very much. that wraps up this hour for me. i'll see you right back here tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. eastern and again at 3:00 p.m. eastern. "deadline: white house" with nicolle wallace begins right now. >> hi, everyone, it's 4:00 in new york. we begin with breaking impeachment news and a do-over from sondland. he's been in the middle of the impeachment scandal since his text messages with ambassador bill taylor showed him moving a conversation about whether military aid was tied to those politically damaging investigations into the bidens from text to a phone line. sondland also a key player in pressuring the ukrainians to open the investigations donald trump sought as a condition for a meeting with trump. but before today, sondland had not testified to his role in or even acknowledged that he believed military aid for ukraine was also tied to the

ukrainians commitment to the investigations into the bidens. sondland today amending his original testimony to include this dramatic admission that military aid for ukraine was tied to a public commitment from the ukrainians to investigate trump's political rival. from the "new york times" which was first to report on sondland's reverse sal, the disclosure from gordon sondland confirmed his involvement in essentially laying out a quid pro quo to ukraine that he had previously not acknowledged. "the times" ads, mr. sondland provided a more robust description of his own role in alerting the ukrainians that they needed to go along with requests being demanded by rudy giuliani. by early september, he said he became convinced that military aid were commissioned on ukraine

committing to those investigations. sondland was in a box. one lawmaker accusing him of perjury. both taylor and morrison have recounted conversations in which it was communicated that military aid was conditioned on those investigations. sondland now saying that their testimony refreshed his memory. in today's updated testimony, sondland writes, quote, i now do recall a conversation on september 1st, 2019, in warsaw with an ukrainian official. this brief conversations followed the larger meeting involving pence and president zelensky in which zelensky had raised the issue of the suspension of u.s. aid to ukraine directly with vice president pence. after that large meeting, i now recall speaking individually with him where i said that

resumption of u.s. aid would likely not occur until the public corruption statement that we had discussed for many weeks. we have white house reporter, ashley parker, plus former senior fbi official, chuck rosenberg, with us at the table, msnbc national affairs analyst and former managing editor for "time" magazine. you broke this news of sondland's planned reversal. take us inside the strategy. is he trying to avoid any questions about whether he perjured himself or had he forgotten these detailed interactions with the ukrainians? >> the explanation from sondland's side is basically that after all of these witnesses went in, he had a much better memory of what occurred. >> three weeks ago, right? september 1st? >> correct. if you look at the transcript that came out earlier today with

that new testimony, you can see sondland saying that he did not believe that he thought that the military aid was tied to the investigation. obviously saying something very different today and leading many democrats into an interesting position. i think they like the fact that sondland has said this because he is seen as a trump ally, he's seen as someone who was close to the president and that sort of enhances their argument that there was a quid pro quo. at the same time, it undermines his credibility as a witness because you have him now in two different instances saying different things. and that can obviously be exploited if he's called at a public hearing to lay out for the country what he knows. >> the politics of this aside, is there a single witness now that we know of that's testified to anything other than both the meeting and the military aid being tied to commitment

publicly to investigate burisma and the bidens? >> no. not that i know of. we haven't seen every transcript yet and there are still other witnesses that have not been spoken to. but this does put sondland in line with a lot of the career state department officials and these long-time national security officials that were working on the national security council for the president, this puts him in line with them and sort of their understanding of what had gone on. now, what does that mean for sondland going forward? that's a decision that democrats are going to have to make. is he a good enough witness to put up there given these contradictions in what he said. >> it reminds me in mike's analysis is similar to the analysis that a lot of us heard about michael cohen who had come before congress in a dramatic way but there were inconsistencies. the credibility of the witness

aside, sondland was the figure in the entire aid for dirt scandal who the white house had pinned their hopes on in terms of providing some sort of exculpatory testimony. it would appear that that has fallen apart with today's amended testimony. >> but even with his first testimony. remember, he went up in a number of people in the white house were excited as you said for him coming to testify because nthey thought, finally, you have an ally of the president who said in a text message there was no quid pro quo and who will be a positive witness for the white house and that ended up not to be the case in that moment. what we're seeing today is sort of another dig undermining a witness they had hoped would be exculpatory now providing more damning information on this deal. >> check, can you jump in on both mike and ashley's reporting that this is a witness that while he confirms the fact

