it has nothing to do with the other, the impeachment story, but on this they're incredibly disturbed and exasperated. >> a.b. stoddard, keir simmons, thank you so much. that will wrap up this hour of "msnbc live." "andrea mitchell reports" starts right now. hey, andrea. >> hi, chris. right now on "andrea mitchell reports," the middleman. a key player in the impeachment inquiry, gordon sondland, tells house committees it was the president who directed rudy giuliani to dig up dirt on the bidens in the ukraine. >> reporter: can you say there was no quid pro quo? >> i'm not giving any comment before my testimony. >> reporter: are you here to salvage your reputation? >> i don't have a reputation to salvage. meltdown. the president insults the house speaker leaving the military

brass with their heads hanging as the speaker walks out following that name-calling. >> what is the plan? my plan is to protect america. that's a goal, that's not a plan. what is the plan for us to be protected from isis now that some of them have been unleashed? >> the first thing i say is that the greatest insult that occurred in that room was simply the lack of policy on how to contain isis. there's a real danger to the american people. and the giant from baltimore, congressman elijah cummings dies at 68, leaving an elegant legacy of leadership to right the country's wrongs. >> we're dancing with the angels. the question will be asked in 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?

and good day, everyone, i'm andrea mitchell in washington where a key figure in the impeachment inquiry is testifying at this hour behind closed doors. this after the white house blocked him from testifying just a week ago. gordon sondland, american ambassador to the european union, is telling congress that president trump directed his personal attorney rudy giuliani to spearhead an investigation into both joe biden's son and the debunked theory that ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. in his prepared testimony, now released, sondland tells congress, quote, my understanding was the president directed mr. giuliani's participation, that mr. giuliani was expressing the concerns of the president. sondland's testimony comes one day after a contentious bipartisan meeting at the white house. speaker nancy pelosi left the meeting after some name-calling, accusing the president of having a, quote, meltdown over syria. in response the president tweeted out this photo calling the speaker nervous nancy, accusing her of having an unhinged meltdown.

last hour the speaker was asked about that photo which she now displays as a badge of honor at the top of her twitter page. >> i think i was excusing myself from the room. the thoughts i conveyed to the president in the meeting about the 354-60 vote in the house disapproving of his syria actions. b, my concerns about all roads leading to putin. the president said, i said in my campaign i was going to take the troops home. i said, is home saudi arabia? that would be the essence, whether sitting or standing. >> joining me is kristen welker, geoff bennett, and michael crowley. kristen, the walkout was extraordinary. for the speaker of the house to be insulted the way she was by the president and her to walk out are such a total breakdown. and this was not about impeachment. she said it didn't even columo .

this was all about the withdrawal from syria and the domino effect of turkey, iran, and the middle east. >> that's right, andrea, the president clearly feeling defensive after that rebuke by congress. house speaker nancy pelosi essentially raising that with him during the meeting and president trump firing back. according to a readout from a democratic aide, president trump ended that meeting by saying, we'll see you at the polls. the white house isn't disputing that account. it really under scores how heightened the tensions are between the house speaker and president trump. as you point out, the white house tweeted that out essentially hoping it would underscore the president's argument that the house speaker had some sort of a meltdown. she flipped the script and made it the backdrop to her twitter handle. so there's a back and forth there, andrea. the broader point here is that

this is the fraught backdrop as this impeachment inquiry escalates by the day, and as congress, democrats and republicans, have been sharply critical of the president's handling of the crisis in syria, andrea. >> and geoff bennett on the hill, nancy pelosi just had her briefing, explaining from her perspective what happened in that contentious meeting. and also you've got the gordon sondland testimony today. in the released remarks he says among other things, i did not understand until much later that mr. giuliani's agenda might have also included an effort to prompt the ukrainians to investigate vice president biden or his son or to involve ukrainians directly or indirectly in the president's 2020 reelection campaign. let's pretty explosive testimony, especially in the context of what we now know are these texts back and forth with ambassador bill taylor, the professional diplomat in the mix, saying on the phone, i think it's crazy to hold up aid,

