flatlining. and then of course the rise of pete buttigieg. you just told me about a poll you saw. dana: out of pete buttigieg up 25%. and biden and warren at 15%. he has momentum. juan: and compounding, that is also in line with what we are seeing an eye well where he has jumped to the lead in iowa. so i think there will be new attention on pete buttigieg as now potentially a front runner. and joe biden. everybody talks about joe biden, oh, poor joe biden. he is looking weak. joe biden is doing great in the national polls, in fact, fantastic, where he is lagging is in fund-raising, and i think right now when you see people entering the race, and of course we are talking about former mayor bloomberg and the former governor of massachusetts coming to say they are going after biden. what happens on the stage tomorrow night? the people like pete buttigieg, warren, sanders go after biden? we don t know. if you want to prove that he cannot fire real fire from the real donald trump, tomorrow is the night. katie: the question about impeachment is an interesting one. if they answer a question, they will probably use the word bribery because in swing states, democrats think that is a good word to use. but a good question for elizabeth warren would be how do you think the impeachment process if it gets to the senate will impact your ability to campaign? because if you look at the timeline of this, senate judiciary staffers have been told that they should not make christmas or new year s plans they are going to be working. that goes right into the iowa caucuses and super tuesday, and she will be sucking d.c. unable of getting the momentum that she was expecting. dana: they say that january could be when you basically have to sit there six days a week, six hours a day, as a juror you are not allowed to speak. you cannot talk about anything in regards to impeachment. can we pull up sound bite numbe? it would be interesting to see you tomorrow night, greg, if anybody brings this up again for vice president biden and if you would have to answer a question about that. do you have a number 8? do you believe that hunter biden on the board of burisma has the potential for a conflict of interest? certainly the potential coming at. miss williams? yes. dana: it is a 99% agreemen agreement. greg: i don t think they saw this coming. a lot of these things when they go after trauma, it has a weird blowback. it is always a boomerang, whoever throws it it comes back and hits them in the face. the democrats have managed to make a trump scandal into a democrat scandal, and make trump sympathetic and every time they go after him with these human resource questions, it becomes really boring. the only thing that is not boring is the hunter biden stuff, that is exciting. juan: i think we know why it is exciting to you. but it was somebody talking about a perception. it is not only a perception, on the republican side. articles in the new yorker, the new york times about whether or not to never any instance of finding wrongdoing. greg: that s exactly what you say about the other side. juan: you say read the transcript, when i read the transcript greg: that is your perception, juan. dana: it was a perception you saw this morning, jesse. read jennifer williams who was detailed with vice president pence. she was troubled by the call but did not talk to anybody about it. so that was her perception, then there is vindman with a different perception, it s all about perception, not about nailing something down. jesse: if my president commits and impeachable offense and i think that is an impeachable offense, i go and tell my boss. i tell everybody. i say, listen, this is a crime. this is bad. no one did that except for one guy. and he did not go to his boss. he went to the whistle-blower at the cia, and that is very, very fishy. and how can you have five phone calls and meetings with the president of ukraine during this freezing of the aid and there was nothing brought up about freezing military aid? there was nothing brought up about an investigation that was needed? you cannot have a bribe if there was no bribe. and no one knows there is a bribe. and no one did the thing that they were supposed to be bribed for. if this is a fake scandal, and to pretend like this is a high crime, the american people do not buy it. it is not believable. juan: that s why 70% say jesse: i will show 70% what they think of something. i can work a poll up. i will get a question up there and i will have them believing whatever i want. katie: republicans have done a good job of presenting the evidence against the argument that it was a quid pro quo or bribery, at it has been pointed out that the aide was given and was essential to what the investors were asking for in terms of backing ukraine and a long-standing policy that we have had as they said both republicans and democratic administrations. for burisma, multiple people every single witness has had on the record that they were serious concerns of a conflict of interest with hunter biden being on the board. burisma was a very corrupt country, we express these concerns. in the fact is it has not been thoroughly investigated, that s why republican senators are asking the state department for more information. dana: they will come back in a few minutes, we will continue the coverage. tonight, greg. tonight you are having fried chicken. greg: i m not going to pull a small well, that s for sure. i take a little bit you know after aid. if i do a tv hit, no way i m breaking wind on national television and trying to blame it on a coffee mug. that s the scandal, that and abstain. he did not kill himself, and it was not a coffee mug that because that noise. dana: i am running out of questions. katie: it is dinner time, we can avoid the potty talk. jesse: back to that testimony today, if you have a freeze on aide in pakistan, and a freeze on aid in the central american countries, a 55 day freeze on aid where you re trying to figure out what is the deal with this new prime minister who was just elected, and if we can trust this country, because the country is corrupt, the biggest gas company corrupt. they are so corrupt today colluded against me, donald trump in the last election. working with the democrats. that is a matter of fact. and so, there is no harm. there is no wrongdoing. and all you are trying to say is, there is an ally. we will send him some aid. we are good. we are trying to fight and kill russians unlike the obama administration. juan: are you i never-trumper? are you i never-bidener? it seems like you re just trying jesse: i don t have to, juan. there is nothing there. juan: the abuse of power in the most powerful man, the most powerful country, we do not have kings jesse: at the are abusing their power. greg: firing your assistant, that is not an abuse of power. a jesse: it s not like the ukraine s are going to investigate joe biden? are they going to call joe biden to ukraine? joe biden, come on over to ukraine! it s never going to happen! spewing all they had to do apparently was announce an investigation. okay, that is it for us. they hearing is set to resume shortly, but now we have special report up next. spewing that evening, welcome to washington. i am bret baier. continuing coverage of the impeachment hearings day 3, nine hours on capitol hill as you look alive at the chairman adam schiff getting ready to gavel into the next round of questions this from the lawmakers themselves, while we wait, we will bring in our panel here. byron york, chief political correspondent of the national and josh holmes, former top advisor to mitch mcconnell, now president of the cavalry consultants as you look there at tom morrison, tim morris and