pattern, and i don't think any of us are aware of any testimony that suggests anything attorney conditioning military aid and a meeting with donald trump, take us through how a witness's credibility might be impacted by amending their testimony and just the power of the fact patterns that has emerged today. >> right. it's not a good thing, nicolle. there's version one, version two. who knows with mr. sondland whether there's a version three, four and five. bank robbers, drug dealers, tell you about the transactions they think you know about and they tend to omit the ones that they don't think you know about. and that undermines their credibility, when they get on the stand. the thing we ask witnesses to do, and it's a really, really hard thing for some of them to do it, is to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and those are three different things. the truth and the whole truth

are not the same thing. >> that's interesting. >> and what you might have gotten from sondland this time is more of the whole truth, but i'm not convinced he got all of the whole truth and it makes him ripe for cross-examination. >> do you think sondland went in there thinking that taylor wasn't going to tell the truth? do you think there was a signal sent that -- what makes someone go in -- if you read the amendment, it's a stunning new anecdote and it's from 4 1/2 weeks ago. >> and it doesn't seem like the type of thing that you would forget, that you would need mr. taylor or mr. morrison to remind you of. it's the central fact, nicolle. again, perhaps analogizing to

bank robbers and drug dealers, they only tell you what they think they need to tell you to get out of trouble at the moment. as their stories change, they become less and less valuable. and i think you mentioned this, michael cohen, paul manafort is another example, we see this over and over and over again in federal court -- or i should say in federal prosecutions. it doesn't surprise me that we would see it here too. >> it's interesting, john, the picture in some ways becomes clearer, you have this testimony that sinks up with the testimony provided by bill taylor and morrison which would seem to me -- i'm not a lawyer, but it would seem like cya testimony, you know their sworn testimony from witnesses that involves you. you make sure your account matches theirs. their stories have to match up when they get called before the principal. on the other hand, questions about his credibility now?

>> yeah, again, i don't really -- i don't think this is as big of a conflict as it seems on the front side. you think about where you're headed now. we're headed in from the period of private fact gathering to public persuasion. democrats are looking at the situation. it looked like public opinion was moving in the direction of impeachment. the challenge that nancy pelosi and the house democrats have to try to move public opinion further is a serious one. they know what the story is here. they know what the truth of the story is here. there's no doubt that sondland has damaged his credibility as a witness but he was never going to be their real witness either. bill taylor is going to be their witness, colonel vindman, maybe john bolton. this guy has done them the favor of removing the one piece of contradictory testimony, and

they can say, even the president's bought and paid for ambassador pick, even that guy has come around to acknowledge the obvious truth of the matter, plus you get the pleasure of looking at donald trump's tweet from october 22nd, the ambassador to the european union has testified, he said there was no quid pro quo, he said the president had told him that. that is the president of the united states a couple weeks ago. that is now inoperative too. the benefits of having sondland's testimony line up to getting him off the side of being the one contradictory, the outliar is way more important -- he's not going to be a good witness. but this guy was never going to be the witness you wanted to make your case, anyway, in public. >> just to pull the michael cohen testimony, the original testimony, that transcript was released today. that was the occasion for the update. and from the original testimony, sondland is clearly another

alarmed witness to i think what bill taylor described as an irregular policy channel. he testified he was asked when president trump told you to discuss with rudy giuliani concerns about ukraine, did you know at that point what he was referring to? he didn't even. he wasn't even specific about what he wanted us to talk to giuliani about. he just kept saying, talk to rudy. when he said that, did you know what he was talking about? i didn't, other than he said, ukraine is a problem. he went on to say, it was getting more insidious as the timeline went on, tit was an unconditional invitation to the white house and the next part was some kind of of a commitment to investigate corruption and then talking about burisma in the 2016 election and then at the end of the c, then the aid

released and this whole thing blew up, ashley? >> we talked a bit earlier about sondland being in a box over perjury, but what you saw in this testimony released today and what had leaked out about it a bit earlier, he was in a box in another way as well. sondland was a wealthy hotel owner, he was desperate to please the president. he was excited and eager to have this job that he had worked for years towards, by being a republican donor, and then the president was basically asking him to do a series of things that he felt increasing uncomfortable with. and so he was always faced with this choice, do i try to please my benefactor or the thing that i think is right. more often than not, he tried to please the president, but that is why you hear those hints of alarm and concern throughout the transcript. >> rick, we travel so far from

normal. but it is normal for the diplomatic corps to be made of political patrons and they typically meld -- i won't say seamlessly, but more seamlessly than this, where sondland didn't exactly do that, there's some syncing up. >> yes, sondland is a complete amateur. the other thing i keep thinking about with this is that at the state department, he's accompanied by foreign service officers and employees, they take notes on every single tiny thing that happens and then they send a memo about it and someone takes notes on the memo and then they send it there. it's all confirmed every which way. all of this is going to be marked. the other detail that keeps coming back to haunt me and it's kind of humorous is this -- i think this is how -- one of the reasons they got dinged.