to withhold security assistance for help in a political campaign. >> you're right, and it's remarkable testimony considering that gordon sondland was widely thought to be the trump-friendly witness in these weeks of closed-door depositions. he was the guy president trump picked, gave him a highly cov coveted diplomatic position, ambassador to the eu, even though sondland had no prior diplomatic experience, he had simply donated to president trump's inaugural. we've obtained the opening statement that sondland delivered to house investigators earlier this morning. he says he was disappointed by president trump's direction for him to work with rudy giuliani but that he thought that working with giuliani was the only way to change president trump's mind about this agreement, that this ask that he. ukrai ukraine's president. a lot of this testimony appears

to be self-absolving. you seasoned land in his testimony pointing the finger at energy secretary rick perry and pointing the finger at the former special envoy kurt volker. the three of them were dubbed the three amigos. the takeaway is that gordon sondland plants this entire ukrainian gambit entirely at president trump's feet. he says rudy giuliani was working to support the stated goals of president trump. this backs up the testimony that house investigators have heard and that we've reported on, as democrats are trying to build the case, what led up to and what came after that now-infamous call between president trump and president zelensky. >> and michael crowley, one after another of these high state department officials,

sondland is the only one so far who is a trump appointee, the others are career ambassadors, mike mckinley, 37 years veteran, who quit in protest for exactly what giuliani was doing, and for sondland's political interference. >> yeah, andrea, i think the bill is really coming due from the state department to pay the cost of what has happened to the care careers of the foreign service officer corps in this administration. we are seeing several people who are coming forward and saying that not only in the case of what happened with trump policy toward ukraine was diplomacy, you know, used, you know, conducted in inappropriate ways, but that there's this wider rot in the state department, that the ukraine fiasco is symptom

attic of something that's been happening throughout the state department in this administration, where one after another these sort of veteran career foreign servants who are not known as partisans and who are widely respected are saying that american diplomacy is being misused and abused. and part of the story is that, you know, these foreign servants feel demoralized. they feel like the policies themselves are being run in an inappropriate way. part of the story is you have a guy like sondland, however culpable he might be for all this, he's trying to suggest he didn't know the worst of what was happening, but look, it basically looks like this guy bought an ambassadorship, had no relevant experience. one of my favorite details is the man he replaced as ambassador to the eu had several advanced academic degrees including in international relations, government, finance,

law. this was a guy who was, you know, really qualified for what he was doing, and in comes this real estate hotel guy from portland who had no foreign policy background. that's really demoralizing to the rest of the foreign service when they're taking orders from him that they think are inappropriate. >> michael, that is such an important, important, graphic point to illustrate exactly what's happened. the foreign service for the most part is a meritocracy, they're academics, they study and work overseas often in dangerous places, and they move up in ranks, and becoming ambassador is like a tenure track in a college. that's exactly what this has not been. kristen, the president had an extraordinary tweet today. this is the speaker of the house. she's a constitutional figure, more important than any other member of the house or senate, and this is what he tweeted today. nancy pelosi needs help fast.

there is either something wrong with her upstairs or she just plain doesn't like our country. she had a total meltdown in the white house today. it was very sad to watch. pray for her, she's a very sick pers person. this was tweeted last night. what would possess the president to do that and -- well, you cover the white house, but there's got to be some distress that this is what he's tweeting about the speaker of the house. >> right, and andrea, this is actually a tactic that we've seen from this president in the past. my sense is, it's a direct response to house speaker nancy pelosi having said on more than one occasion, "i pray for the president." so here he is trying to effectively flip the switch. and again, she said that she thought that the president had a meltdown during that meeting, and so he's trying to say no, i didn't the meltdown, you had the

meltdown. this is and, agasomething, agai we've seen from president trump in the past. the president has a political event in texas this evening, a big rally. his acting chief of staff mick mulvaney, though, is set to brief, in less than a half hour from now, so hopefully a chance to ask him about all of this. again, so far we really have just from the democrats and from president trump's tweet, what occurred in this meeting. so it will be useful to try to really drill down on the specifics with the acting chief of staff, andrea. >> and he in his budget role at omb of course had a direct role in holding back that money from ukraine. thank you very much to kristen welker and of course michael crowley and geoff bennett. now, someone who was at the table at that contentious white house meeting was senator bob menendez, you can see sitting next to those three empty chairs in the white house photo taken after the democratic leaders walked out, later tweeted by president trump. senator menendez is the top

democrat on the foreign relations committee and joins me now. senator, what was going on in that meeting that prompted the walkout and what happened right after they left, what did the president say to your group? >> well, i think pelosi, an extraordinarily disrespectful tone, where it started off with the president slamming his files on the table and saying, well, you all asked for this meeting which i reluctantly agreed to, so what do you want to talk about? the reality was, no one asked for that meeting, we were invited to go to a meeting with the president to talk about syria, the speaker said that to him, said what we are looking for is a briefing from the secretaries of defense, state, and the intelligence community to understand the magnitude of the decision you made. he said, well then, let's end the meeting. she said, the house has voted