mr. eisenberg, he told me to take my concerns to him. and, there s a period of time in it wasn t that long a period of time, but it was enough time for me to enough time to talk to someone who you want i will assume it is, right? i ve been instructed not to, representative jordan. he s what i m getting. he told you not to talk to any of the people and you interpret that as not talking to your boss. but you talked to your brother, you talked to the lawyers, you talked to secretary kent, and the one guy adam schiff will let you tell us who he is. is that right? representative jordan, i did my job. i m not saying you didn t. all i m saying is the instructions from the lawyer where that you shouldn t talk to anybody, and you interpret that as don t talk to my boss, but i m gonna go talk to someone that we can t even ask you if that individual is. that is incorrect. i just read what you said. i shouldn t talk to any of the people. the time of the gentleman has expired. i m sorry, mr. chairman, that sequence is not the way it played out. please, let the colonel answer. speak of the sequence played out where immediately afterwards i expressed my concerns, i did my coordination function, mr. eisenberg circle background and told me how to talk to anybody else. in that period of time i did not manage to so that s what happened. that s when he talked to someone. that s right. think you, mr. chairman. colonel vindman, let s go back to that pair of meetings on jul. about scrambled eggs office and down in the boardroom, were you witnessed ambassador sondland informed the ukrainian officials that, as a prerequisite, ukrainians would have to deliver an investigation into the bidens. you said that ambassador sondland was calling for an investigation that didn t exist into the bidens and burisma. is that correct? that is correct. that same afternoon he went to mr. eisenberg, correct? that occurred in the afternoon, and i m sure it was a been within a couple hours i talk to mr. eisenberg. how did he react? he was cool, calm, and collected. he said he would look into it and you took notes. did he tell you you would be free to come back if you have additional concerns? he did, mr. congressman. ambassador sondland said his request to the ukrainians had been coordinated with the acting chief of staff, mick mulvaney. did you report that to mr. eisenberg? i did. what was his reaction? he took notes and he said he would follow up or look into it. i don t recall exactly what he said. colonel, you also testified that on the july 25th call between the two presidents there was no doubt president trump asked for investigations into the 2016 election, and vice president biden s son, in return for a white house meeting. within an hour of that call, you reported that mr. eisenberg, did you not? i did. went back to them to see if it was appropriate? he s an assistant to the president. it was less a suggestion and more of an instruction. did you tell the lawyers that president trump asked president zelensky to speak to mr. giuliani? yes. and the lawyers, it was at this point, told you not to talk to anyone else? that is not correct with regard to timing. they didn t follow up they didn t circle back around. what ended up happening is, in my coordination role, i spoke to a member of the intelligence community. general counsel from one of the intelligence bodies notified mr. eisenberg that there was information on the call, on the july 25th call. at that point mr. eisenberg told me i shouldn t talk to anybody else about it. colonel, i want to go bac bao 2014. in iraq. when you were blown up. i presume that, given the point in your military career and what else was going on in the world, that upon recovery there was the very real prospect or possibility that you might once again find yourself in harm s way. is that correct? yes, congressman. it happened in 2004, but yes. 2004, excuse me. thank you. did you consider leaving the military service at that point? no. frankly, congressman, i suffered light winds. i was fortunate compared to my counterparts in the same vehicle, and i returned to duty i think it may have been that same day. but you could have been subjected to additional harm. you chose to continue service in uniform? i continued to serve in combat for the remaining ten or 11 months of the tour. you know, colonel, i have to say i find it a rich but incredibly painful irony that, within a week of the president, contrary to all advice of the senior military officials, he pardons those who were convicted of war crimes. which was widely decried in the military community. within the week of him doing that, he is engaged in an effo effort, allies on his behalf including some here today, to demean your record of service and the sacrifice and the contribution you have made. indeed, sir, less than 20 minutes ago the white house officially quoted out, out of context, the comments referred to earlier by mr. morrison in your judgment. i can only conclude, sir, that what we thought was just the president as the subject of our deliberations in this inquiry isn t sufficient to capture what is happening here. indeed, what subject to this inquiry and what is at peril as our constitution, and the very values upon which it is based. i want to say thank you for your service, but thank you doesn t cut it. please know, however, that it comes from the bottom of my heart, and i know on the bottoms of the hearts of countless other americans. thank you for your service, sir. i ll back. mr. jordan? thank you, mr. chairman. sunday, the speaker of the united states house of representatives called the president of the united states an imposter. speaker of the house called the president an imposter. 