this is sondland refreshed memory, his memory was refreshed with the fact he could be charged with perjury, he said i recall some question as to whether the statement would come from the prosecutor general rather than from president zelensky directly. remember, they wanted ukrainians to issue a statement, a public statement, that they were investigating burisma. that came from trump. that's the classic trump thing, not only do i defeat you, i rub your nose in it and that's where the ukrainians balked. i'll do this deal, but i'm not going to do it in public and open it up. that's what started the trigger for it to come back. >> and you and your colleagues did some of that reporting about a month ago, about how this statement was -- there was a lot of effort went in on the part of ambassador sondland and others to try to get the ukrainians to do exactly what rick just described, issue this statement

where they publicly commit to these investigations. how does that effort and what we're learning about it play into sort of sondland's disclosures in the amended testimony today? >> well, the charitable view of what sondland was trying to accomplish was basically to conduct american foreign policy around trump and giuliani. he basically saw them as impediments to what needed to be done between these two countries and basically if they could satisfy giuliani and get him to layoff, then they could go back to establishing normal relations and that would be the best thing for the country. the problem is, is that the president and his lawyer were standing in the way. but it was all about pacifying giuliani. these people thought that giuliani had poisoned the president's brain and given him all of these different ideas about what had happened in ukraine and basically to get that to stop and to get the president to layoff, they had to

try and get the ukrainians to put out the statement. >> there is something sympathetic in that depiction of trying to work around a president whose mind has been poisoned against the ukrainians, but i believe that's what they believed, and trying to do the right thing, trying to get the military aid to the ukrainians by any means. when you read through, they're trying to be forthcoming with congress and on the page you read bizarre. is that -- does that paint a more textured picture of the scandal. >> yes, but you're a much, much nicer person than me, nicolle. >> but i'm not. >> you are, you are. because i understand your point about it being somewhat sympathetic, it's also somewhat pathetic because it isn't

binary. you can leave, you can quit, you can say i can't operate in this environment. i'm not saying that's what he should have done. but it's not like he has to try and find a way to make it work. if he's being asked to do things that he thinks are unethical or illegal or just yucky, which might be the technical word here, he can walk away from it and he didn't. he tried to apiece the president and that's on him. it's also part on the president, of course, but that's on sondland. >> it's on sondland and i'm not as -- i'm more mean than you, chuck. we could have this fight every day. ashley, i want to ask you not what the white house is saying, because i think we can all guess, someone is a liar, blah, blah, blah but if there's any effort at any level to understand the fact pattern or if the entire strategy rests on sort of indicting the process and impugning the integrity and character of the witnesses?

>> you do see republicans on capitol hill i think are the most fascinating group to watch because they are trying to, a, understand the fact pattern, and b, respond to it. and you see them grappling with that in these excerpts and in their public shifting testimony. you have them going from, if you look back just a few weeks to saying, there's absolutely no quid pro quo to now, when they do understand the fact pattern, some of them are saying, okay, sure. so there was a quid pro quo and that's certainly not a deal, but it is not necessarily the high crime and misdemeanor of impeachment. they're very much trying to grapple with this in realtime. >> depends what the definitions of a quid pro quo are these days. thank you for your reporting and thank you for spending some time with us. after the break, the transcript from the deposition of the first witness in the impeachment investigation and the first causality of the scandal, kirk volker was

released today, his understanding that everyone was on board except the white house, that's next. also ahead, a revolt at the state department as mike pompeo gets sucked deeper and deeper into the aid for dirt scandal and refuses to defend lifelong diplomats being smeared by rudy giuliani and donald trump, and the danger of a disfrom donald trump. one of the associates indicted, agrees to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry e with the impeachment inquir .

