Best of the Program | Guest: Pat Gray | 11/20/19

Hey, welcome to the podcast.

Today is really the hearings on the hill.

And we look at what Sonlin said in real time

and

the way the media is going to spin this.

This is going to be a victory lap for them.

And we explain why.

Now, on cross-examination,

things also came out in the president's favor.

But will the media discuss that at all?

All that and more on today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the

program.

All right, the ambassador who is at the center of the inquiry has just taken a seat in Capitol Hill in front of the impeachment hearing and the Intel Committee, and

they're about to ask him some questions.

Schiff has just sat down, and he's about to open those big, huge bug eyes.

Can you imagine if he and Alexandria Casio-Cortez ever had a child?

The head would be just a giant eye.

Was it Cyclops has one eye?

Is that what I'm thinking of?

Yeah, the Cyclops is

a third eye, I think, right?

Oh, Cyclops is a third eye.

What's I'm thinking of, like, isn't there something on The Simpsons that's just one eye?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Whatever that thing is.

Well, it's Mike.

We could just say the baby would look like Mike

from Monsters Inc.

Yes, that's there you go.

Perfect.

Mike from Monsters Inc.

Exactly.

That is what I'm thinking about.

This is a big day.

We've had a lot of,

I don't know, a lot of things that you kind of would expect.

Sondland is the witness.

This is the playoff game.

Is it the Super Bowl?

Maybe it's the Super Bowl.

It's right there.

The Democrats lose

playoffs.

Yeah, it's a high-stakes game.

And here's the thing: Sondlin is the one of the big complaints that Republicans have is you keep giving us hearsay evidence.

None of these people have even talked to the president.

Well, Sondlin has talked to the president.

All the things that have come out that have been reported as these huge bombshell negatives to the president have all been through Sondland.

Because Sondlin was the guy that talked to the president.

He's the guy who was on the phone at this restaurant.

And all the people around apparently overheard it.

He's the guy that reportedly, after the conversation, said, you know, Trump doesn't care about Ukraine.

All he cares about is his own personal, you know, benefit with politics.

So

now, Sondlin has not said he said any of those things.

He has revised his testimony a couple of times to move it more towards the evidence Democrats have presented.

So he came out and said.

He's looking for his survival, I think, one way or another.

He's a guy.

He's not a political kind of guy, and he's looking for his survival.

And if he was lying, he realized, oh, crap, I'm in deep trouble.

Yeah, and they keep bringing up this, you know, the media keeps bringing up the same point, which is every time they bring one of these people up, like, this is a public servant.

This man has been, worked for Republicans and Democrats.

He's been in the State Department for 912 years.

And they bring this up as

a positive.

Yeah, that's right.

Sondlin is not that guy.

Sondlin

was not a huge Trump fan initially, but came around to him in a big way and wound up donating over a million dollars to his inauguration campaign, mega donor.

As is the case with every administration, the mega donors wind up getting ambassadorships, and so he's the guy going to the EU.

I want to take

Adam Schiff because he's talking about the 2016 election in Ukraine, that it was a discredited conspiracy theory, that there was anything going on,

and who the president feared the most was Joe Biden, and Sondlin's about to say that that's all true.

In exchange for politically motivated investigations that Trump believed would help his reelection campaign.

The first investigation was of a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election.

Madam, they can both be responsible.

The second investigation that Trump demanded

was into a political rival that he apparently feared most, Joe Biden.

Trump sought to weaken Biden and to refute the fact that his own election campaign in 2016 had been helped by a Russian hacking and dumping operation and Russian social media campaign directed by Vladimir Putin to help Trump.

Trump's scheme undermined military and diplomatic support to the US.

To deal with Adam Shiv's pace.

It's really deliberate, slow, and weird.

And then when he gets questions from other Republicans in the committee, he just stares straightforward like he's on some weird drug.

You notice that?

It's really creepy.

He might be on some weird drug.

Oh, okay, good.

You're expecting someone to

explain him?

Even his mother is like,

no idea.

He's been creepy weird ever since he was sitting at the dinner table in his high chair with those creepy eyes and that big forehead.

Found himself increasingly embroiled in an effort to press the new Ukrainian president that deviated sharply from the norm in both terms of policy and process.

