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Sept. 25, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
55:18
Impeachment Or Bust | Ep. 868
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Democrats tie themselves to the mast on impeachment and President Trump fires back by releasing the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian president.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Man, oh man, a lot of news this morning.
So, we begin with the breaking news yesterday, which is Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, announcing that she has now opened an impeachment inquiry into the President of the United States.
Now, what does that mean practically?
The answer is pretty much nothing.
There are already several different committees in the House They were investigating the President.
Now she's just put them under the bigger umbrella of an impeachment inquiry.
In fact, there are some Democrats who are angry with Pelosi for not actually having given them any additional power to go after the President.
Nonetheless, this does represent a marked shift in terms of Pelosi's own position on impeachment.
It is now clear that the House, in all likelihood, will end up impeaching Donald Trump.
The Democrats do have a majority there.
There are already well over 200 Democratic Congress people Today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.
I'm directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry.
The president must be held accountable.
No one is above the law.
And she continued by explaining that President Trump's actions here betrayed his oath of office.
Specifically, it is unclear what are the grounds for impeachment.
So there are three possible grounds for impeachment that have been presented by Democrats and the media.
Possible ground number one, Trump is stymying the whistleblowers.
Remember, there's a member of the intelligence community who issued a whistleblower report to the inspector general of the intelligence community.
The inspector general found that report Urgent enough to report its existence to Congress, at which point the Director of National Intelligence stepped in and said, hold up a second.
This does not fulfill the statutory requirements.
We can't turn over the whistleblower report.
Congress then said, well, no, actually you have to, according to the law.
So that is an actual conflict over executive privilege.
And what exactly is supposed to be turned over?
So, rationale number one is the possibility that Congress says President Trump is engaged in a cover-up, he should be impeached.
He won't release the whistleblower report, he should be impeached.
That's possibility number one.
Then there's possibility number two.
Possibility number two is that just the stuff that Trump has admitted to is already impeachable.
Meaning that President Trump has already admitted that he said to the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, that he wanted Ukraine to investigate the Joe Biden-Hunter Biden-Burisma nexus.
So going back to 2016, for those who don't remember the story, Joe Biden was vice president.
His son, Hunter, was on the board of a natural gas company in Ukraine called Burisma.
And Hunter Biden shouldn't have been on that board.
There's no reason for him to be on that board other than the fact that Hunter Biden was related to Joe Biden.
Joe Biden then threatened to withhold $1 billion in American loan guarantees to Ukraine unless Ukraine got rid of a particular state prosecutor in Ukraine.
Now, to be fair to Biden, that prosecutor was well believed to be corrupt by the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, by the European Union, by the Obama administration.
And there are certain reports that suggest, Bloomberg, that the Burisma investigation being undertaken by that prosecutor was already defunct.
Nonetheless, Biden has openly bragged that he got that prosecutor fired.
Now, he didn't brag that he got him fired in order to protect his son.
That was sort of the conclusion that a lot of people took away from the story, although the evidence isn't totally there to support it.
So President Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate that.
So the grounds for impeachment, number two, that Democrats could be putting forward is that Trump merely by mentioning Joe Biden to the Ukrainians, by saying to the Ukrainians would be would be great if you investigate that just by doing that, he has stepped into impeachable territory.
That is very weak sauce.
Probably not.
Bad behavior?
President should not be going to foreign countries and asking for their help in investigating his political opponents.
But to be fair, Hillary Clinton did the same thing in 2016 when she worked with Wade Forth, the Ukrainian ambassador, in order to find information about Donald Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
So...
That is grounds number two, and it is a weak grounds.
And then there's grounds number three, and this is the one we are all sort of waiting to see if there's another shoe that drops, and that is the quid pro quo grounds.
Now, if President Trump went to Ukraine and said, listen, got a bunch of military aid right here, $400 million in military aid, and I'm not going to give it to you.
I know that you are under pressure from the Russians.
I know that you are fighting a proxy war with Russian backed insurgents in Ukraine.
And you know what?
I'm just not going to give you the military aid that you need unless you do what I want and investigate my political opponent.
That's impeachable.
That is a quid pro quo.
That is presumably bribery.
It's a violation of criminal statute.
It's a serious problem for Trump.
So Trump has already admitted that he talked to the Ukrainians about Biden.
The question is whether he connected that with aid, whether he was saying, OK, your aid is withheld unless you do what I want.
Okay, so that is the background to all of this.
We're gonna get to the rest of Nancy Pelosi's announcement, and then the big breaking news of the day.
President Trump has released the transcript of his call with Vladimir Zelensky, and it casts more shadow than light.
Let's put it that way.
Okay, it does not clear anything up.
It does not exonerate the president.
It also does not damn the president.
It is an absolute Rorschach test.
And I'm gonna read you nearly the entire transcript, so you can make up your mind for yourself.
So that you can understand what is going on and why two possible interpretations still exist of what Trump is saying in that phone call.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so Nancy Pelosi moves on with her announcement of this impeachment inquiry by suggesting that President Trump has taken actions that betray his oath of office.
The president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically.
The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable fact of the president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.
Okay, so obviously the question is whether she comes up with the grounds.
Does Nancy Pelosi come up with the grounds?
Now, it is worthwhile mentioning, just as an aside, that Nancy Pelosi didn't used to be quite as gung-ho about impeachment when it was a Democrat in office.
Here's Nancy Pelosi circa 1998 talking about how impeachment is a terrible, terrible idea with regard to President Bill Clinton.
Today the Republican majority is not judging the president with fairness, but impeaching him with a vengeance.