. as we've noted the transcript from curt volker's deposition was released today. he was a special representative for ukraine negotiations clashed with donald trump's tinfoil had brigade when rudy giuliani raised the issue of joe biden playing any role in burisma. he also tried to navigate the rudy-infested waters after trump and pompeo green lit rudy's hijacking of the relations and he described why a hold on military ukraine was so unusual. he says this, quote, in this case, here you had an instance where everyone that i spoke with in the policy side of the administration, you know, pentagon, military, civilian, state department, national security council, they all thought this is really important to provide this assistance and so in that circumstance, for there to be a hold placed struck

me as unusual. i didn't know the reason. no reason was ever given as to why that was. joining our conversation just in time, former aid to george w. bush and "washington post" columnist. chuck rosenberg is still with us. elise for curt volker who had a reputation before he got embroiled with donald trump and his "looney tunes" foreign policy apparatus, had a representation as a person of integrity. but once he was on board, he was making a doing all of the unsavory things you had to do to survive in the world. >> there have been so many public servants who joined to help further our national security and they get drawn into it, just like rick wilson says, everything trump touches manages

to die. you have something like ambassador volker who i have held in high regard and had a really great reputation for being an effective diplomat, you see where he was trying to dissuade but got pulled in. and so this is where you wonder who can survive unscathed in this administration. >> i keep thinking about the trump inauguration speech about human carnage. who thought it would be the entire -- the brain drain. it's the entire national security apparatus, sort of like the band formally known as the republican party. >> and i think, you know, the great irony here is that there really is -- no one escapes. no one gets out of here alive except for maybe john bolton and that's the one person, we'll

see, when he eventually testifies which i think he will is the person who, like, people hated more than anyone. but he was the one -- it's important i think with bolton to remember that his main reputation was that he was a skilled bureaucrat keep themselves clean when things started to get dirty. he was a guy who understood, but had enough internal savvy about how to play the game that he was able to leave the paper trail in the right place where he may be the one who comes out with his reputation actually enhanced out of this -- >> to stay on the right side of the line, you have to know there is a line. and sondland doesn't seem to have known there was a line, right? >> but as rick said, how would he? >> exactly. he had no experience.

no one and rick can correct me if i'm wrong, the diplomats i know, they understand the chain -- that there's a chain of command. they understand that they're to execute the foreign policy that gets made by the president and the secretary of state. but if they're skilled and experienced, they know extortion when they see it. they know corruption when they see it. >> let's bring it back to the substance. this is -- and i'm glad we've moved away from quid pro quo. this is clear that these were all witnesses to extortion and what comes through in curt volker's tortured transcript is that there was some discomfort and maybe it's with himself, he was the first official, i believe, to resign, he was the first impeachment witness to appear and it was his text messages that really put in motion the public understanding of what had gone on here, that military aid for an american ally that's threatened by russia was tied to dirt on the bidens.

what if any exposure does volker have? >> i don't think he has any criminal exposure, certainly not. he's a witness. he's a classic witness. sometimes your witnesses have done things you prefer that they had not done, that doesn't mean we prosecute them and i think mr. volker is going to be absolutely fine. but to elise's point, good people get singed, some beam get obliterated. i was struck by what you read from mr. volker, how many people in the dod and the white house and on the national security council, and the state department new that something was wrong. folks who had dedicated their lives to public service, to furthering public policy, trying to do the right thing, how many people, not the dozen we've heard about, how many people knew there was something wrong and must have been incredibly frustrated, sad, may over how t

president high j jacked foreign policy. >> i'm going to seem like i'm not nicer than chuck, but here's the thing about volker. he's an experienced guy. he's been in a lot of administrations. he discovered that someone had put a hold on military aid for ukraine. in normal times you think, how did that happen? you start back checking it. the assumption would not be the president of the united states has put a hold on military aid to ukraine because he wants his political opponent investigated. no one would ever think of that normally and even in this administration, i think someone like volker who says we have these weird actors and stuff going on, but i'm not going to assume that that's the case. >> let me put this out there, because there is an effort on the part of the president, sean

hannity, and rand paul to out the whistle-blower. why weren't you the whistle-blower? why didn't they all go to the lawyers or to congress and say i'm already on the line for swearing, holy bleep, why weren't there 30 whistle-blowers. what's wrong with these people? what company is going to hire them. because if there's we live in a cultural where all sorts of companies -- what company wants a man who isn't the whistle-blower? >> look, i completely agree with you, there should have been dozens of people who once this dawned on them, they should have resigned or registered -- >> or filed a whistle-blower complaint. >> and some have. and i actually think whistle-blowing is almost a kind of truth virus and more and more people will start coming out now because the momentum has shifted. but i agree with you. there should have been hundreds of resignations in the administration since the --