Interesting visual for radio listeners.

They're showing clips of Sanlin as Schiff Schiff is reading this.

Sanlin does not look

U.S.

ambassador to Ukraine.

He looks confident.

He looks confident.

He looks like, this is a joke.

I know exactly what happened.

He looks like he's been smiling through this with Schiff.

He's projecting confidence.

Yeah.

Not a, I'm going to tell a big secret, and I'm so sorry.

It's not that vibe, at least visually, from Sanlin.

I want to

someone at a goal of the White House meeting for President Zelensky, which the group deemed crucial for U.S.-Ukrainian relations.

So as Schiff is blabbing here, can I give you a preview here of this opening statement?

There's some pretty big stuff in it.

He goes through a series of about six points here at the beginning of it.

We've acquired the testimony here in advance.

And what's interesting here, probably the big takeaway is his fourth point here.

And he's going to go through this whole thing in just a couple of minutes, but we're going to give you a preview anyway.

He says, as I testified previously, this is when when he changed his testimony, Mr.

Giuliani's requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky.

Mr.

Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 DNC server and burisma.

Mr.

Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president.

So that is as clear

an accusation as

the only one that really has any real first-hand firsthand knowledge.

Credibility on this.

And he's saying, now, again, like you can say

this is why we've made this point 5,000 times.

You can't set the hurdle at quid pro quo.

It's a dumb place to defend because there's tons of people who were all acting like it was a quid pro quo.

They all seem to have evidence and

at least belief and testimony here that it happened.

Now, Sonlin is as close as we've been able to see to the president that is saying, yes, that's what it was.

Again, Sonlin is not just some guy, he's a huge supporter of the president.

So that is a big deal.

And it points to, if nothing else, Glenn, and see if you agree with this, that

Giuliani is going to be the focus of this.

These people who are in this situation who are on the borderline, like Sonlin, who could get in trouble or could be the hero witness, are going to push this not necessarily to the president at the end, but towards Giuliani.

And if they can get Giuliani to take the blame for all of it,

it may be a place where

Where the president and everybody else winds up being comfortable

now that whether that works or not, I don't know.

It's a big question of whether the American people believe that.

And I think there's some evidence to believe that Giuliani does this type of thing, you know, on his own.

But

he says in his testimony that we knew we didn't think Giuliani was necessary for this process, but we did not think he was acting in bad faith.

We did not think he was trying to do something illicit.

We thought it was a legitimate role.

We just didn't really like that he was involved in our thing.

So he says, Finally, at all times, I was acting in good faith as presidential appointee.

I followed the directions of the president.

We worked with Mr.

Giuliani because the president directed us to do so.

We had no desire to set any conditions on the Ukrainians.

Indeed, my personal view, which I shared repeatedly with others, was that the White House meeting and security assistant should have proceeded without preconditions of any kind.

We were working to overcome the problems given the facts as they existed.

Our only interest was to advance long-standing U.S.

policy and support Ukraine's fragile democracy.

Yeah, that's that's interesting.

And he in the previous paragraph also talks about the quid pro quo he's mentioning, he's saying was a thing, was about the meeting, not about the money.

Correct.

When he found out about the money, he was the security assistants, he was very upset about that and did not think that that should be any part of the

policy whatsoever.

So he is making a distinction there.

It's like, yeah, we were doing a, yeah, you can come meet with the president, but you got to do this investigation thing.

That did happen, according to Sondland.

However, he's saying when he found out about the security assistance being withheld, he was very angry about it.

And he said he was adamantly opposed to suspension of any aid.

He tried diligently to ask why the aid was suspended, but never received a clear answer.

What's interesting about that is it means the quid pro quo that he's talking about, according to Sondlin, did not have to do with the money.

He never got an answer as to why the money was suspended.

That's a big, a big distinction here.

The Democrats will certainly push on that to see if they can get something else to pop out of it.

But that is a ⁇ it looks like that's the direction, the sort of the window he's trying to fit this into.

So he says, with enthusiasm, we return to the White House May 23rd to brief the president from Ukraine.

The importance, strategic strategic importance of Ukraine and the value of strengthening the relationship with President Zelensky.

To support this reformer, we asked the White House for two things: a working phone call between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, and second, a working Oval Office visit.

