welcome to "inside politics." i'm john king. thank you for sharing your day with us. so what? then never mind? the white house chief of staff confirms a quid pro quo. then he says, oh r, no, he didn mean it. then the president said the deal he made with turkey was a cease-fire. but the president of turkey says it's not a cease-fire at all. the president again sold out the

kurds. the witnesses all serve in the trump administration. for the president, though, it's a conspiracy hatched by democrats. >> the more america achieves, the more hateful and enraged these crazy democrats become. crazy. that crazy nancy, she is crazy. she's nuts. these people are crazy. they've gone nuts. democrats are now the party of crazy politicians. >> we begin the hour with the fallout from the white house briefing room. the president said to be miffed at his acting chief of staff. baffled is the word by the cabinet. he told reporters point blank there was a quid pro quo. the president froze security aid into ukraine partly to pressure them into investigating

democrats. listen. >> did he also mention to me in the past that the corruption related to the dnc server? absolutely. no question about that. that's it, that's why we held up the money. >> so should the demand for an investigation into the democrats was part of the reason he ordered to withhold funding to ukraine? >> the look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about. >> pretty clear, right? hours later, an about-face. then he denied, saying there was a quid pro quo. mulvaney says it's the media reading way too much into those comments. >> he took probably 40 questions. people were talking over one another. he did a great job. he mentioned the same message over and over and over, and now the media, of course -- we put out a statement clarifying some of the things the media got themselves in a tizzy over. >> they put a statement out trying to clarify what the chief

of staff said. no one was in a tizzy, they were repeating what he said. julie pace with the associated press, cnn, nia-malika henderson, and margaret talev with the "new york times." rudy giuliani goes on television after months of saying the president had nothing to do with the payoff to stormy daniels and they said, yes, he did. so what? he said he asked for dirt on joe biden from the president of ukraine. yes, i did. so what? there was a connection that mulvaney had decided let's just put it out there and say, so what? so why pull it back? >> i think one of the reasons this time was different was that this question of whether there was a quid pro quo is so central to what's happening on capitol hill. you've had a lot of lawmakers, including a lot of republicans, who have held up this idea of a

quid pro quo as sort of the reason why they're okay with what the president did. yes, maybe he had this phone call where he raised these issues, but the white house says there was no quid pro quo for the military aid. that would be a problem, but that's not what happened. then mick mulvaney goes out and says, that's cannotexactly what happened, and it puts the people who have stood by this president, because they put out the reason why they stand by him, and then they completely undermine it on national television. >> it says, reporters are in a tizzy. no, the reporters are repeating what he said in the white house briefing room. this is mick mulvaney at the podium. did he, being the president, did he also mention to me the dnc server? absolutely. that's why we held up the money. what happened in 2016 is exactly

the thing he was worried about. the fact ukraine meddled and not the russians is a debunked theory, but that's in the president's head. mick mulvaney says, let's be clear, there was no quid pro quo. the statement on the right does not match up with the statement on the left. this isn't a tizzy, it's cleanup. >> it's cleanup, and if you look at this press conference, he said this over and over again. there are multiple times when reporters were quizzical where he actually said this, where he said, yes, get over it, this happens all the time in foreign policy. so the idea the reporters are getting it wrong and they used the real message just doesn't make sense. it does seem to be the unveiling of what might be the white house strategy going forward, even though they're trying to clean it up, which is to separate this ukraine conspiracy theory and mulvaney said look back at 2016 with the biden issue as well.