354-60 to disagree with the decisions you made as it relates to syria. that set off a series of comments by the president that she was a third rate politician, that in fact all of us as democrats who were sitting there, we all support the kurds but the kurds are communists so therefore we must be happy about that, the incircumferenference all are communists. it just devolved. the president's belligerent tone from the get-go was not the type of temperament and type of meeting i would expect the president of the united states to deal with on a matter that is critical to national security and foreign policy. >> let me also ask you about something that chuck schumer brought up, he brought up what general mattis had said to chuck todd on "meet the press" this past sunday. what was the president's response about general mattis, his former defense secretary? >> he said that general mattis

said it would take him i forget what period of time, two years to defeat isis, he did it -- that he, the president, did it overnight. that general mattis was weak. and of course i was, you know, struck by the fact, i'm looking around the table to the secretary of defense, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and others, who did not utter a word in defense of general mattis. general mattis, as we all know, is an extraordinary service member in our country, a storied history. the president always touted him as "mad dog mattis" and all of a sudden he was weak. the problem, the reason general mattis left is the president tried to do what he did in syria before, and general mattis knew the consequences of it and made it very clear he could not support that. so this was the president's response, to denigrate a storied general who has served his country with exceptional valor and distinction. >> we'll hear shortly from vice

president pence and secretary pompeo who are in ankara right now meeting with erdogan, they'll come out and speak, we hope. but this is right after we released -- they released a letter from the white house showing what the president had written to erdogan, the very day that he then ordered the incursion. and the letter says, history will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way. it will look upon you photographer as the devil if good things don't happen. don't be a tough guy. don't be a fool. an insulting letter the likes of which isn't usually written by heads of state to heads of state. what is your reaction? bbc says that erdogan threw it in the waste basket. >> the president gave us all a copy of the letter at the beginning of the meeting. >> so he was proud of it. >> he was -- oh, he was proud. he wanted it all to be dispersed, because i think he thinks the letter actually makes him somehow look tough. i consider the letter an effort

to cover his backside after the firestorm of opposition, bipartisan opposition as well as from voices in the national security and foreign policy establishment who decried the action and the consequences that flow therefrom. and i looked at the letter simply as an attempt to try to create some cover for himself. i didn't think it was a serious letter, at the end of the day. as i stayed and pressed the questions about what are you going to do about the potential resurgence of isis, 10,000 fighters that the kurds have detained successfully for us, what if they get released because the kurds are busy fighting for themselves, what about the land bridge that iran now he's a free access into syria to attack our ally, the state of israel, what is the role you've given to russia, not only in syria but now in the middle east where allies are recalculating what they should be doing and who they should be with?

these are all the things that the president has unleashed. yoe i don't get a sense that he understands the magnitude of what he's done. >> senator bob menendez from the foreign relations committee, things very much, sir. breaking news about iran and rudy giuliani from julia ainsley in the newsroom. julia, talk to me about what you've learned about rudy giuliani representation of -- well, you should call him an expat iranian group, a controversial group long on the state department's terror list. >> that's right, andrea, the mek is a dissident group in iran. they're small but they have a large amount of influence particularly over right wing american politicians who are for the denuclearization of iran and for being tougher on iran in american foreign policy. rudy giuliani is someone who has met with mek at least once a year since 2014. that's what our reporting shows.