63 million people voted for him. the guy who went on an electoral college landslide. the people calls an imposter. that has what has happened to or country come to this congress. the speaker s statement says it all. the democrats have never accepted the will of the american people. democrats don t trust the american people. the american people who want to defend someone in this town who was willing to shake it up a bit. they don t trust that. they have tried to do everything they can to undo what the american people decided on november 8th, 2016. they ve been out to get the president since the day he was elected. the whistleblower s lawyer, the whistleblower s legal team, said this january 30th, 2017. the president had been in office about a week. coup has started, first of many steps. next sentence, impeachment will follow ultimately. i guess you are in the final step. it started three and a half years ago. congressman tlaib, first day of congress, said impeach the president. representative greene said, if you don t impeach him, the president will win reelection. he got to do it. most important income of five democrat members of this committee voted to move forward with impeachment before the phone call ever happened. the truth is that the attacks actually started before the inauguration, even before the election. the ranking member talked about this. his opening statement. july 2016. fbi opens an investigation, so-called trump-russia coordination, collusion, which was never there. open an investigation, spied on two american citizens associated with the presidential campaign. that s probably never happen in american history, but they did it. and for ten months, jim comey s fbi investigated the president. guess what? after ten months, they had nothing. you know why we know that? we deposed mr. comey last congress, he told us they didn t have a thing. no matter. special counsel mueller gets appointed, and they do a 2-year, $40 million, 19-lawyer, unbelievable investigation. guess what? they come back and they ve got nothing. but the democrats don t care. so now we get this. a bunch of depositions in the bunker in the basement of the capital, witnesses who aren t allowed to answer questions about who they talked to you about the phone call. we get this. all based on some anonymous whistleblower. no first-hand knowledge, bias against the president. these facts have never change. we learned these right away. who worked with vice president biden, who wrote a memo the day after somebody talked him about about the call. awaited 18 days to file a complaint. 18 days to file a complete prewhat do you do in those 18 days? we all know. ran off and talked with chairman schiff s staff. and then hired the legal team that i just talked about. that i just talked about. one of the steps in the whole impeachment coup, as his legal team has said. this is scary, what these guys are putting our country through. it is sad, it is scary, it is wrong. the good news is the american people see through it all. they know the facts are all on the president s side. as representative stefanik said, four facts will never change. we got the transcript, which they never thought the president would release. it shows nor could, no conditionality, no language. we got the guys in the call. president trump, president zelinski. no pressure, no pushing here. about the fact ukrainians didn t even know it was held up at the time of the call, and most important, we have yet to have one witness tell us that any evidence from anyone that president zelensky did anything on investigations to get the eight release. those facts will never change. the facts on the president s side. the process is certainly not. it has been the most unfair process we have ever seen, and the american people understand that there was 63 million americans understand it. i think others do as well. to see this for what it is. they know this is wrong. especially wrong just 11 months before the next election. i yield back. mr. welch? thank you. what this hearing is about, i think, what s best stated by colonel vindman s opening statement. the question before us is this is it improper for the president of the united states to demand a foreign government investigate the united states citizen and political opponents? it is very well-stated. i just listened to mr. jordan, as you did, as well, and i heard his criticisms of the process. nothing really happened. a lot of people are out to get the president. i didn t hear an answer to the question as to whether it s proper for the president of the united states to demand a foreign government to investigate a u.s. citizen and political opponent. and, to date, i haven t heard any one of my republican colleagues address that questi question. colonel vindman and ms. williams, thank you. i want to ask some questions that go through the background. what has come out during this process is that we had two ukraine policies. one was bipartisan and long-standing. that was to assist ukraine, which had freed itself from the domination of russia, to fight corruption and to resist russian aggression. is that a fair statement, colonel vindman? i think that is a fair characterization, congressman. and to give folks a reminder of the extent of corruption by the way, a legacy of putin s russia. is it your understanding that when the prior president fled to russia, into the arms of mr. putin, he took with him for 30 to $40 billion of that impoverished country? there are different estimates, but it s on that scale, yes. a vast scale for a poor country. is it your understanding that powerless but motivated ukrainians rose up in protest to this incredible graft and theft and abuse by the president? that is correct. and that was called the maidan revolution. the revolution of dignity. correct? correct. and young people went into that square in downtown kyiv and demonstrated for months. correct? correct. and 100 died. 106 young people died, and older people died. correct? that was between february 18th, 2014 and february 22nd. is that correct? correct. 106 died, including people who were shot by snipers. kids. and yanukovych had put snipers on the rooftop of buildings to shoot into that square and kill, murder, slaughter those young people. is that your understanding? that is correct. our bipartisan support by the way, i want to say to mary public and colleagues, a lot of leadership to have this support came from your side. thank you. but our whole commitment was to get rid of corruption and to stop that russian aggression. is that correct? the amounts to some of the key pillars. that s right. and the giuliana, sondland, and it appears current policy was not about that. it was about investigations into a political opponents. correct? i will take the question back. we know it. you know, i will say this to president trump. you want to investigate joe biden? you ought to investigate huntern cannot go at it. do it. do it hard, do it dirty. do it the way you do it. just don t do it by asking a foreign leader to help you in your campaign. that s your job, it s not his. my goal in these hearings is two things. one is to get an answer to colonel vindman s question. the second coming out of this is for us as a congress to return to the ukraine policy that nancy pelosi and kevin mccarthy both support. it s not investigations. it s the restoration of democracy in ukraine, and the resistance of russian aggression. i yield back. mr. maloney? thank you both for being he here. you know, lieutenant colonel vindman, this might be one of your first congressional hearings like this. and i hope the last. [laughter] i can t blame you for feeling that way, sir. particularly when i ve been sitting here listening to my republican colleagues, one of the advantages of being down here at the kids table is that you get to hear the folks above you ask their questions. i ve been listening closely to my republican colleagues, and i ve heard them say just about everything except to contradict any of the substantive testimony you ve both given. you may have noticed there s been a lot of complaints, and there s been a lot of insinuations and a lot of suggestions, maybe, that your service