which might be hard, because if you look at the memo from that call, they're very much linked, not only the dnc conspiracy theory, the ukraine conspiracy theory, but it's also asked about burisma. you also heard the chief of staff say, look, this is an investigation going on by the doj into the roots of the russia probe. so it's fine, except the doj says it's not fine. sdplz t >> the republicans on capitol hill are trying to say there's nothing wrong. mick mulvaney, again, he's taken it back, but several times stood right there and said, yes, we did. of course, we did. he said, of course, we did. so here's the point. what he said yesterday wipes out all of this. >> the text message that i saw

from ambassador sondland who is highly respected was there's no quid pro quo. he said that. >> no quid pro quo. >> no quid pro quo. >> no quid pro quo. >> this phone call is a nothing burger in terms of a quid pro quo. >> no quid pro quo whatsoever. the two guys on the call, no quid pro quo whatsoever. >> there was no quid pro quo. >> except apparently there was until there wasn't. >> well, look, the reason why the president was so confident and gordon sondland's assessment also we found out the president dictated the assessment to gordon sondland and typed out that text message. the initial strategy was to release the transcript and get it over with. putting the transcript out is not that big a deal. it turned out the transcript was a huge deal and it ignited the fuel for everything that came since then. the strategy after that became two-prong two-pronged. it's almost crazy when you say

it out loud but it's two pieces. it was, there is no whistleblower because that person doesn't deserve protection, and there's no impeach. becau -- impeachment because there's been no inquiry. now it's swung back to the other side which is another trump response when your attack is just deny it. deny it by saying, so what? we did this and there isn't anything wrong with it. but if you're going to make the argument, the nuance is important. if you're going to make the argument that who a president is dictates foreign policy negotiations, that is not the same thing as saying what mr. mulvaney ended up saying yesterday, which has now turned into a controversy. >> that is why we held up the money. that's the money quote. and it's about money. i think it just totally undercut their defense on capitol hill. their entire defense, as you just played out there, was that this was inappropriate but wasn't an abuse of power. now you have, you know, pretty much an admission of an abuse of

power, and i haven't talked to a lot of people in the aftermath of this because congress were leaving town, but i did talk to some people and their attitude has changed after that yesterday. their attitude changed. >> well, their attitude changed because it's another situation in which the answers keep changing from the white house. and if you're a republican, you need to take cover, because anything you say today could be undermined tomorrow. you have to have empathy for the republicans on capitol hill, especially the ones who have been trying to make the argument saying, i don't like this but it's not impeachable, trying to keep that middle ground version. listen to mick mulvaney. we won the election. we can do what we want. >> we do that all the time with foreign policy. i have news for everybody. get over it. there's going to be political influence in foreign policy. that is going to happen. elections have consequences and foreign policy is going to change from the obama administration to the trump administration. >> as part of that, he also defends, and others also defend,

bringing rudy giuliani, a private citizen who is the president's personal lawyer, as if that's fine. the president has every right to bring in outside advisers, has every right to say, the state department is telling me this. but what they don't mention is rudy giuliani is making money off this. this was not a private citizen's good intentions. he was making money off this, including two guys who are in federal prison right now put there by the trump justice department. >> deeply conflicted and completely bypassing the normal internal checks and balances, and people who have to come and testify to congress and that sort of thing. >> to the other point there, yes, the president gets elected, the president and power changes, it changes with foreign policy. but we are not talking about that here. we're talking about the president holding up money to serve his own political interest. either looking forward to try to investigate a future political rival or looking backward to try to investigate a debunked conspiracy theory.

>> the problem for mick mulvaney or anyone who was asked to speak on behalf of the president, i'm not sure they even have awareness of what's going on. only donald trump and rudy giuliani really have awareness of what this policy was. >> but that's it. that's why we held up the money. i would say a pretty declaretive and damning sentence. you can tweet u us @insidepolitics. will the u.s.-brokered cease-fire hold? we'll have the answer to that question after this. >> we hope things will turn out for the best. for help. i didn't have to call 911. and i didn't have to come get you. because you didn't have another heart attack. not today. you took our conversation about your chronic coronary artery disease to heart. even with a stent procedure,