he's written op-eds for them going back to 2011, and that was before they had been taken off the terrorist watch list. why all of this is interesting now is because his former business partner, michael mukasey, former attorney general under george w. bush, recently filed for the foreign agents registration act because of his work with mek. that is exactly the kind of thing paul manafort and michael flynn did not register for and it later ended up adding to their list of legal charges. we understand that rudy giuliani worked with michael mukasey, they were in these meetings together. but giuliani has not filed and mukasey has. so it's interesting to see how that might play out. and it's a big question now as we look at these reports that perhaps giuliani is under investigation by federal prosecutors for his work abroad. what's also interesting to point out, and really noteworthy here,

is that we talked about people who investigated mek, these are former state department officials, some of these are prosecutors who have looked at f.a.r.a. cases, and they say giuliani's work is especially troubling because he did this at the same time he was the president's lawyer, and he's trying to represent the interests of the united states while working for these foreign interests. >> julia, let me get right to that point, because in warsaw last february, i was in warsaw covering the secretary of state, the vice president mike pence on these meetings on iran. netanyahu was there as well, mek was in town. i interviewed rudy giuliani and asked him exactly that, how can you be representing this iranian group while you're the president's lawyer. let's watch this tape. there is a summit that is supposedly about peace but you have a strong statement from the vice president against iran. you have the prime minister of

israel using words like combat against iran or war against iran interchangeably. >> right. >> you have the president's personal lawyer here coming out against iran. convinincidence coincidence? >> absolutely. and totally in line with what i've done for 11 years. if i doesn't come here, it would be unusual. i've spoken for the mcri, mek, related groups, for 11 years now with the same people here today, robert fortorrecelli. three of the last five joint chiefs of staff are on our board. this is something that's been a cause of mine for 11 years. i'm probably one of their four or five most prominent spokes peek. >> that's amazing that you have that tape, andrea. this is perfect, that you have that interview. he's acknowledging it, saying he's one of their four or five

most prominent people. what's not clear is how he's been paid. but going through michael mukasey's filings, they say he was unpaid but reimbursed for all of the travel. the way giuliani lays it out there is that this is something that's always been done, we've been working for them for so long, why should it matter now. of course it does matter because he is the personal attorney of the president, and some of these things that used to go unnoticed under the foreign agents registration act are now obviously being noticed. we saw that with the charges against michael flynn and paul manafort. >> julia ainsley, great reporting, thank you for joining us. coming up, we're going live to turkey where vice president pence and the secretary of state are expected to speak at any moment now after meeting with president erdogan. we can only imagine what that meeting was like after that insulting letter. and later, remembering elijah cummings, lion of the house. stay with us on "andrea mitchell

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right now vice president mike pence and secretary of state mike pompeo are in ankara and should be holding a press conference now. president trump sent an insulting letter to president erdogan telling him not to be a fool. the bbc reports erdogan promptly threw the letter out and ordered his forces into syria. keir simmons joins us from ankara. so much going on, they flew over saying they would broker a cease-fire but erdogan in the

interim, while they were in the air, said he had no interest that cease-fire. >> reporter: that's right, andrea. and i know that you, my friend, have been in this situation more times than perhaps you care to remember, because we're standing here in the news conference room waiting for that news conference with the vice president. it was supposed to start well over an hour ago. no sign of the vice president. what we're hearing is that the u.s. delegation and the turkish delegation are still locked in talks. the first meeting between vice president pence and president erdogan lasted more than an hour. now this wider bilateral is lasting two hours and still going. andrea, it's not just officials in the room, this is a high level meeting, you have the vice president, the secretary of state. on the turkish side you have the president, you have the defense minister, the foreign minister, a senior general. on the american side also, jim

jeffries, u.s. envoy to syria. what they're talking about, we don't know. i think it's a mistake, you know better than anyone, not to read too much into this when you're outside the room. i guess you can say at least they haven't walked out of room, they have something to talk about. one point to make, andrea, turkey as a nato ally of america, you would hope they would have things to talk about even if it's extremely challenging. >> keir simmons, i know you'll be standing by to join us as soon as things develop there. quite a story you're on, my friend. meanwhile, the chaos in syria is playing right into vladimir putin's hands. not only is putin hosting president erdogan in sochi next week, a spokesman says, you don't often encounter such language in correspondence between heads of state, adding that the letter is highly unusual. that's something no one would

really dispute. joining me is a former foreign minister of russia, the author of "the firebird." imagine, if you can put yourself in the place of vladimir putin, i know difficult to do, but you know him far better than we do. right now he's watching a meltdown in american diplomacy, and a corruption of american diplomacy. i don't even know how much he's been pulling the strings behind the scenes because we don't know anything about these private meetings he's had, without note-takers, with our american president. in "firebird" you recount how the successor to the kgb, which he was a former kgb official, plans all this, theoretically. it's playing out in real time. >> but of course, it plays right into his hands.