In the investigation of the president, fundamental principles which Americans hold dear Privacy, fairness, checks and balances have been seriously violated.
And why?
Because we are here today because the Republicans in the House are paralyzed with hatred of President Clinton.
And until the Republicans free themselves of this hatred, our country will suffer.
Okay, well, you could easily flip Clinton for Trump here, and you could say the same thing about the Democrats.
They've spent two and a half years trying to impeach Trump over Russia allegations that turned out to be sheer nonsense, and now they're trying to go after Trump on this Ukrainian stuff.
So if you're a Republican, that is going to be your gut reaction to this latest crusade by Democrats.
Amazing how quickly they swiveled from Russia to Ukraine.
I mean, like, literally within a matter of weeks.
Okay, now.
The question remains, what exactly did President Trump do here?
Because again, we got to get the standards straight.
The Democrats are already shifting the standard.
They're moving the standard.
They've been saying things like nobody is above the law and President Trump has already engaged in bad behavior that he's admitted to.
AOC is already out there suggesting that Trump has admitted to impeachable offenses.
In other words, we don't even need to do an investigation.
He's already impeached.
Ultimately, I think what is going on is that the president has committed several impeachable offenses.
He himself, what he has admitted to, is already impeachable regardless of future developments.
What he has already admitted to is an impeachable offense, among others.
I anticipate and I believe there will be discussion as to whether when we draft or when the judiciary examines the question on filing potential articles of impeachment, what those articles will include.
OK, so the Democrats, the more radical Democrats are saying we don't even need an inquiry.
We don't need an investigation.
It's a done deal.
We're impeaching.
But the actual standard the Democrats set here is going to be the one that they are held to.
So if they believe that it's enough to impeach Trump just over he requested help on Biden from the Ukrainians, Go for it, man.
Really, have at it.
If you think the American people are going to go along with that, I really, really doubt it.
I really don't.
Now, Nancy Pelosi may think that, right?
I mean, Nancy Pelosi came out yesterday and she says the public understands the Trump-Ukraine allegations better than they did the obstruction of justice allegations.
So maybe we have a better case for impeachment here than we did on the Mueller report.
This is about the Constitution of the United States, and we have many other, shall we say, Candidates for impeachable offense in terms of the Constitution.
But this one is the most understandable by the public.
And it's really important to know this.
There is no requirement there be a quid pro quo in the conversation.
Okay, so she's shifting the standard.
Is there a quid pro quo?
Is there not a quid pro quo?
Unclear what she wants.
So she can try to impeach on the basis of no quid pro quo, right?
She can.
But I think that that is going to fail dramatically.
If she believes the American people are going to throw Trump out of office in ignom- in ignanimity.
Based on he asked Zelensky in Ukraine to look into Joe and Hunter Biden and Burisma.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
It's only if people feel like Trump was using American taxpayer dollars from Democrats and Republicans from people all across the political spectrum in order to target his political opponent.
That he was actually withholding aid on the basis of this, that it turns into a real impeachable offense.
That is the line that I think is going to end up being drawn.
Now, that brings us to the release of the transcript today, because the Democrats and the Republicans in the Senate, actually, are pushing very hard for the Trump administration to release materials.
And Trump's response has been, okay.
Okay, sure.
I'm gonna release it.
So today, he released the full transcript of his call from July 25th, 2019 at 9.33am.
25th, 2019 at 9.33 a.m., from 9.03 to 9.33 a.m.
We'll release the full transcript of that call to the public with Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.
We're going to go through it line by line in just one second.
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Okay, so now the President of the United States has responded to these calls for transparency by actually suggesting he's going to provide the transparency that is desired.
So this takes off the table.
The second of the, the first of the Democratic rationales for impeachment.
So first rationale was he's covering it up.
Second rationale was he asked Zelensky for help with Biden.
Third rationale is quid pro quo.
As I said, I don't think the second rationale, the he asked Zelensky for help with Biden, is enough for the Democrats to impeach Trump or for any Republicans in the Senate to go along with it.
The whistleblower coverup might've been a grounds, right?
The coverup is worse than the crime, as the saying usually goes, but Trump isn't covering it up.
So as it turns out, the White House is now going to work with Congress, not only to release the transcript of this conversation between Zelensky of Ukraine and the President of the United States, but also they're going to work to release the whistleblower complaint.
And we'll get to that in a moment.
But today the big news was that they dropped the full transcript.
And a couple of preliminary words about the full transcript.
How you interpret this transcript is almost entirely dependent on what you think of Trump as a human being.
This is true of nearly every conversation that you think about.
Any conversation you think about, if you were to read a transcript of that conversation and you'd remove the name of the person saying things, that would make a very big difference in how you interpret the conversation.
Right, whether I'm speaking to my wife or my business partner.
That makes a big difference.
They can say the exact same thing and it means two completely separate things.
So, your impression of Trump and what he is as a person.
Is he a scattered thinker?
Is he somebody who sort of just blorts out what is on his mind?
Is he somebody who says ill-advised things and then walks them back?
Or is he somebody who plans?
Is he a bully who plans?
Is he somebody who sits there and applies leverage, turns the screw on people?
And that's really what he desires to do.
Or is he just a guy who has sort of these fragmentary thoughts?
Maybe he's a bully, maybe he's a bull in a china shop, but he sort of has fragmentary thoughts, and he spits things out there, and he doesn't mean them seriously, and then he walks them back.
Now, the answer may be that he is both of those things, and it sort of depends on the time of day.