In our view, both were vital to cementing the U.S.-Ukraine relationship, demonstrating support for Ukraine in the face of Russia aggression and advancing broader U.S.

policy interests.

Unfortunately, Trump was skeptical.

He expressed concerns that the Ukrainian government was not serious about reform.

He even mentioned that Ukraine tried to take him down in the last election.

Our response to the persistent efforts to change his views, President Trump directed us to talk with Rudy.

We understood talk with Rudy meant Mr.

Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer.

Let me say again, we weren't happy with the president's directive to talk with Rudy.

We didn't want to involve Mr.

Giuliani.

I believe then, as I do now, that the men and women of the State Department, not the president's personal lawyer, should take responsibility for Ukrainian matters.

So do I, but unless there's something else going on.

Is Schiff done with this yet?

He's still blabbing.

He's still blabbing.

President Zelensky did not clear things up and publicly.

The only person this

impeachment is more about than actual President Trump is Schiff.

It's all about Schiff.

The Schiff Show.

He loves it.

Schiff show with the goo-goo-googly eyes.

I first communicated with Mr.

Giuliani in early August.

He emphasized that the president wanted a public statement from Zelensky.

Mr.

Giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election,

Burisma, and Tukop, the two things that were important to the president.

We kept the leadership of the State Department and NSC informed about our activities.

We included communication with the director of Secretary of State, Pompeo, his counselor, his executive secretary, all within the State Department.

Communications with Ambassador John Bolton, Fiona Hill, blah, blah, blah.

They all knew knew what we were doing and why.

Well, that doesn't, does that look good for them?

Because they all kind of said they didn't know what was going on.

I mean, it is, you can tell there is seemingly animosity between Sondland, again, who's not a State Department guy, although he does believe in the State Department and had a big role there, between him and Giuliani.

I mean, they are throwing a lot of this on Giuliani.

And, you know, while they're saying, like, there's a big, you know, segment kind of that that you mentioned there where he is saying, look, we didn't want to do this.

We didn't want Giuliani involved.

The president, though, was skeptical of the State Department, and so we went along with it, but we did not want Giuliani involved in this.

Now, look, it's the president's decision whether Giuliani's, I mean, the president's the guy paying him, right?

It's his personal lawyer.

So he gets to make those decisions, and Sondlin respects them here, but is pointing out over and over again that he did not like the idea, the road it went down.

So it really looks

in this testimony so far that you haven't heard yet, but we're reading ahead on his opening statement.

His opening statement, at least as far as we have read, I'm halfway through page

the 24-page document and reading it as we are telling you about it.

He is

he looks like he's going after Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani

is

looks like he's going to be the fall guy.

Can we take Nunez and his opening statement?

He's coming up in just a second.

Some things happened yesterday that we'll get into as well that did not go well for the Democrats.

And,

you know, well, let's just see.

This is a really important article drafted against an important day

for the impeachment hearing.

Adam Schiff.

And with that, I recognize Ranking Member Nunes for any remarks that he has.

Please, thank God finally finished.

Thank the gentleman.

As we learned last night,

story time last night.

We get story time first thing this morning.

Ambassador Sonlin, welcome.

Glad you're here.

I'm really not glad you're here, but welcome to the fifth day of this circus.

So

as I've noticed,

the Democrats on this committee spent three years accusing President Trump of being a Russian agent.

In March 2018, after a year-long investigation,

Intelligence Committee Republicans issued a 240-page report describing in detail how the Russians meddled in the 2016 elections and making specific recommendations to improve our election security.

Denouncing the report as a whitewash and accusing Republicans of subverting the investigation, the Democrats issued their own report, focusing on their now debunked conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to hack the elections.

Notably, the Democrats vowed at the time to present a further, quote, comprehensive report, unquote, after they finished their investigation into Trump's treasonous collusion with Russia.

For some completely inexplicable reason, after the implosion of their Russia hoax, the Democrats failed to issue that comprehensive report.

We're still waiting.

This episode shows how the Democrats have exploited the Intelligence Committee for political purposes for three years, culminating in these impeachment hearings and their mania to attack the president.

No conspiracy theory is too outlandish for the Democrats.