i think now he understands why his people were celebrating when trump was elected. they had some pain in the duma, that is the russian parliament, and said our guy is now in the white house. >> our guy is now in the white house. >> yes, that was the toast, the champagne toast. putin was not there himself, but i think now he appreciates very we well, maybe they have champagne every day. they are in a desperate condition. the russian economy is in stagnation. russia is involved in support of assad who is losing and who is a loser and who is isolated there, and there is no end. so it's a dead end war they are waging. and all of a sudden this present

coming his way from the american side. >> militarily he could not have driven us out of syria, and we've just ceded the battlefield to him. this is what the president had to say yesterday about russia's role. take a look. >> syria probably will have a partner in russia, whoever they may have, i wish them all a lot of luck. russia was involved in afghanistan, it used to be called the soviet union, now it's called russia for a reason, because they lost so much money in afghanistan that they had to downsize, a very big downsizing. so if russia wants to get involved with syria, that's really up to them. >> he sees this as a victory. >> it's up to them, of course, i mean, before, throughout my career, and throughout what i saw in history, in american history, it was not up to them.

it was up to america to decide who does what. and, you know, to limit them if they did wrong things. and i can't believe what i see. the ukrainian president, i was once in his shoes, you can read in the book, we were also looking for aid from america to promote democracy, we failed in the end, you see what happens now in kremlin. but at that time, it was unconceivable that an american, it was george bush, the senior, or any of his representatives, would blackmail us with the aid that they were given. that aid was not like a regular

diplomatic exchange, when you give something, you take something. it was help to build democracy. and that's what zelensky, the president of ukraine, and the ukrainians need now. and that's what was always the role of america. but not just bargaining, commercial bargaining, we will give you aid. >> a tool of democracy. >> yes. >> it's fascinating. thank you so much. the book is "firebird: the elusive fate of russian democracy." coming up, elijah cummings, proud son of baltimore. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports." stay with us right here on msnbc. >> it's time to go. please, i beg you. i'm not asking. i'm begging. it's very important that we keep

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the nation is mourning the loss of long time public servant congressman elijah cummings of maryland. he died at age 68 following a lengthy illness in his native

baltimore. he was born to sharecropper parents who moved north for better opportunity for their children. he credited his parents, both preachers, for instilling in him a moral code that led to a life in public service. cummings was a fiery presence on capitol hill as house oversight chair in july of this year. he took the trump administration to task over the separation of migrant families. i am so sorry about that, the tape was not correct. but we will get that to you. in april of 2015, the congressman gave an emotional speech at the funeral of freddie gray, where he spoke about his own nephew. >> family, you have those who tell you don't cry.

i'm not going to say that. i put my nephew in the grave for years ago, blasted away, still don't know who did it. i mourn every day. >> the emotion there, the raw emotion is just one representation of elijah cummings, a man many of us admired and loved. joining me now from capitol hill, congresswoman eleanor holmes norton and here with me, "washington post" political reporter eugene scott. congresswoman norton, the elijah cummings you knew, the kind, gentle man, tell us about him, as well as the fiery son of preachers. >> what you just showed, andrea, was the commanding presence that those in the public saw in elijah cummings. those of us who worked with him, and i must say i believe i speak

for republicans and democrats alike, saw in him a gentle spirit. and we saw in him rare bipartisanship in one of the most partisan congresses in united states history. i must say, his passing would always grieve members and of course his family, maya and those whom we feel strongly for. but this is not a time when we can afford to lose elijah cummings. we are in the midst of impeachment hearings. sadly, i have here, and just received today, a summary of his views on what we've heard so far in the impeachment inquiry along with two other committee chairs. our committee was one of three committees who have been most involved in the inquiry.

i have just come here from discussions we're having now with witnesses, closed hearings on the inquiry. this is when we need him most and when we can afford to lose him least. >> and as you speak of the impeachment inquiry and his comments, he was working up until the end, he was in hospice at the end and still working and communicating with all of you. >> indeed, it's interesting that last week we had a committee hearing with him by phone. that's just how involved he was until the very end. >> and the passion that he brought to the immigration and separation of families issue, i don't want to let the moment pass without playing that because we do have that tape, let's play that and i'll bring in eugene scott to talk about ou're doing a great job, right, is that what you're saying? >> we're doing our level in the can't take a shower?