But that doesn't clear it up.
So as we will see from the transcript, your interpretation of who Donald Trump is really heavily affect how you're about to hear the transcript that we are about to read.
Okay, so here is the transcript.
We're gonna go through it so you have all the information because again, on this show, we try to provide you all the information and then I'll provide analysis, but you can make up your own mind because on major issues of the day, you should, you're an adult.
So here's the transcript.
The president opens the call by congratulating Zelensky on his big win.
You're absolutely right, Mr. President.
We did win Bing, and we worked hard for this.
And you did a terrific job.
The way you came from behind, somebody who wasn't given much of a chance and you ended up winning easily.
It's a fantastic achievement.
Congratulations.
Zelensky then says, you're absolutely right, Mr. President.
We did win Bing and we worked hard for this.
We worked a lot, but I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you.
We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections.
And yes, it is true that these were unique elections.
We were in a unique situation that we were able to achieve a unique success.
I'm able to tell you the following.
The first time you called me to congratulate me when I won my presidential election and the second time you are now calling me when my party won the parliamentary election.
I think I should run more often so you can call me more often and we can talk over the phone more often.
Okay, so first thing to note.
It is obvious that Zelensky is trying to butter Trump up.
I mean, that is obvious.
And why wouldn't he?
If you are a foreign leader and you've watched President Trump do foreign relations for the last couple of years, what you know more than anything else is if you develop a warm personal relationship with Trump, he is more likely to give you what you want.
So this does add a wrinkle.
So people have been saying that Trump is requesting a quid pro quo.
What if it was Zelensky who was actually sort of requesting the quid pro quo?
In other words, what if Trump was holding up the Ukrainian aid for what he thought were good reasons, and Zelensky was trying to get Trump to release the aid by buttering Trump up?
Well, what if that was the actual case?
Because the transcript kind of reads like that.
I mean, from the very beginning, you've got Zelensky talking about how he learned from Trump in his election cycle and all this kind of stuff.
Like, it is obvious that his advisors told him, you know what you should do?
You should really massage Trump.
You should massage him, right?
Look how Kim Jong-un massages him.
Look how Bibi Netanyahu massages him.
Look how the Eastern European leaders in the area massage him.
The Orbans of the world massage him.
If you massage him, things will go better for you.
And Zelensky is taking that attack right from the outset.
Right from the outset, he is saying to Trump, You know, I want to be just like you, Mr. Trump.
And so there is that aspect of the conversation.
And the other side of the conversation does matter, because as we will see, some of the topics that are brought up in the conversation that have to do with things Ukraine can do for the United States are actually brought up by Zelensky, not by Trump.
Okay, so he butters him up and then Trump says, that's a very good idea.
I think your country is very happy about that.
And Zelensky said, well, yes, to tell you the truth, we are trying to work hard because we want to drain the swamp here in our country.
We brought in many, many new people, not the old politicians, not the typical politicians, because we want to have a new format and a new type of government.
You are a great teacher for us and in that, right?
Again, it's more buttering up of Trump on a personal level.
And he is the one who first mentions the drain the swamp kind of stuff.
Now, he's using Trump's phraseology because he is trying to butter Trump up.
Obviously.
100% obvious, right?
It is also true that he brings up the corruption stuff.
Well, that opens the door to Trump talking about corruption.
And in a second, we are going to get to the president talking about Ukrainian aid, right?
This is sort of the key aspect.
And how you read this paragraph, particularly, is going to inform whether you see this conversation as, if not proof of a quid pro quo, Then some sort of indicator that a quid pro quo was in the making and that you need more research on it.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so now we get to the crux of the matter, or as my father says, the meat of the matter, Uncle Eddie.
Okay, so the President of the United States finally gets Ukrainian aid, and here's what he says.
That's very nice of you to say that.
I will say we do a lot for Ukraine.
We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time.
Much more than the European countries are doing, and they should be helping you more than they are.
Germany does almost nothing for you.
All they do is talk, and I think it's something that you should really ask them about.
When I was speaking to Angela Merkel, she talks Ukraine, but she doesn't do anything.
A lot of the European countries are the same way.
So I think it's something you want to look at, but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.
I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal, necessarily, because things are happening that are not good, but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.
Okay, so, couple of things here.
One, Trump has been saying the reason he withheld aid from Ukraine is because he wanted the Europeans to pay up.
He's making that pretty explicit in this paragraph.
So he wasn't lying about that, right?
That has been a bugaboo of Trump's for a very long time is that the Europeans don't pay their fair share when it comes to international arrangements, including foreign aid, right?
They don't pay their fair share in NATO is one of Trump's main complaints.
He believes they don't pay their fair share at the UN has been Trump's complaint.
And he believes they don't pay their fair share when it comes to Ukrainian aid.
He's saying the Europeans should do more.
Okay, so that part Trump is telling the truth about, right?
The Democrats keep saying that Trump has shifted his rationale on why he is holding back Ukrainian aid or why he held back Ukrainian aid.
They say the real reason is because he wanted to leverage the Ukrainians to research Joe Biden.
But Trump has said, well, there are a couple of reasons.
One is because the Europeans should pay more.
He says that explicitly in the call.
And the other is because of generalized concerns about corruption.
And that brings us to that last line right there.
He says, I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily, because things are happening that are not good, but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.
Now, when he talks about reciprocal, does he mean, I need you to give me something and then I'll give you something?
Which looks more like a quid pro quo.
Or does he mean, Simply, we give you a lot of aid, and you're not doing a great job over there.
There are corruption issues over there.