is somehow not to be trusted. you were treated to questions about your loyalty because of some half-baked job offer i guess the ukrainians made you, which you of course dutifully reported. mr. castor is implying that you have some dual loyalty, which is of course an old smear we ve heard many times in our history. they ve tried to demean you as though maybe you ve overstated your importance of your job, and of course you are the guy on the national security council responsible for directing ukrainian policy. we ve heard them air out some allegations with no basis in proof, but they just want to get them out there and hope maybe some of those strands of spaghetti, i guess, we ll stick on the wall. they keep throwing them. we ve even had a member of this committee question this is my favorite question why you would wear your dress uniform today. even though that dress uniform includes a breastplate that has a convent, combat infantry badge on and a purple heart ribbon. it seems like if anybody gets to wear the uniform, it is somebody who s got a breastplate with those commendations on it. so, let s do it again. let s do the substance. can we do that connect because we ve had a lot of dust kicked up. ms. williams, you heard the call with your own ears, right? yes, sir. not secondhand, not hearsay. you are the president speak. you heard his voice on the call. correct. your conclusion was what he said about investigating the biden s was, your words, unusual and inappropriate. in my right? that was my testimony. mr. vindman, you were treated to a july 25th meeting where you heard ambassador sondland raise investigations that you thought were unduly political. i believe that s how you describe them. he went to nsc council and reported it. correct? correct. later, you come too come around the copy you read it with your own ears. correct. not secondhand, not from somebody else, not hearsay. correct. you heard the voice of the president on the call. i did. you heard him raise what ambassador sondland andries before, about investigating the bidens. i did. when you heard him say that, was the first thought that went through your mind? frankly, i couldn t believe what i was hearing. it was probably an element of shock. that maybe in certain regards my worst fear of how our ukraine policy could play out was playing out. how this is likely to have significant implications for u.s. national security. and he went immediately and reported it, didn t you? i did. why? because that was my duty. you still have your opening statement and he? i do. would you read the last paragraph for megan? not the very last one, the second to last one. would you read that again for me? i think the american public deserves to hear it again. i think my dad would appreciate that one, too. dad, my sitting here today in the u.s. capitol and talking to our elected officials as proof you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the soviet union and come here to the united states of america in search of a better life for our family. do not worry i will be fine for telling the truth. you realize when you came forward out of sense of duty that you are putting yourself in direct opposition to the most powerful person in the world. do you realize that, sir? i knew i was assuming a lot of risk. i am struck by that phrase, do not worry. you addressed your dad. was your data warrior? he did serve. it was a different military. and he would have worried if you put yourself against presence of the united states, is that correct? he deeply worried about it. in this context, it was the ultimate risk. and why do you have confidence that you can do that, and tell your dad not to worry? congressman, because this is america. this is the country i ve served and defended, that all my brothers have served. and here, right matters. thank you, sir. i yield back. [applause] ms. deming s thank you, mr. chairman. first of all, ms. williams, let me think you for your service to our nation. it truly matters. lieutenant colonel vindman, i have the honor of speaking to a group of veterans this past weekend. what i said to them was that no words are really adequate or sufficient to fully express our gratitude for their service to our nation. so, lieutenant colonel vindman, today i say to you there are no words that are sufficient to fully express our gratitude to you for what you have done for our nation. amazingly, what you are still willing to do for our nation. it is vitally important that the american people understand how president trump s unethical demand that ukraine deliver politically-motivated investigations in exchange for military assistance created a security risk for our the united states of america s national security. the president was not just playing a political game by upholding military aid and meetings with ukraine. threatening the hundreds of millions of dollars of military assistance that congress had appropriated has real-life consequences for ukraine and the usa. in your deposition, the 11, you testified and i quote a strong and independent ukraine is critical to our security interest. could you please explain why a strong and independent ukraine is so critical, and why it is so vital u.s. interests? we sometimes refer to ukraine as our front line state. on the front line of europe. they have actually described to me, the ukrainians, that it is they consider themselves as a barrier between russian aggression and europe. what i have heard them describe is a need for u.s. support in order to serve this role, in order to protect european and western security. lieutenant colonel, this is not just a theoretical conflict between ukraine and russia. you have already said this morning that russia is actively fighting to expand into ukraine. that ukraine is in a hot war with russia right now. is that correct? it is stable, but is still a hot war. isn t it true, lieutenant colonel, that even if the security assistance was eventually delivered to ukraine, the fact that it was delayed, just that fact, could signal to russia that the bond between ukraine and the u.s. was beginning? that was the concern of myself and my colleagues was the risk of even the appearance that the u.s.