come on, man. none of us would have our children in that position. they are human beings. >> he always got right to the core of the issue, the moral center of the issue, eugene. >> absolutely. i think he really prided himself on looking out for marginalized groups. when you think about baltimore, the demographics, it's a large working class community, a large community of color. he focused on issues that were devastating these residents, be it police brutality, substance abuse, the opioid epidemic, issues that are national but aren't often centered on the inner city. he was doing it and had done it for a while, in part because he was mindful of legacy. he often talked about what one would be remembered for and pushed law marmakers from both s

of the aisle as they navigated politics and how to pass legislation. >> he had great influence on young correspondents, i heard yamiche alcindor talking about it this morning. >> i ran into him at black caucus events, i saw him often in the green room here at msnbc. he knew what it was like to be an outsider and a new person to power. so he very much wanted to help young people, young people of color, navigate these spaces that just weren't filled with people like him and like me. he was helpful, humble, but fair and honest and available and accessible. you think he'll be missed on both sides of the aisle. conservative lawmakers said he was easy to work with in the sense that he didn't paint caricatures of them which is what we see often when talking to people on the other side of

the aisle. >> congresswoman norton, one of the most extraordinary moments was when michael cohen was testifying and he counseled michael cohen as he was finishing his testimony about what to expect. i think we can play part of that for you right now, who to expect when he goes to jail. >> you have to have your head down. this is one of the hardest things you can do. the picture that really, really pained me, you were leaving the prison, you were leaving the courthouse, and i guess it was your daughter had braces or something on. man, that thing hurt me. >> it was a very emotional moment, congresswoman. >> there you hear a strong chairman, in empathy with a witness with whom he could not have more strongly disagreed. all of us felt that. one of the reasons i'm going to miss him is that he was not

present and let me preside at the statehood hearing, statehood for the district of columbia was about to go to the floor. i believe he allowed me to preside because that's the kind of man he was. but what you heard right there was a man who was respected on both sides of the aisle even when he was interrogating people as the trial lawyer he always was. >> congresswoman eleanor holmes norton, our condolences to you for loss of a colleague and fellow leader, and eugene scott, he was a critical mentor. thank you both. as we speak, mick mulvaney, acting chief of staff, has been briefing, taking questions. he spoke about congressman cummings with great respect. he also announced that the g-7 meeting next year will be held at the doral property, the trump property in florida. let's listen. >> almost half as much. i don't want to butcher the

numbers, it was millions of dollars cheaper to do it at doral than another facility, it was roughly 50% savings. the g-7, the g-8, that discussion is ongoing. the president is candid about whether he wants russia to join the g-7 again, they used to be a member of that organization. he's been fairly straightforward to you folks and leaders around the world which is, we go to the g-7, and what dominates so much of the discussion? russia. russian energy, russian military policy, the russian economy. it dominates a lot of the discussion. wouldn't it be better to have them inside as part of those conversations. but i think that decision will be made later and we'll continue to review it. yes, ma'am. >> reporter: the g-7 has been held for decades. how can you make the argument this is the best place to hold it? surely there were other places this could be held. you can't make the argument that the president will not profit because we can't know how much

he might profit in the future, right? >> yeah, to your first point, uh, again, i think -- the profit, again, he's not making money off of this just like he's not making money working here. if you think it's going to help his brand, that's great, i would suggest he would probably not need much help promoting his brand. let's put profit aside and deal with the perfect place. camp david, was that the perfect place? i understand the folks who participated in it hated it and thought it was a miserable place to have a g-7, way too small. as i understand, the media didn't like it because you had to drive an hour -- >> reporter: i take your point but there have been other g-7 summits, i've attended numerous, that have been just fine according to the leaders who attended them. how can the white house really make the argument that this is the only place the g-7 -- >> it's not the only place, it's the best place. those are two different things. >> reporter: there's other good places. >> no question about it. some of the limitations, we wanted a specific time. we wanted it in early june.