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there's global skepticism today over the northern brokered cease-fire over syria. the president tweeting, great, saying he spoke to the kurdish president. the president and the kurds want a cease-fire. he says, there is goodwill on both sides and a really good chance for success. his take on twitter clashes dramatically from statements from the turkish government. just hours ago, the turkish president saying the cease-fire is not really a cease-fire at all, just a 128-hour pause with

a note to the kurds: get out or die. you're right there on the ground, a lot of political rhetoric. i don't trust what you're seeing. what does this pause look like? >> reporter: well, john, it's quite interesting how these agreements get interpreted on the political spectrum and what that actually turns out translating into on the ground. we are in turkey overlooking the syrian town of asre-rawan which is where a lot of the action has been. people say they're still hearing turkish gunfire and explosions. a part of the battlefield weaver been able to get a little closer to does appear to be calm, but bear in mind as well, we do not

have access to what's happening across the spectrum and there have been various reports of attacks of artillery strikes that took place earlier this morning, they're saying there was a hospital hit in the vicinity vicinity. at the moment there are a few crucial things we need to be keeping an eye on, that clock that runs out on tuesday. turkey being very clear saying, look, the kurds will either get out of this entire safe zone across the entire border, or we're going to pick up this battle more sbintensely than we already have so far. also you have this regime factor in the north of the country. next step presumably, that's going to lie with russia to try to negotiate something with onker and damascus.

>> i appreciate your reporting. the european union calls it a major capitulation. they have 128 hours to get out. the president says, think of middle school and there's a fight on the playground. >> sometimes you have to let them fight a little while, then people realize how tough the fighting is. these guys know right up here. these guys know. right? sometimes you have to let them fight. like two kids in a lot, you got to let them fight and then you pull them apart. president erdogan was a gentleman. he understood it. but without a little tough love. you know what tough love is, right? without a little tough love, they would have never made this deal. >> history records president erdogan is not a gentleman, he is an authoritarian thug.

does the president view the world as wwe? i'm serious, i don't ask the question as a joke. this is an incredibly complicated -- for hundreds and thousands of years, it's a me neighborhood, but it's a mess right now. >> syria is far away, the middle east has been this quagmire where lots of folks, americans, have spilled blood in treasure, so he's fine, essentially selling this idea that the united states wins by pulling american troops out, the thousand or so, 50 or 100 that were in the northern part, basically just kind of keeping this fragile place, and certainly keeping kurds safe. and, of course, now who knows what's going to happen to the kurds at this point. what was interesting was there was a lot of criticism that the president was getting from republicans. you saw some of that, mitt romney taking to the center floor. but in some ways after this

happened, you didn't really hear as much criticism, right? for instance, evangelicals was very much up in arms. you would think benjamin netanyahu would have been much morph critical than he was considering this reshapes the balance of power in the middle east, but this deal where turkey walks away with everything. >> to that point, today as it sinks in, you see republicans trying to do their homework here. normally whatever the president puts on twitter becomes the republican bible. they usually just repeat the president or pick the part they can repeat. here you have some republican reactions. a little bit of caution here, but also some, i don't think the president is right. >> it reminds me of somalian south vietnam. >> i think churchill tried to act glibly in 1901. >> are we so weak and so inept

diplomatically that turkey forced the hand of the united states of america? turkey? >> it's that point there by senator romney, again, if you're a trump supporter, you say he just doesn't like the president. but he's not the only one saying, show me what the united states got out of this deal. turkey got everything it wanted, and what did the u.s. get? >> unless you're president trump, you don't see this as a good deal at all. we don't seem to have gotten much. we've given turkey quite a bit. lindsey graham is someone to watch here, because he's been leading the charge. how does he respond to this and is this good enough? i think the early verdict on this deal is a bad one, and it's also one of these incidents where the president can't just bluster his way through, because there's things that are happening on the ground that

prove him wrong, and i think that's the difference. >> it's sort of a classic trump play where you have this huge gap between the rhetoric about a deal or some accomplishment of his and the reality of it, right? he's saying this is a great deal, civilization is happy with his deal, and then you look and say, who is happy with it? turkey is happy with it. republicans are not happy. the kurds certainly are not happy. others in the administration and national security roles are not happy. he's going to keep saying this, hoping he can create this narrative that will overshadow everything. >> he's trying to substantiate what the president created by announcing u.s. withdrawal. so to hear the remarks at the event in texas, if you just woke nup t up in the middle of this, you would be like, oh, the u.s. stepped in to try to broker something between two people.