-ukraine bond is shaky, is that it could embolden russia to act with more aggression? would you say that is correct? i believe that was my testimony. just last month during an interview, president putin joked about interviewing dominic interfering in our political elections. i can only guess that is what we have become to russia and its president. i think he felt emboldened by the president s reckless actions, both attempts to hold critical military aid from ukraine and president trump s effort to blame ukraine not russia for election interference. ms. williams and lieutenant colonel vindman, i can only say that every american, regardless of our politics, should be critically concerned about that. let me just say this yes, we do trust the american people. you know what? the american people trust us, too, as members of congress, to support, protect, and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies, foreign and domestic. we intend to do just that. thank you again for your service, mr. chairman. i yield back mr. krishnamoorthi? steel good afternoon, lieutenant colonel vindman and ms. williams. thank you for your service. colonel vindman, i m concerned your loyalty is question not because you are bringing evidence of wrongdoing against the president of the united states, but because you are an immigrant. recently, fox news host brian kilmeade said he, meaning you, were born in the soviet union. emigrated with his family young. he tends to feel simpatico with the ukraine. i find the statement representablor principle, because it appears your status is being used against you i came to this country when i was three months old. your family for the soviet union and move to america when you were just three and half years old, right? correct. i understand her father worked multiple jobs well so learning english, right? correct. he stressed the importance of embracing what it means to be an american, correct? all-america that is correc. all your childhood memories relate to being american, correct? correct. you and your family faced difficult times during your childhood, correct? correct. i can relate. that s my story, too. but your father went on to become an engineer, right? yeah, he reestablished himself and his former profession, in the united states. i can relate. i got a b.s. in engineering. of course, some people claim i practiced the b.s. part now. [laughter] your father never give up working hard to build his very own american dream, did he? he did not. lieutenant colonel vindman, your father achieve the american dream, and so did you and your family. from one immigrant american to another immigrant american, i want to say to you that you and your family represent the very best of america. i assume that you are as proud to be un-american as i am, correct? yes, sir. sir, i want to turn your attention to lutsenko. he called me disruptive actor in your opening statement, correct? correct. mr. lutsenko, the former prosecutor general in ukraine, has made various claims about various americans, right? correct. you were unaware of any factual basis for his accusations against ambassador yovanovitch, right? correct. he also was a source for john solomon and the hill, correct? that is correct. you said a key element of article as well as his accusations are false, correct? correct. lutsenko is not a credible source, correct? correct. sir, the other side claims there is absolutely no pressure on this july 25th phone call. i think that s we heard earlier, right? i believe so. and you have termed what president trump asked, in terms of the investigations on that phone call, is a demand. correct? correct. and you pointed out the large power disparity between president trump on the one hand and president zelensky on the other. correct? yes. there was pressure on that phone call, right? the ukrainians needed the meeting. the ukrainians subsequently, when they found out about it, needed the security assistance. so pressure was brought to bear on them, correct? i believe so. sir, colonel vindman, last week we heard a decorated military veteran namely, ambassador bill taylor come before us. you interacted regularly with ambassador taylor, and you know him to be a man of integrity. he is a patriotic american, isn t that right? a superb individual. asked ambassador taylor a series of questions based on his experience as an infantry commander. i asked him, is an officer allowed to hold up action pleasing his troops at risk until someone provides him a personal benefit? ambassador taylor responded, no, sir. colonel vindman, do you agree with ambassador taylor? i do. i then asked ambassador taylor, is that because they would be betraying the responsibility to the nation? ambassador taylor responded, yes, sir. colonel vindman, do you agree with ambassador taylor? i do. i then asked him, could that type of conduct trigger a court-martial, he said, yes, sir. do you agree with ambassador taylor, colonel denman? i do. thank you for your service. this concludes the question. you are recognized for any concluding remarks. act one of today s circus is over. for those of you who have been watching it at home, the democrats are no closer to impeachment then where they were three years ago. in the process, they have the department of justice, fbi, state department, elements within the ic, the icig, have all suffered long-term damage. the democrats can continue to put to poison the american people with this nonsense. we have sat here all morning without any evidence for impeachment, which would be a very serious crime, high crime and misdemeanor, as it says in the constitution. no such thing. policy disagreements and the democrats failure to acknowledge their involvement in the 2016 election. i would say it s astonishing that that would be putting too little emphasis on their actions. with that, you ll back the balance of my time. i think the gentleman i want to thank our witnesses today, ms. williams, colonel vindman, both of you, for your service to the country. for your testimony here today. i just want to address briefly some of the evidence he presented, as well as others thus far in the impeachment inquiry. first of all, i want to join my colleagues in thinking you, colonel vindman, for your military service. i should tell you that, notwithstanding all of the questions you got on, why didn t you talk to your supervisor? went in to talk to mr. morrison? why didn t you go to the national security lawyer? as if there something wrong with going to the national security lawyer. are you aware we asked mr. morrison where he went to the national security lawyer, right after the call? and that he did? i am. are you aware also that we asked him, if you have this problem with colonel vindman not going to you instead of the lawyer, naturally, you must have got to your supervisor. his answer was that he didn t go to his supervisor either. he went directly to the national security council lawyer. so i hope my colleagues would give him the same hard time for not following his chain of command that they complained about with you, apparently. the president may attack you, and as. others on right-wing tv might attack you, and they have. i thought you should know, and maybe you know already, that this is what the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff had to say about you, colonel vindman. he is a professional, competent, patriotic, and loyal officer. he has made an extraordinary contribution to the security of our nation in both peacetime and combat. i m sure your dad is proud to hear that. my colleagues have tried to make the argument here today and we ve heard it before but the president was just interested in fighting corruption. that s our goal, fighting corruption in ukraine, this terribly corrupt country. the problem, of course, with that is there is no evidence of the president trying to fight corruption. the evidence all points in the other direction. the evidence points in the direction of the president inviting ukraine to engage in the corrupt act of investigating a u.s. political opponent. ambassador yovanovitch was known as a strong fighter of corruption, so what does the president do? he recalls her from her post. ambassador