Because if that's the question, then that's exactly what Joe Biden said to Ukraine back in 2016, right?
Joe Biden said, you don't get a billion dollars in loan guarantees unless you clean up your act.
So it sounds like Trump could be saying that too.
So again, as I say, Rorschach test.
If you think going in that this is a quid pro quo conversation, it sounds like a quid pro quo conversation.
If you think that it's not, it kind of doesn't.
Okay, so Zelensky, continues to read this.
I think the fairest way to say this is that Zelensky is reading this as a conversation in which he can try to pry aid out of President Trump by buttering him up.
Now, does that mean that Trump himself perceived the conversation that way?
Or that Trump actually was withholding aid in order to be buttered up?
I mean, what does that mean?
Right, exactly.
Just because Zelensky wanted the aid to come forth, as we'll see, and because he was offering stuff to Trump, that does not necessarily mean that Trump was soliciting the stuff in exchange for the aid.
It's a bit murky.
It's a bit murky.
And as I say, there are a couple of different plausible reads, which is why this controversy is not going to end today.
The transcript is not going to end the controversy.
In fact, it's going to fan the flames of the controversy.
Okay, so Zelensky then responds, yes, yes, you are absolutely right.
Not only 100%, but actually 1,000%.
And I can tell you the following.
I did talk to Angela Merkel, and I did meet with her.
I also met and talked with Macron, the leader of France, and I told them they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the sanctions with the sanctions.
They're not enforcing the sanctions.
They're not working as much as they should work for Ukraine.
It turns out that even though logically the European Union should be our biggest partner, but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union, and I'm very grateful to you for that because the U.S.
is doing quite a lot for Ukraine, much more than the EU, especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation.
I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense.
We are ready to continue to cooperate.
For the next step specifically, we are almost ready to buy more javelins from the United States for defense purposes.
Okay, so now he is explicitly bringing up the military defense issue, right?
At this point, like a week beforehand, Trump had instructed the Office of Management and Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney, to hold up the Ukrainian aid, $400 million in Ukrainian aid that was directed toward defense.
So now Zelensky is bringing it up, just openly.
He's explicitly asking for more Javelin missiles to defend against the Russian aggression that is occurring in Ukraine.
So now it's on the table.
And from here, the conversation goes into a bunch of things that Trump would like to see Ukraine get done.
And we'll get to those things momentarily.
But the question is, Zelensky seems to perceive this as, what can I do to get you to give the military aid?
And Trump seems to perceive this as, we can talk about military aid in a general way, and we should talk about military aid, and there may be certain preconditions that the country wants to set on the military aid, namely anti-corruption.
And then he mentions Biden, and so the question is, is he conditioning the aid on the Biden stuff, or is he conditioning the aid on generalized concerns about corruption, which is what he has said before, right?
That is the actual question here.
So, Zelensky finally brings up the actual military aid, and here is how President Trump responds.
He says, I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot, and Ukraine knows a lot about it.
So the question now, again, the whole thing's a Rorschach test.
When Trump says, I would like you to do us a favor, Are people now gonna read that as, you just said military aid, now do me a favor, go after my enemies.
Or, is it, Zelensky says, I want you to give military aid.
And Trump says, well there's a bunch of stuff you have to do, among those things, I want you to fight corruption, and one of the aspects of corruption is X. Again, I keep emphasizing because I want to be as intellectually honest as possible, and I want everybody else to be as intellectually honest as possible.
That there are several different plausible reads of this particular conversation.
And it seems like Zelensky is, in fact, trying to butter Trump up.
So Trump opens his favor requests not by talking about Biden.
Now, if you were a full on open quid pro quo, you would expect at this point that Zelensky says, we're ready to buy more javelins from the United States for defense purposes.
And Trump says, first, I need you to prosecute Biden.
That's what you would expect.
That's not really where the conversation goes.
So where the conversation goes next is Trump says, I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.
I would like you to find out what happened with the whole situation with Ukraine.
They say crowd strike.
I guess you have one of your wealthy people, the server.
They say Ukraine has it.
OK, so this is a reference to the firm that hacked Hillary Clinton's emails and the DNC.
So he's opening, not with the Biden stuff, but with a generalized point, which is basically correct, that Ukraine should investigate Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, which is totally appropriate.
There's nothing wrong with Trump saying that.
So far, nothing in the conversation has been incredibly wrong.
He says, there are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation.
I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people.
I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people.
I would like you to get to the bottom of it.
As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine.
Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible.
And then Zelensky responds, yes, it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier.
For me as president, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation.
We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine.
For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from the United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer.
Now, the Ukrainian ambassador issue is presumably a reference to the article in Politico from 2017 in which the embassy, the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, D.C. was working with sources from the DNC to research Paul Manafort and release that information.
And the ambassador allegedly was involved in that.
So the Ukrainian president is saying, well, we're going to recall that ambassador.
That ambassador's out.
And then it's the Ukrainian ambassador who raises Rudy Giuliani, right?
It's not Trump.
The Ukrainian ambassador seems to be trying to wheedle Trump, right?
The whole thing is him trying to massage Trump.
That's the entire conversation.
So, he continues by then talking about Rudy Giuliani, who is the president's personal lawyer.
He says,
I also plan to surround myself with great people, and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee, as President of Ukraine, that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.
That, I can assure you.
So again, this is Zelensky trying to butter up Trump.
Maybe this all falls under the broad rubric of corruption, of anti-corruption, right?