Time and time again, they floated the possibility of some far-fetched malfeasance by Trump, declared the dire need to investigate it, and then suddenly dropped the issue and moved on to their next asinine theory.

A sampling of their accusations and insinuations includes

these.

Trump is a long-time Russian agent, as described in the still dossier.

The Russians gave Trump advance access to emails stolen by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The Trump campaign based some of its activities on these stolen documents.

Trump received nefarious materials from the Russians through a Trump campaign aid.

Trump laundered Russian money through real estate deals.

Trump was blackmailed by Russia through his financial exposure with Deutsche Bank.

Trump had a diabolical plan to build a Trump tower in Moscow.

Trump changed the Republican National Committee platform to hurt Ukraine and benefit Russia.

The Russians laundered money through the NRA for the Trump campaign.

Trump's son-in-law lied about his Russian contacts while obtaining his security clearance.

It's a long list of charges, all false.

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn, and you're listening to the Glenn Beck program.

If you like what you're hearing on this show, make sure you check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

It's available wherever you download your favorite podcasts.

So I want to take you back to the hearings.

Sondlin, Ambassador Somlin, is still reading his opening statement.

If you just joined us, you missed a couple of things.

Let me just read probably the most critical thing in the last 20 minutes.

Also, July 26th, shortly after our Kiev meetings, I spoke by phone with President Trump, the White House, which had finally shared certain call dates and times with my attorneys,

will confirm this.

The call lasted five minutes.

I remember I was at a restaurant in Kyiv, and I had no reason to doubt that this conversation included the subject of investigations.

Again, given Mr.

Giuliani's demand that President Zelensky make a public statement about investigations, I knew the topic of investigations was important to the president.

We did not discuss any classified information.

Other witnesses recently shared their recollections of overhearing this call, but for the most part, I have no reason to doubt their accounts.

It is true that the president speaks loudly at times.

It's also true that we discussed ASAP Rocky.

It's true that the president likes colorful language.

While I can't remember the precise details, again, the White House has not allowed me to see any of the readouts of that call, the July 26th call did not strike me as significant at the time.

Actually, I would have been more surprised if President Trump had not mentioned investigations, particularly what we were hearing from Mr.

Giuliani about the president's concerns.

However, I have no recollection of discussing Vice President Biden or his son on the call or after the call ended.

I know that members of this committee have frequently framed those complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there quid pro quo?

As I testified previously with regard to the White House call and the White House meeting, the answer is

yes,

there was.

Mr.

Giuliani conveyed to Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volcker, and others the president wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing to investigations of Burisma and the 2016 election.

Mr.

Giuliani expressed those requests directly to the Ukrainians.

Mr.

Giuliani also expressed those requests directly to us.

We all understood the prerequisites for a White House call and a White House meeting.

It reflected President Trump's desires and requirements.

So they talk about, you know, it was no secret.

In fact, let me quote, it was no secret.

Everyone was informed via email on July 19th,

days before the presidential call.

As I communicated to the team, I told President Zelensky in advance that assurances to, quote, run a fully transparent investigation, end quote, and quote, turn over every stone, end quote, were necessary in his call with the the president.

That doesn't seem like a bad thing to ask for if you want a meeting.

The rest of it seems to be this is what I heard or what I later came to believe, but no evidence.

But make no mistake, this is going to hurt the president's case because he has made his case, which it is not.

But he has decided to make the case all about quid pro quo.

This is the only guy with first-hand knowledge that can say there was quid pro quo.

But he didn't say it was happening from the president.

He said it was happening through Rudy Giuliani.

That only Rudy Giuliani said quid pro quo.

You have to do this or he's not going to get that meeting.

But he is saying that did come directly from the president to Giuliani.

But he does not have first-hand knowledge, but

that would be a good assumption.

Sure.

I think it's important to kind of talk about what we're doing here today, which is I think you can go probably all over

talk radio today and get people telling you that, you know, oh, these guys are all, it's all a sham and it's a hoax and there's nothing going on here.

And you can certainly go on every media source today and they're going to say this is the worst thing in the world.

What I feel like it's important for us to do today is to look at this and see how is the media going to take this?

How are they going to push this to the American people?

What the truth is and what is still speculation.

And what is the approach the Democrats are trying to take here?

Right.

They are playing by the president's.

