The Daily - The Latest: A Call to ‘Fox & Friends’

Episode Date: November 22, 2019

President Trump called into ‘Fox & Friends’ this morning to respond to all that has been said over two weeks of public impeachment hearings. The conversation offered a preview of what may become the president’s impeachment defense.“The Latest” is a new series on the impeachment inquiry, from the team behind “The Daily.” You can find more information about it here.

It started with a whistleblower's complaint about President Trump's contact with a foreign leader. I had a perfect phone call with the President of Ukraine. Like, I mean perfect. Today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. It is our great pleasure to welcome the President of the United States, Donald Trump, calling in. Mr. Trump, good morning to you. Good morning. It's Julie Davis in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times. The latest is that after two weeks of public impeachment hearings,

President Trump had a lot to get off his chest. Good to have you on Fox & Friends today. As you said in your tweet, another slow news week. One by one. Okay, first of all, Volkerker i don't know him he's trying to discredit the witnesses in the inquiry so far kurt volker don't know him uh this guy sondland hardly know him i've had a couple of conversations with him i see him hanging around you know when i go to europe gordon sondland look the ambassador the woman marie yovanovitch

she wouldn't even put up she's's an Obama person, you know. I said, why are you being so kind? Well, sir, she's a woman. We have to be nice. David Holmes. How about the guy with the telephone? How about that one? I guarantee you that never took place.

He said he's sitting there listening to me. And he gave kind of a preview of what the Republican impeachment response will be and what his reaction is going to be as this whole thing unfolds. A lot of it had to do, they say, with Ukraine. Which is that everything the president did, he did because of corruption in Ukraine. He did because he essentially was the victim of this scheme that Ukraine was trying to pull off. But Mr. President.

You know, it's very interesting. It's very interesting. They have the server, right, from the DNC, Democratic National Committee. Who has the server? The FBI went in and they told him, get out of here. You're not kidding. We're not giving it to you. They gave the server to CrowdStrike or whatever it's called, which is a country, which is

a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian. And I still want to see that server. You know, the FBI has never gotten that server. That's a big part of this whole thing. Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company? Are you sure they did that? In short, he's saying that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind interference in the 2016 election. So why wouldn't he reevaluate or question or ask Ukraine to investigate? And why wouldn't he reevaluate or question or ask Ukraine to investigate? And why wouldn't he be skeptical of having a White House meeting

or sending hundreds of millions of dollars in American military assistance money to Ukraine? Are you sure they gave it to Ukraine? Well, that's what the word is. That's what I asked actually in my phone call, if you know. I mean, I asked it very point blank because we're looking for corruption. So this is interesting because, of course, just yesterday in the final day of the impeachment hearings of the week, as Democrats are kind of wrapping up their public case and getting ready to sort of sum it up in a big report for the public, their witness, Fiona Hill, who was the top Europe

and Russia expert at the National Security Council, almost seemed to anticipate this. Some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves. She told Republicans in the room this idea that Ukraine influenced the election, this idea that it was Ukraine that meddled and not Russia. It's fiction. The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our

democratic institutions in 2016. I say this not as an alarmist, but as a realist. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests. These fictions are harmful, even if they're deployed for purely domestic political purposes. Not only is it fiction, but it's fiction that is essentially a Russian disinformation campaign that is designed to Russian disinformation campaign that is designed to interfere with American democracy. Right now, Russia's security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We're running out of time to

stop them. And you know, the Times reported this afternoon that Fiona Hill's testimony aligns with information that the American intelligence community has actually been sharing with senators in recent weeks and telling them over the last couple of weeks that they've discovered that Russia for years has tried to frame Ukraine as the nation behind the 2016 hacking to say that it wasn't us, it was Ukraine that framed us. But based on what we saw on TV this morning, it seems like this is going to be central to the president's impeachment defense. He's not dismissing this as a conspiracy theory. He's embracing this as kind of the core of his own

defense in the impeachment case. And furthermore... Frankly, I want a trial. You know, I could think I could have it. You want a trial? Whatever I want. Oh, I would. We're starting to see signs that this is also the story we're going to be hearing in the Senate once the House, more likely than not, votes to impeach Trump in the coming weeks, sending things to a trial in the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans. Lindsey Graham, who is the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, wrote to the State Department this week asking for documents about Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of this Ukrainian energy company, their contact with the former Ukrainian president, the contacts

that other members of the Obama administration had with Ukrainians in the past. It's all a sign that he's going to try to lay out in hearings some sort of alternate narrative to what the Democrats have been presenting in the House. And it looks like that's the same narrative the president was promoting today and that Fiona Hill and American intelligence officials have been warning about. I'm not a doctor, but if I was running a prescription, calling in every week to update the country about what's happening might be good for your health.

That's something to consider. You have the phone number. Well, you know that I've been doing it for years. With your group, I've been doing it for years. For stress release. If it was up to me, and it is up to me, and we'll do it more often, but I have a lot of fun doing it. And you know what?

The nice part, we get the true word out. And that's the latest. We'll be back when things pick up after Congress's holiday break.