Of Trump saying the same thing that Biden said in 2016, and that the Obama administration said in 2016, aid is contingent on anti-corruption efforts.
And maybe this all falls under that rubric.
But once he brings up Giuliani, this is where things start to take the sideways turn that has created all the headlines.
So President Trump immediately picks up on the reference to Giuliani, and he starts talking about Giuliani and Biden.
Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man, he was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you.
Shut down and that's really unfair.
A lot of people are talking about that.
The way they shut your very good prosecutor down.
And you had some very bad people involved.
Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man.
He was the mayor of New York City.
A great mayor.
And I would like him to call you.
I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General.
Rudy very much knows what's happening.
And he is a very capable guy.
If you could speak to him, that would be great.
Now, again, this is where you start to cross streams that are inappropriate.
Not necessarily impeachable, because, again, is he conditioning aid on Rudy Giuliani being given information about Biden?
Not clear from the conversation.
Not clear.
Is it inappropriate for him to bring his personal attorney and campaign attorney into a conversation with the Attorney General about Joe Biden?
Yeah, that's pretty inappropriate.
And so he says, Rudy very much knows what's happening.
And he is a very capable guy.
If you could speak to him, that would be great.
The former ambassador from the United States, the woman was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news.
So I just want you to know that.
The other thing, and here's where Trump decides to just go full bore on the Biden stuff.
He says, the other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution.
And a lot of people want to find out about that.
So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.
Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution.
So if you can look into it, It sounds horrible to me.
And now, a couple possible reads.
One is the obvious read.
He doesn't like Biden.
He wants Biden out.
He wants Ukraine to go after him.
Is that explicitly connected to the aid?
Well, it is happening in a conversation that has mentioned foreign aid, including military aid, but is it conditioned?
Is it explicitly conditioned?
If Zelensky does not investigate Biden, Is the military aid going to continue to be withheld?
That's not clear from the conversation, because again, there's a lot in the conversation.
Another read is the sort of read that the Obama administration was using in early 2016, which is that if Ukraine was not going to investigate Manafort, then were they truly anti-corruption?
Is Trump subsuming the Biden stuff under the broader anti-corruption rubric?
That's a pretty flattering read for President Trump.
It doesn't sound particularly accurate to me.
But Trump brings up Biden and then Zelensky says, I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor.
First of all, I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation.
Since we have won the absolute majority in our parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September.
He or she will look into the situation specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.
The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty.
So we'll take care of that and we'll work on the investigation of the case.
Right, so Zelensky is now putting this in the broader rubric, not of the campaign, but of anti-corruption efforts that he's trying to prove to Trump.
And he says, on top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the ambassador to the United States from Ukraine.
As far as I recall, her name was Ivanovich.
It was great that you were the first one who told me she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%.
Her attitude toward me was far from the best as she admired the previous president and she was on his side.
She would not accept me as new president well enough.
And Trump responded, well, she's going to go through some things.
I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call.
I'm also going to have Attorney General Barr call, and we'll get to the bottom of it.
I'm sure you will figure it out.
I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly, and he was a very fair prosecutor, so good luck with everything.
Your economy is going to get better and better, I predict.
You have a lot of assets.
It's a great country.
I have many Ukrainian friends.
They are incredible people.
Okay, and then Zelensky responds with continuing to butter up Trump.
I'd say you can tell that we're going to talk about the general dynamics in just a second of the call, what it means going forward, and really why this is sort of the opening of the investigation, not the end of the investigation.
Zelensky says, I would like to tell you, I also have quite a few Ukrainian friends that live in the United States.
Actually, last time I traveled to the US, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower.
This is him again, trying to just massage Trump.
He said, So he is picking up on Trump's focus on the Biden stuff and saying, I would love to do that.
So it is possible, again, that there's a bit of a disconnect here, or it's possible there's no disconnect.
specifically Washington, D.C.
On the other hand, I also want to ensure you that we'll be very serious about the case and we'll work on the investigation.
So he is picking up on Trump's focus on the Biden stuff and saying, I would love to do that.
So it is possible, again, that there's a bit of a disconnect here or it's possible there's no disconnect.
So if there's a disconnect, the disconnect is Trump saying, talking about aid and then being like, also, you know, just as a general rule, there's a bunch of stuff I want you to do.
And then, Zelensky taking that as, oh, if you want the, if I want the aid, I have to do X, Y, and Z. Now, what you really need is more than the phone call.
What you really need is somebody, if you wanted to impeach Trump, if you're the Democrats, what you need is a smoking gun conversation where Trump said to somebody, guys, no aid to Ukraine until they investigate Biden.
Right?
You do need that smoking gun.
You need that final data point linked in order to get to the quid pro quo.
The conversation is not an explicit quid pro quo.
If you're reading it with a jaundiced eye about President Trump, if you think he's really corrupt, if you think a quid pro quo is there, then you read the conversation and it sort of supports the story.
If you think there's no quid pro quo, then it sounds like Trump basically talking about aid and then talking about stuff he'd like to see Ukraine do, but not conditioning one on the other.
That's just a friendly conversation about things we'd like to see you do, and also about aid, because these are issues that both are going to come up in a conversation.
Zelensky seems to- I mean, if you read Zelensky's side of the conversation, it sounds like he's trying to wheedle Trump into giving aid, right?
That does sound like what it is from Zelensky's point of view.
And Zelensky says, I believe we can be very successful in cooperating on energy independence with the U.S.
We are already working on cooperation.
We're buying American oil.
But I'm very hopeful for a future meeting.
Again, everything he says is attempting to pry something out of Trump.