They're letting him hang himself on the quid pro quo.

When I say this is bad for the president, I mean it's bad for the president because he has insisted on making it only about that.

It's not about that.

It's about the national interest on what happened in the 2016 election and deep corruption in our State Department and former administration.

That's what this is really all about.

But he has insisted on making this about quid pro quo.

And so, because everybody knows that,

what's going to happen is the media is just going to pound Sondland's thing into the ground, saying, yes, those who question if there was a quid pro quo, I can tell you, yes.

This does, I think, potentially provide an off-rep for Trump on that defense, which is to say, wait a minute, we're talking about the meeting?

Well, meetings we use for all sorts of things.

You were talking about security.

You're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.

I didn't withhold that.

I didn't withhold their safety for any of these things.

I withheld a meeting, as Son Lund said.

And that does give him an off-ramp from that argument, potentially.

If he decides to take it,

he's had plenty of it.

He's had off-ramp after off-ramp after off-ramp.

The biggest one being Mick Mulvaney, who came out and took all the arrows for

saying, look, it's not about quit pro-quote.

It stuff happens all the time.

And we haven't, I mean, Mick's been invisible since.

Apparently did not go over well in the White House and was not received well by the media, but he was being honest, which is like this stuff happens all the time.

Of course, when you're giving a country $391 million,

there are some strings attached to that.

Yeah, it's true.

And

there's real nuance in Ambassador Sonlin's testimony.

He talks about how the president didn't believe anybody in Ukraine.

He thought they were all corrupt.

He didn't want anything to do with it.

So there, again, is a reason in national interests to withhold the money.

And that backed up Trump's sort of telling of this, which is it was for the national interest and not for personal, private, political benefits.

So we're talking about a couple of things.

We're talking about how the media is going to run with it, and you know that.

How the legal case should be run here by the Republicans, but I don't know what the Republicans are doing.

And what this means for the deep state.

Now, yesterday

we had some pretty incredible things happen

yesterday

with the witnesses that were there.

Vinman

is a guy who

was pursued by Ambassador Sonlin

and Rudy Giuliani.

He was a guy who said there was no national interest in this.

If Ukraine was engaging in U.S.

election interference, colluding with Obama, and Bidens were using the power of the government to make millions of dollars with a known corrupt oligarch,

he didn't hear about it, and it wasn't in the national interest.

Well, that doesn't make any sense at all.

He didn't.

It showed that

the

three amigos

were Sondlin, the guy who's testifying now, Vinman, who testified yesterday, and the whistleblower.

Vinman was on the phone call, and we found out yesterday that when he finished the phone call, he immediately ran out and talked to the whistleblower, and I believe Sondlin, right?

And

I think it's Sondlin.

And they started to

war game this out.

Now, it wasn't Sondlin.

Who was the other guy?

It was the other guy, the bow tie guy, wasn't it?

Taylor.

Taylor was a little bit of a single day.

Kent.

It was Kent.

It was also on the first day.

So Kent is the three Amigo.

It was Kent, the whistleblower, and Vinman.

Now, yesterday, we looked

at Vinman.

They kept asking him, did you know about all of these things?

Did you know about corruption in Burisma?

Did you know that was happening?

Did you know that there was speculation that his son was corrupt?

Did you know anything about the DNC working with

the

embassy?

Did you know anything?

And gave this whole list.

The answer was no on absolutely everything.

Absolutely everything.

So he looks as if he is,

I mean, he's supposed to be a Ukrainian expert.

This is his beat.

The name Chalupa had been floating around.

Soros' involvement in Ukraine had been known since early 2015.

Hunter Biden's involvement with Bereza had been a topic of concern in the State Department for a while, as testified by George Kent last week.

So, was this guy lying or was he just incompetent?

We'll tell you more about this coming up in just a second because we have an expose on this.

It's really important tonight at 5 o'clock.

We'll tell you about it here in a second, but it looks like Adam Schiff is now ready to

ask some questions of Sonlin here there.

Over this continuum,

it became more and more difficult to secure the White House meeting because more conditions were being placed on the White House meeting.

And then, of course, on July 25th, although you were not privy to the call, another condition was added, that being the investigation of the Bidens.

I was not privy to the call, and I did not know that the condition of investigating the Bidens was a condition, correct?