>> or a lot -- and i understand there's no one to go to. mick mulvaney has his t-shirts, everybody is doing it, whatever stupid thing he said about quid pro quos and donald trump was, you know, called the code red. but why not go to congress. when i read these transcripts, they all knew it was wrong, they all felt dirty, they all new they were singed or damaged. why weren't they the whistle-blower? >> i think when you get in a position of power, sometimes you think that you are the glue that's holding it all together. >> that's a psychological condition. >> being in these positions and feeling like you're standing between donald trump and disaster and that you are containing disaster is a mind set that you hear frequently from national security officials who have worked in the administration. >> chuck, i ask you to do this all the time, but try to pull this together for all of us.

what are we looking at in these transcripts? what do you see? >> i don't see, you know, sort of crimes by people like volker. i want to be clear. i don't think he's a criminal. far from it. but what i do see are people, leaders who are not able to sort of lift their eyes over the horizon and see what this would look like on the front page of the "new york times" or in a congressional inquiry. they're not able to see because they're so close to the flame what they're actually doing. and i think good leaders -- the best leaders have that ability to step back, take in all the data, as my friend jim comey says, lift their eyes above the horizon. that didn't happen here. and for whatever reason, weather they enjoyed the power or whether the power tainted their judgment, you have a failure of leadership at many, many levels. it starts at the top. but i think you're spot on,

nicolle, these people knew something was wrong and didn't act to stop it. >> chuck rosenberg, who's always, always, always, every day of the week nicer than me. thank you for spending some time with us. donald trump's claims to not know two of rudy giuliani's business associates who were indicted may have backfired. how one of them is seeking to cooperate with the congressional impeachment investigation. that's next. that's next. as a struggling actor,

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but i don't know. maybe they were clients of rudy. you would have to ask rudy. >> i don't know anything about the crimes that they commit for my personal lawyer rudy when they go to ukraine and -- i don't know -- i'm in pictures with them. we hug. they know my -- i don't know them. so that, that, that moment where the president sought to distance himself from those two men, lev parnas and igor fruman might not have worked for donald trump. they are associates of rudy giuliani and their work with him, assisting him in efforts to dig up dirt on the bidens lies at the heart of donald trump's impeachment. parnas and fruman who were indicted last month for campaign finance violations had previously ignored the subpoenas they received from house impeachment investigators, but after that, after that dis from

donald trump, i have pictures with everybody, that made one of them change his mind in the wake of that epic presidential dis. lev parnas is willing to cooperate with congress. his reasoning, no one puts lev in the corner. mr. parnas was very upset by mr. trump's false statement that he didn't know him. his lawyer expanded to "the washington post" saying this, quote, any being looking at the public record of the president and parnas together during intimate dinners, waving to each other at rallies, taking pictures together, and if parnas's alleged involvement with the president's lawyer rudy giuliani could divine that the president and parnas knew each other. everyone is back. eugene? >> one of the questions i have is does parnas's willingness to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry means he has flipped

basically and he's going to cooperate with the southern district of new york in hopes of more lenient treatment, i don't know against fruman, against others, against mr. giuliani perhaps. who knows what the angle is. he may have something to say to the law. >> more criminals around the president. roger stone is on trial today, paul manafort is -- i worked in politics a long time, but i've never known any elected officials to have so many criminals in their inner circle. >> and a couple of obvious thugs like those guys. it's kind of a -- it's a joke, right? would you like me to speculate? >> please. >> you know, i think that the

president, you know, at this point if you're thinking about who the president has to be worried about, who are you nervous about, you're worried about rudy. because the truth is, that if rudy flipped on the president on this front, on the question of what happened in ukraine, if rudy were under pressure and flipped on the president, the president would be really hosed. i asked the question about to eugene's point, i think they're under a lot of pressure to provide information about everything they did on behalf of rudy giuliani which was on behalf of donald trump and i think the way in which the investigators will want to do is roll those guys up and go to giuliani and say, you have some criminal exposure here, and you can have a conversation about all of the work you were doing on behalf of the president of the united states, some of which might be illegal. this is a significant thing the notion that one of these two

russian henchmen has flipped on rudy. >> rudy is under investigation by the southern district of new york for the corrupt lobbying practices and a window into his defense, we've seen it, he holds up his phone and says mike pompeo and his state department told me to do. we've seen rudy's defense and we know where it's going to go down, it's going to go down on fox news with one of his devices he bangs on in a way that makes me wince. he's not going down for this. >> he's not. when he's waving that phone around, that phone is waved at the president of the united states. he's reminding the president of the united states that he has that phone. that's a -- that's not just the act of a lunatic. it's also meant to send a signal, about what's in that phone and who could be harmed by its partial or full exposure.