but it was the u.s. that instigated the violence and led to the deaths of civilians which were the u.s.' allies in the fight against isis. cease-fire or not, the horse is already out of the barn on the bigger stuff -- not the diplomatic implications that are real, but the national security implications. there were prisoners in the prison camps that were retained by the kurds. the cease-fire can't address any of that stuff. i think it does begin to bring into question, and for these securities. the way he's dealt with kim jong-un, there are conversations with what happened in the ukraine and what happened here with president erdogan are any example, there's just a lot of information that people are going to want to have a greater

visibility on now. >> i think senator romney's comment, though, he's like, it's really incredulous. we've been rolled by turkey twice now? i think a lot of people are having a hard time respecting that. up next, two well-respected military leaders take on the president. announcer: time magazine reports: "the new american

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james mattis is raising some

eyebrows today. the former trump administration secretary appeared last night at a dinner where he faced some of the president's attacks on him head on with humor. >> i do stand before you, as was noted here, really having achieved greatness. i'm not just an overrated general, i am the greatest, the world's most overrated, and i'm honored to be considered that by donald trump because he also called meryl streep an overrated actress. so i guess i'm the meryl streep of generals. you do have to admit that between me and meryl, at least we've had some victories. >> biding there, but roasting is somewhat of a tradition. but mattis also turned serious.

the idea of abandoning the kurds in syria have angered some and also for an impeachment against the president. >> it is not the pressure we must fear. it was corrosion from within. the rot, the viciousness, the lasitude, the ignorance. the rise of an ambitious leader unfettered by decency who would make himself supreme. >> he's quoting lincoln there, but the lasitude, ignorance -- >> i think you have to assume that mattis' words were purposeful there, that he knew -- he's been on this book tour and there's been a lot of attention paid to what he's saying and what he's not saying about donald trump, but certainly in light of everything that has happened over the last couple of days and weeks, i think his rhetoric there, his

choice of words takes on greater meaning for sure. >> and in some ways maybe takes on lesser meaning given the setting there, right? he's got a very fancy tuxedo or suit on, so in that context, it sort of takes a little bit away of it. he's talked about having the duty of silence after leaving an administration. i do think, you know, jim mattis decided to come out of retirement to join up with trump and give donald trump credibility, and this was after, you know, a lot of people questioned donald trump's character based on the kind of campaign he ran. so i think, you know, should he criticize donald trump in a m e more robust way, i think it's fair to turn the questions on him, well, why did you join up with him in the way that you did? >> most of it was humor. the last that we played of lincoln was much more sober because he knows what the

democrats are considering on capitol hill. but the question says he would follow up. is it a one-off at this dinner? back to the humor part, the commander in chief got a deferment. that was part of the mattis joke routine. >> bill mcripe, retired admiral, 37 years. >> hillary clinton fan. >> special operations -- >> excuse me. hillary clinton fan. >> sorry, we rolled the wrong bite there. i want to get back to that point there, but let's go back to jim mattis last night making fun of the president. >> some of you were kind during the reception and asked me if this bothered me to have been rated this way based on what donald trump said. i said, of course not, i had earned my spurs on the battlefield, martin, as you pointed out, and donald trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor. and i think the only person in the military that mr. trump

doesn't think is overrated is who you pointed out, martin, and that's colonel sanders. >> that part there an attempt at humor, but since we played the other bite, i want to move on to the next point. secretary mattis there, we'll see if this is a one-off. admiral mcraven has led this successful raid to capture osama bin laden and has been critical of the president in the past. he wrote an op-ed and went on "the lead with jake tapper" the other day, and what he said about the commander in chief is eye opening. >> he's a transit president. he believes it's only good if it's good for us. but he forgets we're the same nation that fought naziism, fascism and terrorism, and we did it not because it was good for us but because it was the right thing to do. if we're going to be the good guys, it's going to be important to join the intelligence community, the military, any part of the federal government where those values are so