You saw that in the call record, correct?

It was not in any record I received.

But when you didn't

I saw that in September, correct.

So

on this continuum, the beginning of the continuum begins on May 23rd when the President instructs you to talk to Rudy?

Correct.

And you understood that as a direction by the President that you needed to satisfy the concerns that Rudy Giuliani would express to you about what the President wanted in Ukraine?

Not to me, to the entire group, Volcker, Perry, and myself.

Correct.

Now, in your opening statement, you confirm that there was a quid pro quo between the White House meeting and the investigations into Burisma and the 2016 election that Giuliani was publicly promoting.

Is that right?

Correct.

And in fact, you say that other senior officials in the State Department and the Chiefs of Staff's Office, including Mick Mulvaney, Secretary Pompeo, were aware of this quid pro quo that in order to get the White House meeting, there were going to have to be these investigations the President wanted.

Correct.

And those, again, are investigations into 2016 and burisma slash the Bidens.

2016 burisma.

The Bidens did not come up.

But you would ultimately learn that barisma meant the Bidens when you saw the call record.

Of course.

Today I know exactly what it means.

I didn't know at the time.

Credible, Stu?

And then on July 26th,

he's not all pro-Democrats.

We've pointed this out multiple times now, but

a lot of his testimony is actually

helping the president here

in some ways, in some ways, and hurting him in others.

If he chooses

recounting that I take exception with is I do not recall mentioning the Bidens.

That did not enter my mind.

It was Burisma in the 2016 elections.

You have no reason to believe that Mr.

Holmes would make that up if that's what he recalls you saying.

You have no reason to question that, do you?

I don't recall saying Biden.

I never recall saying Biden.

But the rest of Mr.

Holmes'

recollection is consistent with your own.

Well, I can't testify as to what Mr.

Holmes might or might not have heard through the phone.

I don't know how he heard the conversation.

Are you familiar with this testimony?

Vaguely, yes.

And the only exception you take is to the mention of the name Biden.

Correct.

That could be significant.

Not only

is it correct that the President brought up with you investigations on the phone the day after the July 25th call, but you would have been surprised had he not brought that up.

Is that right?

Right, because we had been hearing about it from Rudy, and we presumed Rudy was getting it from the president.

One of the big things that you're seeing here from Sonlin, in his testimony, he said the conversation after the phone conversation at the restaurant, where he said

he doesn't care about Ukraine, is not included in his opening statement.

And you see the tricky shift tactic there, which is to say, do you know that, are you familiar with his testimony?

He says, vaguely.

He says, well, so the only thing that you disagree with is you didn't say Biden.

And he says, yeah.

Well, wait a minute, there's a whole other other part of the call you haven't discussed at all.

And now they're going to say he agreed with that part of the testimony as if he knew what he was talking about.

Back in just a second.

One minute.

Keep the testimony running in case something happens.

Do you remember the good old days when the internet was safe and fun?

Nobody tried to hack and steal things from you?

Yeah, no, it never happened.

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Thanks.

So, Pat Gray is joining us.

And by the way, happy birthday, Pat.

No, thank you.

I'd get you a gift, but you have the pants.

Didn't I give those back on your birthday?

Nope.

It's inconsiderate of me.

It is.

We've been giving the same gift to each other since, what, 1989, I think.

And

it's a pair of lovely golf pants that I bought Pat originally in 1989.

They're pink Paisley golf pants from Ralph Lorraine.

Very nice.

They're very colorful.

Yeah, so I gave them to him.

I actually believe they're Dolce and Gabbana because really, yeah,

that's an expensive joke gift.

Yeah, but it is, but they're extremely weird, and that fits Dolce and Gabbana perfectly.

No, I'm telling you, it's uh you sure, yes, all right, I'm positive.

All right, I know at one point some of the pants we were giving back and forth were Dolce and Gabbana.

I think I gave you a shirt to go with the pants, and then you kept the shirt, but anyway, uh, so we've been giving the same gift back and forth to each other since uh 1989 and or 1990.

And

I didn't get my.

I really thought I gave that back to you.

Nope.

But

repurpose it again last year.

What?

I'll have to get you another pair of shit.

I've got a sip in your birthday.

Anyway, so Pat, you've been watching the impeachment.