He says, we'll have more time and more opportunities to discuss these opportunities and get to know each other better.
I'd like to thank you very much for your support.
And then Trump goes back to Rudy and Barr.
He says, I appreciate that.
I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call.
Thank you.
Whenever you'd like to come to the White House, feel free to give us a call.
Give us a date.
And then Zelensky talks about inviting Trump to Kiev and visiting Ukraine.
And then Trump says, OK, we can work that out.
And then they say goodbye.
So that is the content of the conversation.
We're going to get to analysis of that conversation in just one second.
First, let's talk.
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Okay, so we're gonna get to much, much more on impeachment 2019.
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All righty.
So the bottom line about this conversation, he had to sum it up in one line, is that this is the beginning of the inquiry, not the end.
Because it is a Rorschach test, because it is plausible to read the conversation as a sort of soft quid pro quo, a, if you don't hand over the, if you don't give me what I want, you don't get the aid, conversation.
And it is also plausible to read it as, let's talk about the aid, you gotta make some anti-corruption efforts, one of the things I'd like to see you do is investigate Joe Biden, but it's not conditional.
Right?
It is possible to read it in a variety of ways.
That means that the investigation is going to continue.
And it means that everybody who has had discussions with Trump about Ukraine and Ukrainian aid is going to be called as a witness.
Because the fact is that Trump did not give good excuses to Congress about why exactly he had not given aid to Ukraine.
Mitch McConnell was asked about this yesterday.
Mitch McConnell explicitly said, I don't know.
He said, I have no idea why the president didn't just give the aid to Ukraine.
It is not clear why he didn't give the aid to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, there's a report from the Washington Post today.
Reporters on that story, Greg Miller, Josh Dowsey, Paul San, Ellen Nakashima, so the Washington Post going all out on this story, of course, saying Giuliani ran shadowy Ukraine policy, sidelining and alarming officials.
According to the Post, President Trump's attempt to pressure the leader of Ukraine followed a months-long fight inside the administration that sidelined national security officials and empowered political loyalists, including the President's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to exploit the U.S.
relationship with Kiev, current and former U.S.
officials said.
The sequence, which began early this year, involved the abrupt removal of U.S.
Ambassador to Ukraine, the circumvention of senior officials on the National Security Council, and the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars of aid administered by the Defense and State Departments, all as key officials from these agencies struggle to piece together Giuliani's activities from news reports.
Several officials described tense meetings on Ukraine among national security officials at the White House leading up to the President's phone call on July 25, sessions that led some participants to fear that Trump and those close to him appeared prepared to use U.S.
leverage with the new leader of Ukraine for Trump's political gain.
And now this is the Washington Post trying to suss out a smoking gun where the evidence does not back the smoking gun yet.
So yes, we know that Rudy Giuliani was in Ukraine.
We've known that for what, two years now?
That Rudy Giuliani was walking around Ukraine looking for dirt on Hunter Biden and Burisma and all the rest of this?
Does that mean that it totally overtook Ukrainian policy?
Not clear.
And if you are a disgruntled former employee, if you're somebody who is working in Ukraine and Trump fired you for any reason, you might have an interest in suggesting that Trump had gone out of his way to get rid of you so that he could do his political manipulation.
And we've seen this story before, right?
James Comey suggested the same thing.
When Trump fired him from the FBI, Comey then claimed that Trump did so for corrupt reasons as opposed to just because Trump was frustrated with him.
One of the problems with a governing strategy of chaos, which is what Trump does, is it leaves an awful lot up for speculation, and it leaves an awful lot of pissed off disgruntled people on the other end.
And this story would be no different.
According to the Washington Post, as those worries intensified, some senior officials worked behind the scenes to hold off a Trump meeting or call with the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, out of concern that Trump would use the conversation to press Kiev for damaging information on Trump's potential rival in the 2020 race, Joe Biden and Biden's son, Hunter.
One former official said an awful lot of people were trying to keep a meeting from happening for the reason that it would not be focused on Ukraine-U.S.
relations.
The White House disputed the account saying no such concerns were raised in the Security Council meetings and that Trump's focus was on urging Ukraine to root out corruption.
So...
Again, lack of clarity, lack of clarity.
So where does this go from here?
So the Democrats and the Republicans have now issued a unanimous call from the Senate for the actual whistleblower report to be turned over.
The whistleblower report presumably includes something beyond the transcript of the phone call.
Presumably it would include information about other conversations that were had about Ukraine or other lower level conversations that were had between Ukraine and the Trump administration.
And so Congress wants to see that information.
Now this raises some pretty significant national security issues for the future.
Namely, the president is supposed to be able to conduct foreign policy.
Making every conversation that he has, subject to congressional review, Does destroy a lot of the constitutional order.
The commander-in-chief does have plenary power over the US's foreign policy.
He's the sole policymaker when it comes to having conversations with foreign leaders, for example, in shaping American policy along those lines.
Negotiating treaties, talking about foreign aid, and all the rest of it.
So this sort of new world where Trump is releasing transcripts, it's not great.
It may be necessary for Trump to do so at this point because of how this all went down.
But it isn't great for the office of the presidency.
John Yoo, the former lawyer for the Bush administration, now law professor at University of California, Berkeley, He has a piece in the New York Times talking about this today.
He says, we should be aware that rushing into an impeachment may do long-term harm to the presidency and our national security.
The Constitution vests the president with the authority to conduct foreign policy and the responsibility to protect the nation's security.