critical to doing your job and to sacrificing for this country. >> it's a fascinating interview. you should watch all of it. go to cnn.com and watch all of it or read the op-ed piece that nancy pelosi has taken and spread out in the sense you have this american hero essentially questioning everything about this president, saying he believes he is corroding democracy. >> i think this is that little bit of shift in attitude i mentioned earlier. you're seeing more and more people very alarmed by syria. these are people who have invested their military careers and credentials in that situation over there, and they're seeing the president unravel it. go back to mattis. that was pretty tough stuff from him, from somebody who everyone considers to be reserved. trump gave him the opening with his comments, but i think you're going to see more and more of these military people say, you know what? i've had enough. i need to say something. >> how they do it strategically sort of matters. mcraven has been out for months in terms of his open criticism

of president trump, and trump has been able to some extent marginalize mcraven, saying he's an opponent of mine. if you see a nonpartisan republican serving defense chiefs, joint chiefs of staff. so far in the letters that have been critical of trump, you might see some who have served democrats. it doesn't make that point but it's easy to put them in that box. if you see a more robust and higher level strategic coming together, that will be a sign that the defense establishment is trying to message to republican members of the senate that thing have changed. >> that has influence on those numbers. >> we're not quite there yet, but if that happens, that will signify another turning point. >> it feels like it's heading in that direction. sto

we'll take a quick break and be right back.

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straight to the white house, the president taking questions about his acting chief of staff, mick mulvaney. >> we have a packed arena with thousands and thousands of people outside. it was an incredible evening. got back very, very late. i did actually get to hear about ambassador kent. this is the witch hunt. crooked schiff is coming after the republican party. he's coming after the republican party as hard as he can considering he's been compromised very sadly and badly because of the fact, as you know, i think as the press knows, he made a statement and then he made a virtual speech about what i said, and then it turned out i didn't say any of it because he fraudulently made the statement to congress. i thought what he did was one of

the worst things. i understand he has immunity, but he doesn't have immunity when he puts it on his twitter, which he did, and he doesn't have immunity when he speaks to the press, which he did, and he certainly won't have immunity if we ever get him into congress and can swear him under oath. what he did was a very bad thing. but what else happened is ambassador kent who i have never met and i don't know him. they brought him in as a witness even though i don't know him, and they excoriated what they said on the news and maybe in this case it won't be fake news, but he excoriated the obama administration and joe biden and joe biden's son saying they have tremendous problems with joe biden's son and the ukraine. so he's got tremendous problems with biden's son and ukraine, and it's inappropriate, and all of the horrible things. you could get it, you could see it. it's been a big deal. and i heard schiff going, no,

no, we don't want to talk about that, we don't want to talk about that, but he talked about it. it's one of those things. look, this is a terrible witch hunt. this is so bad for our country. i just spoke to president erdogan of turkey. we're doing very, very well with turkey. there's a cease-fire or a pause or whatever you want to call it. there was some sniper fire this morning, there was mortar fire this morning that was eliminated quickly. they're back to the full pause. we have isis totally under guard. turkey is also guarding separately. they're watching over everything. so you have the kurds who we're dealing with and are very happy with the way things are going with the kurds, and you also have the turks watching, just secondarily watching. we have isis under control. we've taken control of the oil in the middle east, the oil that everybody was worried about. the u.s. has control of that.