What is your thought today?

Kind of like yours.

It seems like a bad day for the president.

And

I just don't understand why they've gone this direction the whole time.

You mean Trump?

Yes, why Trump has insisted it's not quid pro quo.

Who cares if it's quid pro quo?

Tell them it's in the national interest.

Because it was.

Because it was.

And that's what.

See, here's what Schiff has done today is he's moved it two steps.

He's made two moves.

He's got somebody now saying, yep, definitely.

I talked to the president.

I got it from Rudy Giuliani.

It was quid pro quo.

If this didn't happen,

he would not have a meeting with Zelensky.

Now, he later tied that to the aid, but that is hearsay because that was something that the ambassador said, I just assumed that that's what it was.

So there is no evidence that it was tied to the aid, but you could make that assumption as Ambassador Sotlin did.

So what he did was he gave them the quid pro quo today.

At least with the meeting.

With the meeting.

But did you see

what he had the ambassador testify to towards the end?

The Democratic attorney said,

or Schiff said, so this was a working meeting, though, right?

This was an official working meeting.

Oh, yeah.

And he said, yes, it was.

And so you were planning on doing work and trying to really work.

Yes.

So this was an official presidential duty.

So he moved this piece two spots down the board.

And the president shouldn't have ever let them have have that.

No.

And

he only allowed them to have that because he kept insisting and probably still will.

There was no quid pro quo.

There was an off-ramp, however.

The off-ramp

was,

I think, the first part of that.

Oh, well, if that's what you meant by quid pro quo, a meeting?

I thought you were talking about the money.

But the meeting, yeah, quid pro quo.

Right.

But you better have a legitimate reason why that money was held up.

Right.

It's going to be hard for him to say, sure, yeah, that was a quid pro quo.

The point here is that what are we arguing about

at this juncture, right?

A meeting?

Like, I mean, that is like, what age are we?

I think that's out.

If it's all about the meeting, I don't care if that's a working meeting or not.

You can't impeach him over a meeting.

Can you?

I mean, it's silly.

It's ridiculous.

It's just, it's so.

But he's not, but that's not the way it's going to be spun.

Remember, impeachment is not a legal proceeding.

It is a political proceeding.

So you have to convince the American people.

Donald Trump has given him the ammunition.

He's armed the media with the ammunition.

Clear-cut.

Yes, it was quid pro quo.

They're not going to take it any further.

They won't care about that.

And even if he didn't say that, they would lie about it.

But they have him on tape saying it multiple times with

all the flavor that they want.

And it is a logical leap from the meeting to then what happened to the aid?

Why was the aid held up?

It was a logical leap from Sondland.

Yes.

Which is what he's saying.

I was like, yeah, well, obviously, this is part of it.

Right.

And so the American people will take that leap, and that shuts down everything else, everything else.

of what this is about.

2016, what's the State Department's role in these

riots all around the world, including Ukraine?

What was happening with civil society 2.0?

What was happening with the 2016 election?

What happened to the $7 billion?

All of that is gone.

It's honestly like somebody burned down a house, and we're listening to two attorneys

argue with the guy who left the paint thinner open and then was smoking around it.

And all they're doing is asking the painter, yes, but was the living room eggshell or white?

That has nothing to do with anything.

That has nothing to do with this.

But that's the president's fault.

And it's strange that they haven't seen that along the way.

How is it possible?

I think everybody did.

He, with all his advisors, didn't say, look, this is the wrong tack.

We've got to go to U.S.

interest.

I don't understand.

Inside

sources have told me that they have been saying that.

To the president?

Yes.

And he won't go with it.

No.

He never wants to give up crowds.

And I do think after this, he will come out again and say there was no quid pro.

I agree.

Because he'll say it wasn't in the call.

He will.

And we still, at this point, don't have a transcript of Trump saying it, right?

What we have is a very close aide, a million seven-figure donor to the president who said that it was said.

And he's incredibly from Giuliani.

And he's credible in a way that his presentation, as you watch it, he seems credible.

He's credible.

He's seen for the media and the American people to consume it and deem he's credible.

The clips will play.

He could be the biggest liar in the world, but he will not be spun that way.

And his clips don't look like Vinman looked a little

squirrely.