A president, even one who is possibly engaging in wrongdoing, must have confidence in the confidentiality of his communications or he will be unable to perform his constitutional duties and our international relations will fall victim to governance by committee.
So turning over transcripts of private phone calls with foreign leaders to Congress and making them public is not good policy.
You points out that George Washington in 1796 refused to provide the House with the Jade Treaty negotiating record.
Presidents have claimed the right not just to communicate with foreign leaders, but also to keep national security information secret.
And now we are violating all of that.
So on a going forward basis, this is pretty dangerous stuff, but it's pretty obvious at this point that Trump does not have much of a political choice.
Again, the Senate yesterday passed a unanimous resolution to hand the whistleblower complaint to the intelligence committees.
Presumably, whatever is classified will be kept behind closed doors.
McConnell bypassed normal Senate procedures to move Chuck Schumer's request on this to a vote without any floor debate.
So, this led a lot of people on the right to speculate, okay, there's nothing in the whistleblower report, and that is backed by a report in the Washington Times yesterday, and a Fox News report on Tuesday evening, citing a senior Trump administration official who said that the intelligence community inspector general who judged the complaint, the whistleblower complaint, found that the person who wrote it had political bias in favor of a rival candidate for president.
The rival candidate was not identified, according to Fox News, but the substance of Trump's conversation involved Joe Biden, So, will the whistleblower report actually cut against the accusations against Trump?
Will it make it look like a partisan hit job?
A witch hunt, as President Trump has suggested?
Trump has already tweeted out about all of this.
Trump tweeted out last night in the aftermath of the move by Pelosi to open an official impeachment inquiry.
He said, such an important day at the United Nations, so much work, so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news witch hunt garbage.
So bad for our country.
And that obviously is gonna be how Trump treats this, because again, I mean, he treated all of this the same way with Trump-Russia and ended up being right on that.
So it is unclear where this is all going.
Hillary Clinton, for her part, is super excited about this.
Maybe she's unaware that if Trump is impeached, she does not become president.
Mike Pence does.
But she endorsed an impeachment inquiry.
She told People Magazine, which is still interviewing Hillary Clinton.
She said, I'm not in favor of moving toward impeachment.
I did not come to that decision easily or quickly.
Then I'm in favor of moving toward impeachment, rather.
But this is an emergency, as I see it.
This latest behavior around Ukraine, trying to enlist the president of Ukraine in a plot to undermine former VP Biden or lose the military aid he needs to defend against Trump's friend, Vladimir Putin.
If that's not an impeachable offense, I don't know what is.
Now, again, Hillary Clinton and her campaign worked with the Ukrainian government, with the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington, D.C., to dig up dirt on Donald Trump's campaign manager in 2016.
So if her complaint is working with foreign governments to dig up dirt, she has no complaint.
Really?
If the complaint is quid pro quo, that is a bit of a different story.
And then the question is, is the quid pro quo designed to benefit Trump's campaign?
Or is it really just Trump making a general anti-corruption point and he thinks that the Biden thing is a corrupt thing?
And so he is mentioning that as one point among many.
Now, the Senate GOP is moving to quash articles of impeachment.
Senator John Kennedy said, my response to Democrats is go hard or go home.
He said, if you want to impeach him, stop talking, do it.
Go to Amazon, buy a spine, do it.
And let's get after it.
He said, I think the public will feel like it is more harassment.
And President Trump himself suggested that it will be a positive for him.
He said impeachment will probably pay off to his benefit.
Clip nine.
He's doing the best it's ever done.
And I just heard that you'd like to impeach.
They're going to lose the election and they figure this is a thing to do.
This never happened where we're in the election.
And, I mean, if she does that, they all say that's a positive for me from the election.
You could also say, who needs it?
It's bad for the country.
Then they wonder why they don't get gun legislation done.
Then they wonder why they don't get drug prices lowered.
Because all they do is talk nonsense.
And as I say, Trump has flipped the tables on the Democrats by basically pursuing radical transparency.
He could have easily argued executive privilege over the transcript of the phone call.
He did not.
Chuck Grassley, senator from Iowa, Who's a senior member of the Judiciary Committee said correctly.
You can't tell me they're talking about impeachment when the president is cooperating with them 100% to release these things.
Said it's premature to talk about impeachment.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said, I think the Democrats have made this such a partisan exercise that I think most of the public has discounted the idea of it.
I think most people believe it's become sort of a political attack on the president and nothing more.
Paul did hedge his bets a bit.
He said it's hard to predict exactly how events are going to unfold.
Now, President Trump's campaign is ramping up fundraising.
He sees this presumably as a big winner with his base because now it looks like they're coming after him and coming after him hard, which presumably they are.
The asks began as House Speaker Pelosi prepared her announcements.
There were emails, texts, tweets, a video directing Trump supporters to a new Republican portal designed to capitalize on Trump's army of online donors, according to the Washington Post.
There's an email to supporters Tuesday afternoon.
He said, "The Democrats thrive on silencing "and intimidating his supporters like you, friend.
"They wanna take your vote away.
"President Trump wants to know who stood with him "when it mattered most." So watch for Trump to pick up serious money in the aftermath of the Democrats pushing for impeachment.
Meanwhile, even Tulsi Gabbard in the Democratic Party, who just made the next Democratic debate, actually, which should be fascinating because she is just, she's a machine when it comes to destroying other Democratic politicians.
See Kamala Harris.
Tulsi Gabbard came out yesterday.
She said, I'm not so sure about this whole impeachment thing, guys.
My position remains the same.
I think that impeachment would be terribly divisive for our already very divided country.