>> we have been in gangster b movie territory for a long time. >> get in there a. that's where we are. >> when rudy felt threatened just momentarily, because this is what, only a couple of weeks ago, by kirk volker, he holds up the phone and he's not going to hesitate to hold up the phone when he needs to. >> that also alienates the u.s. attorneys in the southern district. there's some poetic justice here. if you're a prosecutor, the thing you hate is someone who used to head your office who's violating public law every day in front of everyone. it's like, i'm going to take that guy down. so that -- i assume, of course, these two guys, they are, you know, mutt and joe, people will care if they point the finger at giuliani and if giuliani is indicted, well, then, the only person he can give up is the

president of the united states. >> just to add one more thing on this, i find it fascinating, i was talking to tim stewart, one of the great reporters of our age pointed out something to me which was that when trump was talking to zelensky, he says talk to rudy or talk to barr and that is a very trump thing to do. he's got these two egoed lawyers who are competing for his affection, he's throwing them together like a pair of -- >> which they are, they are -- >> structurally considered rivals and trump loves to throw them together in a sock and see who comes out intact. that kind of thing which is all fun and games when you're setting off your -- when you start to get in a situation like this and two lawyers like that with the degree and power and material information about the

president that those two guys have, you're opening yourself up to certain kinds of dangerous and vulnerability if you're donald trump. and trump loves to do that, to watch there be chaos, but it could come back to hurt you later on. >> after the break, only mike pompeo and bill barr could make jeff sessions look like lincoln's team of rivals. we'll turn to the collapse of confidence in pompeo at the state department. that's next. t. ♪ to bare my skin ♪ yeah that's all me. ♪ nothing and me go hand in hand ♪ ♪ nothing on my skin ♪ that's my new plan. ♪ nothing is everything. keep your skin clearer with skyrizi. 3 out of 4 people achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months. of those, nearly 9 out of 10 sustained it through 1 year. and skyrizi is 4 doses a year, after 2 starter doses. ♪ i see nothing in a different way ♪ ♪ and it's my moment so i just gotta say ♪ ♪ nothing is everything

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when the president will say, here's what i want to do, and here's how i want to do it, and i'd have to say to him, mr. president, i understand what you want to do, but you can't do it that way. it violates the law, it violates a treaty. he got really frustrated. i think he grew tired of me being the guy every day that told him you can't do that. >> that was donald trump's last secretary of state, late last year opining about what drove

him and the president apart. the president wanted to break laws and he told him he couldn't. and rex tillerson did something that mike pompeo is unwilling to do, he said and now his capitulation to donald trump over the interest of state department employees he oversees is the subject of new reporting in the "new york times." mr. pompeo is facing a revolt in the state department. confidence in his leadership has plummeted and letting the president's personal agenda affect foreign policy. he's done more to damage the 75,000 person agency than even his predecessor rex tillerson viled by employees. the table is back. >> tillerson now does look a little better by comparison, but the analogy i would make is that, what separates the united states from autocratic countries

is our institutions. we have institutions that we try to protect. tillerson tried to protect the state department as much as he didn't hire people, when he quarreled with trump and when he was pushed out, it was because he was protecting the equities of the state department. pompeo, no. pompeo is, i am like your lackey. i've got the 75,000 person agency under me. i'm going to do your bidding and that's just soul destroying and bad for the republic. >> it's bad for his brand too. i'm not sure go run for the senate. trump is genius at turning all of his warts and crimes into assets. that does not translate or transfer to someone like mike pompeo. >> the editorial page in kansas is writing mike pompeo, why are you spending so much time in kansas, you have a job. it's really embarrassing that our country's highest diplomat is not focused on any number of crises going on around the world