and there are no shots being fired, and a lot of people are doing a lot of things. this is a deal that should have been made 15 years ago, 10 years ago, over the last number of years under the obama administration. the real numbers, over a million people were killed. we have not lost a drop of blood since we've started what i started. and it was -- so far it's working out. it's a complicated region. many, many people have gone down. i have to watch with great interest as i see people talking about what we should be doing, and these are the same people that have been failing for the last 20 years, didn't know what they were doing, especially when they went in and did what they did. they shouldn't have been there. but we're doing a very, very significant amount of brake work. we'll see if it works. it's been very fragile for years. they've been fighting each other literally for centuries. literally for centuries they've been fighting each other, and years ago we injected ourselves

right into the middle of it, and we won't go into whether or not that was a good thing or a bad thing, you know how i feel about it. we've had tremendous success, i think, over the last couple of days. a little unconventional, a little bit of hard love, i told you that. a little -- there was a lot of pain for a couple of days, and sometimes you have to go through some pain before you can get a good solution, but the kurds are very happy about it. president erdogan of turkey is satisfied with it, and we are in a very strong position. we are also in a position where we can put tremendous powerful sanctions on turkey or whoever else we want to. our country is a financially much stronger country than when i took it over. china would have been, right now, the strongest economy in the world, the number one economy in the world, and right now china is way behind us. we picked up trillions of dollars in value and worth, and they've lost trillions and

trillions of dollars and are having the worst year they've had in 57 years. with that being said, we're working with china very well. we've done, subject to getting signed, and i think it will get signed quite easily by the summit in chile where president xi and i will both be. a lot of good things are happening. our farmers are taken care of, our bankers and financial services are going to have access the likes of which they've never had to the largest or second largest, depending on your definitions, about 1.4 b l billion people population, whether it's india or china, they're pretty close. i want to thank the people of dallas and the people of ft. worth and thetexas, because yesterday was incredible. i want to thank bernard arnot, one of the great business people of the world, for agreeing to do something that was a first. he's built this incredible plant

right in our great state of texas, and they're going to make super luxury and super product. they've already started, it's opened. a big investment and we're very proud of it. that was done with me and with the election. even prior to the election, i said, you have to open up a plant somewhere in the united states. he said, what do you think about texas? i said, i love texas, that would be good. i said, if you do it, i'll be there. i followed through with that promise. we have a great plan with president erdogan and it's going very well. thank you very much. >> the president leaving the room at the white house there. at the beginning of that, he said his chief of staff mick mulvaney had clarified. very damning statements he had made about ukraine and no quid

pro quo. testimony not very helpful to joe biden on the impeachment inquiry, then the president going on to defend remember, republicans in the united states are weak when it comes to what happened in syria, by pulling u.s. troops and allowing the milita military to leave. we'll try to get clarification of what the president meant by this, that the united states had taken control of oil in the middle east. not sure what he meant by that. the white house said this was turkey's decision, and the president did not green-light it, but he said the operation i started is going very well and it's a strong positive response. defensive. >> it's to what we were talking about earlier, it's the disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality of the situation. the president's strategy in so many cases is to just try to

fill the void with words and with over the top words often because he knows that a lot of his supporters will take what he says over the reality. i think to what carl has been saying, are we in a moment where some of this is going to start changing, where the reality starts trumping the rhetoric, even in subtle ways. >> yeah, the whole idea of taking the oil. this is one of the things he talked about repeatedly when he was running for president of what he's talking about now in the context of this conflict in syria. again, i think it goes to your point. he's always talking to your folks at the rally. we saw him do that last night. we saw him do that as he was heading to dallas, too. i don't know that republicans who have been fiercely critical of him prior to this deal, did they have a bigger platform to kind of counter this, did they

come through with sanctions and the president said, oh, it might happen but also seemed to not want it to happen as well. >> part of the deal with turkey was there will be no sanctions if turkey keeps its part of the deal and gives turkey everything it wants. we'll see how that goes, but you have so many republicans calling the president weak there and the president saying the kurds are very happy. >> the president also said isis is under control. i think we all know isis is not under control. that's one of the big problems that has so many of the republican senators concerned. and it's important for everyone watching his remarks for the national security on the ground. it's very alarming and in the long term, it asks the question can the u.s. allies rely on the u.s.? >> most of the impeachment testimony the last several days from a handful of diplomats who work in the state department have been quite damaging to the president. diplomats came in and made clear