Yeah.

He didn't look shady.

He just looked squirrely.

You watch him and you're like, oh, I don't know.

Vinman did not have any of that approach to him at all.

And to be clear, he said some things that have been beneficial, I think, to the president.

And this line is carved out pretty well in that

he basically put Sunlin put all the blame to Giuliani, largely, and said Giuliani was doing these things, but they were at the president's request, but Giuliani was the problem.

Giuliani is the one who was saying

explicit quid pro quo, Giuliani, Giuliani, Giuliani.

Now, he's not saying that he doesn't believe Giuliani, that Giuliani didn't really get the word from the president.

He's not saying that.

But the president may very well say that.

He may say, I don't know what Rudy was doing.

You know, yeah, maybe Rudy was telling people that.

I wasn't telling people that.

He could throw him under the bus.

And we 100% at this point know that there was a quid pro quo for these things, at least according to the Ukrainians, who definitely felt that outwardly from Sondland.

Have you noticed that until today, when Sondland kept saying it, they've dropped the quid pro quo thing and went to bribery?

Yeah.

And I think that's because the American people don't necessarily know what quid pro quo is.

They're not up on their Latin thing as much as maybe we should be.

They did a focus group last week or the week before, and they said, you know, which, what does it mean?

And nobody knew what it meant, and nobody cared what it meant.

But when they said,

how about the word bribery?

They all went, oh, that's really bad.

Right.

And that's why they changed it.

It was all changed again for a focus group.

And I think it was changed for Al Sharpton, too, because

the president has been proven to have a cute

proof.

A quid skin row.

Whoa.

The president has been doing Bribery.

Do many Bradberries.

So I think in part this is for Al Sharpton's Sunday

broadcast.

Yeah, so he doesn't have to deal with that.

Right.

It's also in the Constitution, right, outwardly.

The word is in the Constitution as opposed to quid pro quo.

Well, they tested high crimes, misdemeanors, bribery.

Yep.

Quid pro quo.

And there's no chance that Al Sharpton could ever pronounce it.

No chance at all.

No chance.

Why can?

Can he do high crimes and misdemeanors?

Is that

positive on that one?

Probably pretty difficult.

And I will tell you.

High crimes and Mrs.

Was meaners.

What?

Wait, what?

Maybe Mrs.

Wiener.

Mrs.

Wiener.

They know Mrs.

Wiener.

What's her name?

We're clear.

For Billy Wiener.

All right.

Let me just leave you with this idea.

I want to play the audio from Good Morning America.

Now, listen to this audio, what they say.

Well, our poll also shows that 21% of Americans have made up their minds after the first week of testimony.

That suggests that they were already locked in or that really the testimony they've heard is enough.

But that's a big percentage who still have to make up their minds.

And 70% saying the president did something wrong.

The president keeps saying the call was perfect.

He did nothing wrong.

Our poll suggests that may go down in history along with I did not have sex with that woman as a very ineffective presidential defense.

Okay, so I believe that to be accurate.

Really?

You think only 20% of people have made their mind up on this?

I think it was even close.

No, no, no, no, no.

What I'm saying is the statement: I didn't have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

You're saying that you believe that you never had sex with that woman?

Well, I'm pretty sure.

Okay.

Pretty sure.

Okay.

So

it would never be 100%

these things happen.

I think that it is, I think that this, there was no quid pro quo, is going to go down in the same way as a bad presidential defense.

And we'll all remember no quid pro quo, and it will become a joke,

but it will not harm the president.

It won't bring him down, it will not bring him down.

That's what I predict from this, that ABC is right,

but what I think they're thinking is, and that brought the impeachment.

No, look to the end of that.

Nobody cared.

Nobody cared.

Yeah, and the funny thing, too, is we're talking about him changing the quid pro quo argument, but he hasn't even changed the perfect call argument yet.

Hey, he's still on this call.

So I don't think that's going to be his pattern here.

All right.

Happy birthday, Pat.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Big plan.

38 already.

38.

Oh, I did.

Wow.

Yeah.

I've got children who are 38.

Wow.

Science doesn't know how it happened.

That is weird.

Welcome into it.

Men can have periods.

That's right.

You know, 38 years.

Babies can have babies.

Babies can have adults or teenagers.

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