that limits it a little bit. then there's difficulties with going various places. some places don't have the transportation that you need. there was one place, i won't say where it was, where we had to figure out if we had to have oxygen tanks for the participants because of the altitude. there's limitations at other places. we thought of the 12 places that we looked at, and you recognize the names of them if we told you what they were, that this was by far and away the best choice. >> reporter: very quickly, this is a business optics. how is the president going to stand on the debate stage if in fact vice president bidden wins the nomination and try to make an argument that he didn't profit off his vice presidency? >> he will do that extraordinarily well. >> reporter: so is this going to self-contained just at doral? are there other hotel rooms they'll have to get, anywhere else you'll have to -- >> yeah, i understand. one of the advantages, the advance team came back with

about doral was the fact that it could be sequestered off from the rest of the city and that nearly all or all of the operations could be on that one piece of property. i think there's -- i think the president said there's almost 900 acres there, so it's a huge facility and we will be able to, with a lot of open space, there's three golf courses, a lot of space available to us. we anticipate the entire thing being on that campus. >> reporter: including hotels, they talk about additional hotel rooms, there could be additional hotels involved in that. >> again, i'm not sure about the -- when we talk about the delegations, for example, when we went, um, to, uh, biarritz, there were two or three different hotels around that city. that would not be the case here. the american delegation would stay on campus, the british delegation will stay on campus, the germans will stay on campus, you folks will be there. whether or not there are other folks using hotel rooms in the miami area, i can't speak to that. >> reporter: what local authorities have you been in contact with about this? >> yeah, i haven't asked that

question. we do that, the advance team will do that with each of the teams groups that we work with. >> a video shown last weekend at that resort, a doctored video showed the president killing members of the news media. why do you think he hasn't spoken directly about the sentiment about that video? >> have you asked him? we put out a statement -- you had a chance to ask him that question yesterday and you asked him something else. which is fine. but -- hold on a second. your question is why hasn't he addressed it. we did as a white house. we didn't like that. i think we condemned that. [ inaudible question ] >> did you think that we would? >> doesn't sound like a very strong condemnation. >> come on, john. it was awful. i've never seen the movie. that has no place here. i think we've condemned that. i don't know if he has seen it or not.

>> trying to put it in a place that you think is the best, maybe save the taxpayers some money which is important for all of us. but sometimes you -- because of the paerngs appearance of impro you don't make that call. you can at least acknowledge that just the appearance of impropriety makes it wince inducing and maybe this is something that you want to reconsider? how did that conversation go in the room? >> the president knows that. listen, the president -- we know the environment we live in, you all know the environment that we live in. and he knows that he'll get these questions and get that reaction from a lot of people. and he simply was saying that is fine, i'm willing to take that. the same way he takes it when he goes to mar-a-lago, when he goes to trump bedminster. he got over that long time ago. we believe this is the best place to have it and we're going to have it there and there will be folks who will never get over the fact that it is a trump property. we get that, but we're still going there. >> aside from what your advance

team did to look for the perfect place, what role did the president play in selecting doral including getting in on the initial list of 10 or 12 places in the first place? >> that is a fair question. one night we were back in the dining room and going over what a couple of our advance team had the list and he goes what about doral. that is not the craziest idea. mak makes perfect sense. it is not like he said this is what doral is and i have to explain. no, what about doral? that is not the craziest idea we ever heard. we said we would look at it. >> and i wanted to ask you about as it relates to the decision that you've made as host country, couldn't the president simply as the host country invite you putin to the g-7? >> i think that we can. as i understand, there will be other leaders there anyway. for example i met with the prime minister of australia at the g-7 even though they are not there.

and we could do the same thing. but i think the question i got originally was turning it from the g-7 into the g-8. >> and the question is could he simply invite president putin. >> can he physically codo that, yes, he can. >> would he consider doing that? >> that has not come up. i think the conversation that we've had about whether or not we would turn to the g-8, that could be a step. >> you mentioned that the president is willing to take the criticism on this, but what about the country itself? is there any value to sending a message to the world, especially given that all the foreign interference and attempts at foreign interference in our country, that this president and this country is not open for the kind of self-dealing that happens in other countries, is that not an important about message to send when you are inviting the word to come to the united states? >> no. your question? any last g-7 questions?

>> the best property for this to take place and why has no other g-7 ever been held there before? >> because they didn't look at it. why did they have it at camp david? seriously. i'm a little familiar with it, i've talked to the folks up there because i was up there recently and i said didn't you -- i think it was the g-8 back then, 2004, something like that. and they said it was a complete disaster. how did that decision get made? >> last g-7 question if i can. you were talking about the video where the president was seen shooting members of the media and others played at the doral plot ther property there. broadly the president has tweeted 45,000 times, how come the president hasn't used that twitter account to more than 60 million followers to condemn it? >> the white house put out a statement about it. next time you ask him, again, it is not like the man hides from you folks. i think he has done almost 100 face-to-face interviews with you. anybody else on g-7?