they did not like rudy giuliani being put in charge of foreign policy in ukraine. they did not like things rudy giuliani was asking of them or asking of ukranians. that was the bulk of the testimony. the president was right, jorgeo kent, one of the diplomats called in for testimony, said he called the president's office back in 2015 in the obama administration and said he thought it was a bad idea that hunter biden, joe biden's son, had taken a job at a ukranian energy company. he said joe biden told him the ukranians could take that as n entree, and he was told to go away, that the vice president didn't want to deal with it.

donald trump's unprecedentedly corrupt administration is melting down because of the scan although he touched off by trying to get ukraine to lie about joe biden. and as the vice president said yesterday, this is horrible and it needs to go away. >> the vice president is going to be collateral damage here. >> i just want to stop for a second there in the sense that, yes, this is a fear. but most of what the president and his allies said about rudy giuliani and hunter biden is reckless and horrible. but the vice president was in charge of the ukraine portfolio at the time his son was working in ukraine, and the fact he didn't say, you can't do this, vial to recuse myself, is a legitimate question. >> we can see that happening. the vice president's staff would be very dismissive of this.

they didn't want to get into it. they'll have to explain it. it doesn't excuse anything the president is doing, it needs to be investigated, and the republicans need to separate that. one other thing on his comment there, i agree with you, i thought he sounded defensive, and i also thought at the beginning he was trying to make it more about a bigger thing than himself. he's saying they're trying to destroy the party. this is about destroying republicans, and he's trying to say, hey, you guys need to rally around me, because i think they're feeling this right now. >> you do agree this week is when many of them hit the pause button. you saw the criticism about the syria decision. my conversations with a lot of republicans are saying they don't like what they're learning about the syria situation right now. they don't say impeach the president, but they don't like when the president's chief of staff goes into a briefing room and says, yep, there was quid

pro quo. get over it. we won the election. >> the challenge at the start of this was they were jumping into a situation where they had very little information. there was going to be a lot that was going to come out and they had to sort of make a choice. how aggressive do i want to be in backing the president when i know there will be a lot more come out? they're seeing that happen right now. there are sort of fears about what else would come out are playing out, and we're watching them in realtime. we have to grapple with each new story, each new development, each new testimony and where am i with the president, and we're still at a place where they have incomplete information. there are questions about his relationship with putin, there are questions about a host of other things that will probably get revealed during the course of this process. >> and the president knows what's going on. he watches more television than anybody i know, cable news about his administration.

he decided that given his press secreta secretary, but give the tape and it will be played over and over again. they said, yeah, he told me to hold up the money until they investigate a now debunked conspiracy theory saying it was ukraine, not russia, that interfered in the 2016 election. >> and there will be more coming out next week, folks sitting on the hill giving depositions, bill taylor among them who was the one that was text and go concern about whether or not there was quid pro quo. you have the president trying to fill this vacuum. he doesn't have a lot of folks defending him, and certainly mick mulvaney didn't do a lot for him saying, yes, there was quid pro quo. >> this president gets very defensive and very mad sometimes when members of his own party criticize him, and there is a lot of that it comes to the

syria/turkey decisions. >> yaureah, a lot of criticism. you saw him today saying, no, no, the u.s. did get something. we got the oil or something. >> i have no idea what that means. >> it will be very revealing next week. we did some exclusive reporting this week where we learned a lot more about what kurt volker, the former envoy, had told lawmakers in his quite long interview. a lot of it had to do with bill taylor, about bill taylor's serious, serious and deep reservations about joining the administration to begin with, about whether the president might throw him under the bus about rudy giuliani's employment. >> so it was an interesting week in the rearview mirror and you're suggesting it's an interesting week to come. strap in. thanks for joining us on "inside politics." hope to see you sunday as well.

brianna keilar picks up our coverage after a quick break. have a great afternoon. pain happens.

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