and is instead wanting to join the senate. >> but think about he was on the erdogan call, john. he sat on the call where donald trump for whatever reason green lit erdogan's military operation in northern syria, and he was on the call at the center of impeachment with zelensky. >> yes, yes, yes. and he is in some respects worse than tillerson, many respects probably, the high level thing of you've taken the united states state department and turned it into a functional personal political play thing. >> of fox news. >> you've become the instrument of donald trump trying to use the state department to achieve political objectives around the world. here's the thing that bothers me about pompeo more than anything. just reading that yovanovitch transcript yesterday, this woman who was a lifetime -- a public servant, a diplomat, the u.s. ambassador to ukraine is hearing the president talking like a crime boss to the president of ukraine. she's nervous. she's -- in this transcript

she's saying i felt scared for her safety because the president of the united states was attacking her while she was representing ukraine. she's getting phone calls from people in the state department saying you've got to get on the next plane out because you're in danger. these are like spy movie tropes, right? that woman was terrified because of the behavior of the president of the united states. and where was mike pompeo? where was the secretary of state trying to protect her? trying to help her? trying to be on her side while the president of the united states was doing things that were making her fear apparently for her life or her safety. >> she still does. >> she still does and where is the secretary of state? >> look, this is primal politics. if you want to run for office and you want any woman to vote for you, you have to be someone who protects men and women equally in your workforce and you have to be a strong leader. he looks like a total wimp. he looks like a total coward for not defending men and women in

his workforce who felt threatened. and he looks more pathetic than the president's children. >> exactly. >> more subservient. >> thus the uproar and revolt among diplomats. pompeo came in with a measure of good will because of the way tillerson had managed or not managed the state department. pompeo started making hires, he talked a really good game about staff development and sort of, you know, renewing the state department bureaucracy. >> we just didn't know that meant getting the ukrainians to investigate the bidens. >> and so i think because there was that optimism at first among the diplomats that things would at least get close to back to normal, i think the fall is harder than for pompeo because of this betrayal, which is the only way you can see it. the position that diplomats are in, i mean they are representing our country in some really tough

places where they are in danger, and they're responsible for the people in the embassies within their charge and they take that very seriously. you know, they are representing the country and really do believe in what they're doing. this is just demoralizing. >> and it's more recent than when he replaced tillerson. when he prevailed over the boug bolton/pompeo tussel, there was a sense the right one won. >> we knew when he was running the cia and he was one of those who stood up and said, yes, the intelligence community has assessed that russia interfered with the 2016 election. >> now he's out with a flashlight looking for the server in ukraine. >> that's the most incredible thing. one of the great stories is what happened to rudy giuliani, from

america's mayor to whatever he is now. just in three years mike pompeo being the guy who stood up and said russia interfered in the election to being the guy with the miner hat with the light on. >> i can picture mike pompeo getting off the plane, let's go find it, lev. >> everything trump touches, die. >> and he wasn't able to turn it into a effective oppo shop in transforming american diplomacy. >> the miner's hat really got me. >> we are going to sneak in our last break. we'll be right back. last break we'll be right back. and save in more ways than one. for small prices, you can build big dreams, spend less,

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rick, it seems that what's so plain and clear to anyone that reads the transcript isn't plain and clear at all to donald trump or his allies. i mean what is the prospect for sort of the truth of these transcripts, of individuals who work for donald trump who are largely loyal to donald trump who were not the whistle-blower? none of these people that have testified are the whistle-blower. what is the prospect for any of the facts getting through to the president's side or his supporters? >> i don't know. i mean the transcripts -- we were looking at them today. they're incredibly long and detailed. but i do think what they do is buttress this idea that he was extorting a foreign leader to do his bidding to blackmail a political opponent. that is absolutely clear. one of the things that we've seen in the last few weeks is nothing happens on its own in government. there's a tremendous amount of scaffolding around it. what we're seeing is the scaffolding but the scaffolding protects that central argument that he was blackmailing a foreign leader to help basically blackmail joe biden. >> and those are the facts. we'll see if they get through.

my thanks to john, elise, eugene, rick. his new book "information wars" is of the moment and a must-read. most of all thanks to you for watching. that does it for our hour. "mtp daily" with chuck todd starts right now. welcome to tuesday. it is "meet the press daily." do you have a transcript you want to change? i'm chuck todd here in washington where a key witness just changed his testimony in the house impeachment inquiry, now describing both a quid pro quo and his part in it. neither of which he acknowledged the first time he was questioned about it. that person is gordon sondland. he's the u.s. ambassador to the european union and one of the president's so-called three amigos who was unofficially overseeing ukraine policy for the president. he now remembers telling a top aide to ukraine's president that military aid would not be