yovanovitch, in fact, was at a meeting celebrating other anticorruption fighters, including a woman who had acid thrown in her face on the day she was told to get on the next. you prepared talking points for the president s first conversation with zelensky. he is supposed to talk about rooting up corruption. if this president had such a deep interest in rooting out corruption in ukraine, surely he would have brought it up in the call. but of course we now know he did not. we then see rudy giuliani not fighting corruption but asking for an investigation of the bidens, and my colleagues say, maybe he was acting on his own, even though he says he s acting as the president s lawyer. maybe he was really acting on his own. the two investigations that rudy giuliani wanted coming up in the meeting you participate in on july 10th at the white house. when ambassador sondland brings up the bidens and burisma in 2016. tells the ukrainians that want to meet with the white house, you ve got to do these investigations. they would say ambassador sondland was acting on his own, but that doesn t quite work, either. we have the call record from july 25th. which the president was forced to release. in which the president doesn t bring up corruption. he doesn t say, how are those anticorruption cords going? or, great work in the rada. of course not. what does he say? i want to investigate the bidens, and this debunked conspiracy theory by vladimir putin. that helps me in reelection. so much for fighting corruption. the real u.s. policy message is, don t engage in political investigations. the message from president, however, was the exact opposite. do engage in political corruption , and ultimately come if they want $400 million in u.s. aid, this is what they have to do. the only lament i hear from my colleagues is that it wasn t successful. they got caught. they didn t get the political investigations, and they still had to release the money. now they still haven t gotten the white house meeting, but they had to release the money. because a whistleblower blew the whistle. whistleblower the president wants to punish, and because congress announced it was during investigations, and very soon thereafter the president was forced to lift the old on the aide. they argue, this makes it okay. that it was a failed effort to bribe ukraine. a failed effort to extort ukraine. that doesn t make it better. it is no less odious because it was discovered and it was stopped. and we have courageous people like yourself who come forward, who report things, who do but they should do, who have a sense, as you put it, colonel, of duty. of duty. not to the person or the president, but to the country. we thank you for that. at the end of the day, i think this comes back to something we heard from another career foreign service officer just last friday, in a conversation he overheard with the president in a restaurant in ukraine, in which the president not rudy giuliani, not anyone else, but the president of the united states wanted to know, are they going to the investigations? this is the day after that july 25th call. are they going to the investigations? he is assured by ambassador sondland that they are going to do it. what does sondland relate to this foreign service officer? paying support call. the presen president doesn t gn expletive about ukraine. he only cares about the big things that help his personal interests. that s all you need to know. it s not just about ukraine, of course. ukraine is fighting our fight against the russians, against their expansionism. that is our fight, too. that is our fight, too. at least we thought so on a bipartisan basis. that is our fight, too. that is why we support ukraine with the military aid that we have. well, the president may not care about it, but we do. we care about our defense, we care about the defense of our allies, and we darn well care about our constitution. we are adjourned. [gavel] i please ask the audience to allow the witnesses and the members who have to go vote to leave first. adam schiff banging the gavel, and jennifer williams and colonel vindman are finished with this part of the impeachment proceedings that we ve been watching carried out today, as we continue our coverage from new york and from washington, d.c. it was clear that republicans wanted to portray mr. vindman is someone who thought he was the top expert on ukraine, who perhaps had his feathers ruffled by the fact that his policy and the talking points he suggested were not carried out. he clearly said he felt it was his duty to report to the attorney at the nsc what he saw as the president behaving in a way that was seeking his own political gain and not carrying out the policy of ukraine. jennifer williams did not reach out and that way to express her concerns, but i think perhaps one of the most salient things that she established was that when vice president pence had meetings with members of ukraine, he did not push for the investigations into politics and did not push for investigations into the 2016. bret, we ve been watching it with our panel here in your panel here. your takeaways from what we saw this morning? martha: till next he went a couple of key moments. a lot of focus on the tenant colonel vindman service to the country. he s a decorated veteran, served in the iraq war. in 2014, outside of falluja in iraq, there was a lot of focus but his uniform from what he was wearing to this testimony. and democrats pointing at his service to the country. he said he felt empowered to do this because this is america, that he had a sense of duty, and here right matters. at that point there was a pause in the hearing room. i thought some of the questioning from republicans was powerful. john ratcliffe from texas, the congressman questioning about the word bribery, how it has not come up in the depositions and stacks up all of the depositions. they asked whether they felt this is bribery. they couldn t say that. it also was interesting to see that they laid out their case. essentially the transcript is out. you can read it. the two people on that call, president trump and president zelensky, don t believe there was any pressure. that the ukrainians didn t know the aide was held up at the time, and that nothing was done before that aide continued to flow. that is essentially the republican argument against this bribery. but it was a compelling testimony from both witnesses today. we have our panel, chris wallace, dana perino, one williams, andy mccarthy, ken starr, and john roberts. chris, first to you. i don t know that we heard a lot more from the five-minute questioning of the witnesses that we heard in the first 45 minutes from devin nunes and his lawyer and adam schiff and his lawyer. what basically happened today is that we have had a lot of complaints, a lot about policy and how it changed, the irregular channel through rudy giuliani, and gordon sondland. but everybody had to say they hadn t heard it directly from the president. a lot of them haven t heard it directly from somebody else. it was second or third hand. on the one thing i think was accomplished today is that he had two people who were on the call. so neither of them, i