>> is there any precedent in your studying of the g-7 of a gmpt 7 s g-7 summit being held at a property of any president and my second question, as you look at the content for next year, it will probably be hot in florida in june. will climate change be one of the issues that you discuss? >> first question, i don't know if another president has owned a property that was considered for g-7, so, no, i don't know the answer to that question. climate change will not be on the agendagenda. yes, sir. >> thank you. president trump has called for the exposure of the whistleblower on ukraine. >> done on g-7 then, is that the collective will? i have one gentleman -- yes, last one on g-7. >> you talked about the passing of congressman cummings. are you going to share documents that show how you arrived at this decision with the congress? >> no, but i would imagine that we would share dollar figures with you afterwards.

that is ordinary course of business. by the way, you will get this answer a lot. i don't talk about how this place runs on the inside. so if you ask us -- if you see our paper on how we did this, the answer is absolutely not. yes, sir. >> there will almost certainly be a house a house yjuju additi committee hearing on this. will the administration cooperate? >> by the way that is a fascinating question. i had not thought that this would prompt a judiciary committee investigation. on the one hand i'm thinking they don't have time do it because they are too busy doing impeachment, right? and then i think to myself no, this is entirely consistent with how they spent the first 18 months in office. 12 months, how far long they have been here. i guess it has been a year. yeah, they would rather do that than talk about tax policy, drug policy, opoids, talk about

health care. so that is a fascinating question. i don't know if there will be a you additi judiciary committee inquiry. my guess is that there will be. all g-7 questions now? now we're moving on to something else. so who hasn't -- john karl has not asked a question yet. >> so actually a clarification on your first statement on the g-7. you said five finalists and you said mar-a-lago was one of the finalists? >> four finalists i think. we started with 12 on sort of a list. the team visited sort of -- a first team visited ten of those and i think i identified the states. we then got our senior team down and they visited four of which mar-a-lago was one. there was one in hawaii and two in utah. >> so you're telling me in the entire united states, you came down to four finalists and two were trump properties? >> no, one. >> you said mar-a-lago. >> sorry, no, i'm sorry. doral, yes.

sorry, yes. mar-a-lago was not close to being sufficient for the g-7. >> thank you for clarifying. >> if i said mar-a-lago about where we visited, no, it was doral. i apologize. >> so to the question of ukraine, can you clarify, and i've been trying to get an answer to this, was the president serious when he said that he would also like to see china investigate the bidens and you were directly involved in the decision to withhold funding from ukraine. can you explain to us now definitively why? why was funding withheld? >> let's deal with the second one first. look, it should come as no surprise to anybody, last time i was up here -- i haven't done this since i was chief of staff. last time i was up here, it was for the budget briefings. and one of the questions you always ask me about the budget is what are you doing to the foreign aid budget. because we absolutely gutted it. president trump is not a big fan of foreign aid.

never has been. still isn't. doesn't like spending money overseas especially when it is poorly spent. and that is exactly what drove this decision. i've been in the office a couple times with him talking about this. and he said look, mick, is this a corrupt place. everybody knows is ththis is a corrupt place. and this is on the heels of what happened in puerto rico when we took heat for not wanting to give a bunch of aid to puerto rico because we thought that place was corrupt and by the way turns out we were right. so he is like this is a corrupt place, i don't want to send them a bunch of money and have them waste it. use to line their own pockets. and plus i'm not sure that the other european countries are helping them out either. so we actually looked at that. when we cut the money off before the money actually flowed, because the money floed eflowe end of the fiscal year, we did and an analysis of what other countries were doing. and i can't remember if it was zero or near zero dollars from any european countries for

lethal aid. you've heard the president say we give them tanks and other countries give them pillows. that is right. as vocal at the europeans are about supporting ukraine, they are really, really stingy when it coming to lethal aid. they weren't helping ukraine and to this day are not. and the president did not like that. long answer, but i'm still going. those were the driving factors. did he also mention to me that the corruption that related to the dnc server? absolutely. no question. but that is it. and that is why we held up the money. >> so the demand for an investigation into the democrats was part of the reason that 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 in corruption with that nation. and that is