Even on an impeachment inquiry?
I think Congress needs to exercise oversight over the information that's been leaked.
I think that it's important that this transcript is released to Congress.
I mean, the bottom line here is that that's probably correct.
Nancy Pelosi did not have much choice.
She was being bullied by her own caucus.
part an already divided country.
I think it's important that Donald Trump is defeated.
I believe I can defeat him in 2020, but it's the voters who need to make that choice unequivocally. - I mean, the bottom line here is that that's probably correct.
Nancy Pelosi did not have much choice.
She was being bullied by her own caucus.
And with the new reports, The momentum hit fever pitch and she just could not hold back the dam anymore.
She could not hold back.
She was standing there trying to hold back that dam and the Democrats have just overcome her.
So, likeliest scenario here.
Trump gets impeached in the House because the Democrats have a majority.
It goes to the Senate.
But are they going to uncover any real information about a quid pro quo here?
The Democrats are going to suggest that the transcript itself is dispositive.
It is not.
They need more information.
They need to connect all the dots.
All the dots have to be connected if you want to impeach somebody.
Otherwise, you know, you have an opportunity to get rid of him in 14 months if you don't like him.
If the Democrats shoot here and they miss, it's going to be really, really bad for them.
If Donald Trump survives an impeachment attempt and it looks like Democrats basically went out there on a limb and are mad because Trump mentioned Joe Biden to the president of Ukraine, I think most voters are jaded enough Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
There are no things I like today because there's really not much to like.
impeaching Trump for violation of constitutional duty, they're going to see it as Democrats being partisan hacks who are attempting to destroy the president of the United States.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
There are no things I like today because there's really not much to like.
It is time for a quick thing that I hate.
Okay, so you want to hear the most garbage story of the day, maybe of the week, maybe I mean, this is just a massively garbage story.
So, there was this guy named Carson King.
Carson King is a security guard who works in Iowa, and he's a fan of Iowa State.
So he went to a game, and at this game, he held up a sign.
On September 13th, the sign read, Bush Light Supply Needs Replenishing.
Venmo Carson King 25.
He did that, he held up the sign at ESPN College Game Day at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames.
And then the sign garnered national attention.
And people around the country started just randomly giving him money.
Within just, within a day, within two days.
People had given him over $1,000,000 for beer.
I mean, it's just like a funny social media thing.
People just gave him over $1,000,000 for beer.
And then he did something pretty incredible, right?
He's raised over $1,000,000.
I mean, that's enough to retire on in Iowa, right?
And Carson King took that money.
He's 24 years old.
He took that money and he gave it to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital for cancer research.
He took that entire $1,000,000 and he handed it over for cancer research.
That's an amazing story, right?
That's an amazing story.
But because we live in the worst timeline, social media then decided to destroy this guy.
And so what did they do?
People went back into his Twitter account.
They found something that he tweeted that was racist eight years ago when he was 16 years old.
He made some sort of reference, quoting and referencing the show Tosh.0, which is the show on Comedy Central.
It's a racially charged message.
Okay, and he had a contract with Anheuser-Busch, which had announced that it would match his donation to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital.
And they ripped away whatever they were doing with him.
They said they would no longer associate with him.
He held a press conference on Tuesday to discuss the post.
He said, eight years ago, when I was a sophomore in high school, I made some social media posts with my friends that quoted and referenced the show Tosh.0.
One of those posts was brought to my attention by a member of the media today.
He said the Des Moines Register, who uncovered this, has been nothing but kind in all their coverage.
I appreciate the reporter pointing out the post to me.
I want everyone to understand this was my decision to publicly address the post and apologize.
I believe that is the right thing to do.
Anheuser-Busch said Carson King had multiple social media posts that do not align with our values as a brand or as a company, and we will have no further association with him.
We are honoring our commitment by donating more than $350,000 to the University of Iowa hospitals and clinics.
The contents of the offensive post have not been released.
The Des Moines Register reports that the post compared black mothers to gorillas and made light of black people killed in the Holocaust.
Okay, so let's take it for granted that the posts are terrible.
He was 16 years old, a sophomore in high school.
He is only now famous because he just gave a million dollars.
He's not a wealthy dude.
He gave a million dollars he received in donations to cancer research, and so he must be cancelled.
So you just cancelled a guy.
Who, again, is like lower middle class, it sounds like.
You cancelled that guy for the great crime of having risen to public prominence on the back of doing something incredible.
And you cancelled him.
Because of something he said in high school when he was 16 years old.
Guys, your standard's garbage.
And you are garbage, frankly.
And if you're the Des Moines Register and you reported on this, you are garbage.
Hey, if you're a reporter who decided this was newsworthy, it's because you're a garbage human being.
It is simply not newsworthy.
And if you were really concerned about this sort of activity, you know what you would have done?
Honestly?
You would have gone to Carson King, and you would have said, dude, you have these old social media posts.
You might want to delete them, or you might want to address them publicly, but I'm not going to report on them because I don't think that's fair.
But that's not what happened.
It is gross.
It is disgusting.
It is wrong.
But this is the world we live in, where as soon as someone reaches any level of prominence, they must be canceled if they have ever said a wrong thing.
Just despicable.
So, this is the timeline in which we live, and it is gross.
Okay, later today, we'll have two more additional hours of content with all the breaking news, and then we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the breaking news.
I promise you, it's only a Wednesday, guys.
There's gonna be a lot of breaking news.
President Trump, sometime this week, will release the whistleblower complaint.
News breaking hot and heavy, so keep it right here.
here.
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