don t think, had ever spoken to the president outside of listening in on phone calls. certainly vindman has never spoken to the president. but they heard the phone call and they provided first-hand evidence as to what they heard and how they assessed it. both of them had set off immediate alarm bells, so much so that colonel vindman went immediately to the chief lawyer of the national security council to report this. i think it was also somewhat telling certainly not evidence of an impeachable crime that he saw it as a demand. this was a person in the superior position, the president of the united states, asking for a fever from somebody in the lesser position, the president of zelensky, and that he said from his military experience and he believed in this case it wasn t a request or a favor. that that was a demand. the other thing that i think obviously was telling today is that two of the republicans made a real effort to find out who vindman talked to after the phone call. he said he talked to somebody in the intelligence community, both devon nunes and jim jordan wanted to find out who that was. as soon as either of them broach that subject immediately adam schiff came in interrupted, gaveled him down and said, we are not going to do anything to out the whistleblower. no certainty the person he told as a whistleblower. vindman said, i don t know the whistleblower is. schiff says, i don t know who o the whistleblower is. but he s concerned that the person he told is perhaps the whistleblower, and he is clearly determined not to do that in the course of these hearings. martha: just wanted to get back to new york and get to our panel here. one of the things that continues to be very intriguing is this meeting that john bolton cut short. one of the representatives from ukraine came to d.c. on july 10th for a meeting. he was there with fiona hill during that meeting gordon sondland, who we will hear frome e.u. ambassador, brings up once again this issue of pushing for these investigations into joe biden and his son, hunter biden. at this point, john bolton, according to the testimony we heard from his own voice today, from colonel vindman, said that s it, we are done. he ends the meeting, he said there were more points on me intended to be taken care of. he said after that they had pictures taken but then they went into another room and it was sort of continued controversy over what happened that meeting, how upset john bolton was about the line of questioning that was brought in by gordon sondland. john bolton continues to be someone so central to this in terms of the weights that could be there in his opinion on how he understood the president in terms of his intentions, and mick mulvaney also falls into that category. of course, we have not and will not, at least at this point hear from either one of them. let s bring in dana perino, who is joining us now, as well. dana, your take on what we watch this morning? i think a couple of things. one thing i noticed is that once again you have these two witnesses both confirmed in questioning from questioning from elise stefanik, the republican from upstate new york, she asked about whether, in their experience, they might have had a concern about an appearance of a conflict of interest because of hunter biden s involvement with burisma. both of them said yes, that the concern about an appearance of a conflict of interest was there. of course, this is lieutenant colonel vindman and his brother leaving the capital. i m sure they are very glad to be leaving and getting into taxis to go somewhere else. another thing is i think that i would maybe defer to andy and ken starr on this, but it seems to me that we go back to this phone call. it s almost like eyewitness testimony, where a lot of people can see an event and have different interpretations of it. enough somebody like vindman who says, wow, i m so alarmed, i m going to report this. and some did like jennifer williams who says, that s odd, that might be inappropriate, but doesn t tell anybody about it. that is then what we go over and over in these hearings, is that interpretation i think the third thing i would say is that when you are a white house staff, or a federal government staffer, as i remember when getting commission to be that staffer, the chief of staff set us down. he said, remember, you don t work with the president of the united states or the republican party. you work for the united states of america. therefore, it is incumbent upon you that if you ever feel comfortable, if you see something you feel is an appropriate, you are to raise it. you can raise it to your direct report, you can come to me. if you don t think you can come to me, you can go to the lawyers, the president, whatever you think you need to do. i just think about that point you made, martha. it s a good one. about bolton cutting that meeting short. i wasn t there, so i don t exactly know, but i wonder if bolton kept telling people, watch yourself, be careful. remember fiona hill, follow them and see what they re talking about. he s not necessarily thinking there will be huge problem right then. sometimes you think about the future and that if you don t report something you saw you can find yourself in a hearing like this regardless. sometimes people go beyond what they need to do, perhaps, in a moment of trying to exercise caution. bret: let s bring in our legal eagles if you can. judge ken starr and andy mccarthy. judge starr, first to you. daniel goldman asked whether u.s. policy, whether the president was falling u.s. policy. basically, colonel vindman said that he put this in talking points. he had never met the president. he has never briefed the president one-on-one. but his talking points for this call he says, the president can use to use the talking poins or not. he s the president. exactly right. under the constitution, the president is commander in chief. the president guides and shapes foreign policy. the lieutenant colonel is a staff person. god bless him for serving our country in uniform, and all the things that have been said about him in terms of his courage and the fact that he is an immigrant. this is a great american story. at the same time, the republicans are pretty firm with him in essentially saying there have been questions about his judgment. not about loyalty, not about patriotism, but about judgment. i think what we saw today was a lieutenant colonel who is by the book. and the president was not going by the book. not simply the talking points, but simply injecting, which the lieutenant colonel thought was odd. he thought it was a demand, which is a matter of interpretation. injecting domestic political considerations that did relate to corruption in ukraine. that is one of the contextual points that i think we tend to overlook. i also wanted to say that in about an hour ago a very helpful to the president s conversation in terms of the hold, the impetus on the hold and releasing the security assistant funds, was there any illegality? is a judgment call, if the conduct of foreign relations. and the lieutenant colonel said, we looked at that. or, the lawyer said. and determined i think mr. quigley was a little surprised at the answer, because he came back. with the lieutenant colonel made absolutely clear is that it was legal to do what omb and presumably the president directed in terms of this hold. what was missing today is any conversation about the geopolitical situation, the president s concerns about whether the europeans are conducting themselves in the right way. the july 25th transcript mentions angela merkel specifically. president zelensky agrees with that. so there is this broader context that i think largely got ignored today. final point, i think the republican members are doing a fabulous job and asking questions in a very effective way. buteo let s bring it back andy mccarthy. andy i think ken hits the nail that distant wishing inappropriate for impeachable. inappropriate as we heard again and again today. now that we ve been through this for a number of days, i feel like we are spending hours trying to inflate something that, if i can go back to the parlance of my upbringing, is a venal sand and trying to turn into a mortal sin or cardinal sin. we started out with adam schiff at the beginning of the proceedings. i think this is worth remembering. he characterized the conversation between the presidents, trump and zelensky, as the following. i have a favor i want from you, though, and i m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. i want you to make up dirt on my political opponent. understand? that is very telling parody, because what it suggests on the part of schiff is if we had something actually like fat, where president trump have been asking not just to have an of something that warranted investigating, but where he was asked getting him to make up political dirt on an appointment. to manufacture out of whole cloth. that would be something tremendously serious. except we don t have anything like that. to bookend it, here is how chairman schiff ended today. he talked about this transaction yet again, this discussion, and responding to the point that nothing actually happen here. in the sense that the ukrainians got the raid , they didn t have to promise to investigate biden. chairman schiff said, this is no less odious because it was discovered and stops. that s preposterous. of course is less odious because it was discovered and stopped. even if you accept which i m not necessarily sure this is true if they have pushed for investigation of the bidens, something that probably ought to be investigated, something that is utterly inappropriate, we don t even have that. the democrats continuing from the beginning to this very point, groping for a theory of why something that is along the lines of a traffic violation is an impeachable offense. martha: juan williams is here with us, as well. juan, where you take away from this? i came into it having heard attacks on lieutenant colonel vindman. of course, the dual loyalty aspersion. i thought, let s see how that plays out. i think it played out to his benefit. i think he let these hearings today smiling and having repeated that now powerful paragraph about how it is right in america. to do right, to speak honestly. that his father, the immigrant, could be very proud of him. secondly, the idea that he and jennifer williams, the vice president s aid, were never trumpers. again, i think both of them, as they left this afternoon in search of taxicabs, were unscathed on that point. they both said that they were, in fact, nonpartisan. and that they were there to serve the country. there was no evidence introduced that would suggest these are people that were out to somehow diminish or, you know, smear the president of the united states. in fact, they back dolomite both said that the policy prerogative belongs to the president exclusively. but it s up to the president to make the final call. in addition to that, i think the republicans made a big effort to say you saw this at the very beginning, in terms of the minority leader s statement to go after the press in a suggestion, did other stomach either view lead to the press? both indicated they did not. these are not people leaking to the press, they are not people who are never trumpers. these are not people of dual loyalties were stream loyalties. they are not out to smear. i think that was the heart and soul of what the republicans sought to do here grade for the democrats, i think they obviously want to play up the uniform. the idea that you had someone of military service, someone of great gratitude to united states, sitting there. and not sitting there, again, based on partisanship, but on a sense and this is what vindman repeated several times a sense of duty. martha: is interesting to remember, he talked so passionately about it and was questioned about what happened in the square in ukraine, and the 106 people who were killed. it s just interesting to go back to the actions and not words part of the story. this president to give li flee to ukraine, which is something everything recent testify so far very much wanted. so the administration s actions have certainly been along the policy that these people wanted to see carried out. john roberts, let me go to you for the moments before the top of the hour. colonel vindman, it appears, was a vehicle. perhaps, at least based on what we are today, forgetting where it outside the circle that force the release of president conversation. he spoke of to people outside of the warehouse about the call, in between the time he went to the nsc general counsel eisenberg and the time that eisenberg came back to him and said, don t tell anybody else about this. he went to george kent at the state department, who was first witnessing these impeachment increase. proceedings. the public ones, at least, last wednesday. and he talked to some deals in the intelligence community. we saw, as devin nunes tried to drill down on who that person was, adam schiff stopped all of that and said, we are not going to do anything that could potentially unmask the whistleblower, which got a lot of people in the administration because they were texting me wondering, was he the conduit through which the information got the whistleblower? not necessarily the person you talk directly to the whistleblower, but did he talk to somebody who then we talk to whistleblower? and got through an even longer chain than that. but the white house s perspective on all of this today is that this has been a debate the white house believes over minutia. nobody has talked about what the president did here, and vindman confirmed the couple of things of the white house believes were correct, that the aide was withheld to ensure consistency with u.s. policy, and the transcript of that telephone call that the white house believed back in september was essentially accurate. the big question in all of this, though, is it doesn t matter what the white house thinks. it doesn t matter what republicans think. it is all, do the democrats believe they have enough information here to develop articles of impeachment, if and when this goes to the judiciary committee? and will they be the votes among democrats in the house to vote on those articles of impeachment and send the whole matter over to the senate? that s a big wild card here