 We're back. We're live. We're here on Wednesday morning. We're so happy to be here to try to connect the dots on Donald Trump. It's Trump week. We have to have a theme song. That's Tim Apichella, Cynthia Sinclair. Good morning. Let's do Trump week. Yeah. And I asked you guys before, what does ellipsis mean, okay, in Ukrainian, Ukrainian language? I think you have to tell everybody. It means obstruction, right? Struction of justice. Struction of justice. Struction of justice. And he has mixed loyalties, this guy, Venman. What do you think about that? Mixed loyalties. They said it on Fox News a number of times. Now a lot of the Republican, you know, Congress repeated it. Yeah. Let me just quote Republican Senator Liz Cheney from Wyoming, shameful. It was shameful. Shameful is right. Absolutely. She had a bunch of Republicans standing around her and she said that. But you know, they persist in trying to pull the rug out from under the sky, who was a purple heart and all that. Oh, all the medals you can see on his chest as he goes in. And then he had the audacity to try to attack him. How dare they? Because he is an immigrant. He came when he was, what, two years old? All immigrants are bad, you know? Two years old, he came with his family. Three. Was he three? Yeah. Okay. And in that three years, he somehow divided the loyalty when he was two. Right. Just because he's from Ukraine. Yeah. Right. Well, go ahead. What does it surprise anyone if you had John McCain thrown under the bus? Because I don't like people that get captured. Does it surprise anyone when the cons were being assaulted and their son was killed in action? Yeah. I mean, so why should we be surprised now that Donald Trump and his acolytes have taken issue with this particular witness? Yeah. It's all of the Republicans that are jumping on that bandwagon that just makes them so angry. Yeah, a lot. Not all, but a lot. Yes. Too many. Too many. Yeah. Well, how was the case going? You know, the Republicans have decided they were going to attack the process, right? And they've been mercilessly attacking the process without ever getting to the content. Right. But the content, when you shake it and bake it, was pretty good for impeachment. Absolutely. The impeachment looks better all the time. Yes, it does. I'm calling this show the Noose Titan. How good is it? Well, if you can't attack the law, the law is not going to work for you, then you do attack the process. Right now, they're putting, you know, the process together, so they won't be able to attack the process much longer. So then what do you do? If you can't attack the law, you can't attack the process, you attack the witnesses. Well, sooner or later, that's not going to work. So then what do you do? You just throw up your hands and wiggle them around as fast as you can, because that's all they got left. That's all they got left. That's right. What about the content for a moment? Putting aside these arguments, this is the only argument about the process, we'll get to it. But what about what we know in terms of the substantive evidence? How does it look? Who's saying what and how credible are they? Well, it looks like they've all corroborated the whistleblower, right? And that's the thing, too. The whistleblower being attacked the way he is. And even just with the Vindman deposition, all of the Republicans reportedly, anyway, all they cared about doing was trying to get the name of the whistleblower. They didn't ask them substantive questions. All they did was try to get the name of the whistleblower so that they can discredit the whistleblower and that they can out him, which makes him how to vet or her, whoever it is, at very great risk to their own life, their own futures, everything. What about the witnesses so far that we know of? I mean, in putting all this process aside for just a moment, I think it's phony the process issues. Oh, yeah, they are. What do we got in terms of evidence? Well, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman is a crucial witness because you remember when the whistleblower first came out. The first thing that Donald Trump said is, well, he has second-hand knowledge. That's the first thing. Well, in this case, Vindman is first-hand knowledge. Right. So that's critical. Number two is, he's also pointing out that the transcript that was issued by the White House isn't necessarily the actual reality of what was said on that phone call, and he's made some points about the ellipsis and the fact that there would have been a little bit more there that's not in the transcript. So where is the real transcript? Where is the real transcript? Even the summary transcript went down into a vault on a very irregular basis. I mean, is that the missing tape? It is, I think. It's 18 minutes and all that. That's the thing about it is that we've only got about six minutes worth of actual dialogue when, in reality, the whole thing lasted, what was it, 18 minutes. We should have been asking at the outset, insisting at the outset, where is the tape? Where is the full transcript? Pull it out of that. And the funny thing is when you put these ellipses in, they didn't say anything what the ellipses meant. Right. They didn't say, you know, it's just, maybe you could have assumed that it was inaudible or there was a gap in the speaking, but you would not assume that they removed things and that it was, at the end, only a summary with the substance removed. It doesn't matter how important that was or how it fits, you know, in the larger context, but what matters is they changed it. They had a better one and they gave us a worse one and we still don't have the better one. You have direct oppositional testimony between Vinland and Sondland. Sondland said there was no mention of this on the phone call. Okay, so now we have direct, we have a direct conflict. It'll be interesting to see if Sondland is brought back in to clarify and or see if he created burgery of any type. He is coming back in. Well, there you go. You'll have a chance. He is because he's saying that he has to correct some of his testimony. I'm sure that his lawyers are saying, listen, you've got five other people coming in that directly go against what you've said, so you need to switch it up and you need to come back in. Right after the Times reported that the house was considering perjury charges against him. So now he's going back in to change it. He's been deflecting the perjury charges. Okay, that'll be really important to have that testimony corrected because after that I think it's time to go. I mean, again, I said last week and the week before, how far down the rabbit hole do you need to go? The other interesting thing about Venman is that Venman is active duty military and he was there in the Security Council and all that national security. And undoubtedly instructed not to testify. Okay, and in he walks, you know, regardless of any instructions from Trump. And that's a message to all the others who have similar instructions who refuse to walk, including that guy, Cupperman, who filed a lawsuit the day before Friday, before the Monday, asking a judge for some kind of determination as to whether he was obligated to testify. And of course that sort of throws it into court, kicks it into court. Who knows when we're going to get an answer on that? Sooner the better and as sooner actually I think is that he's not in any privilege. He should be ordered to testify. He shouldn't testify. But what this tells us with Venman is that, yes, you can go down there and testify. I'm sure the administration is going, uh-oh, our wall is cracking. Yes. Our phalon is breaking apart. Yeah. Well, what is it? The Noose Titans. And it does. Well, they're bringing up now stuff about the Mueller report also. And I don't see why not. And if you look at it, he's going about the same kind of obstruction in this case that he did in the Mueller case. And so I hope they don't leave that out. And I hope that they make it at least one of the articles of impeachment. Yeah. Because they're worried. They're going back and forth, talking about how we want to keep it simple. We want to just keep it Ukraine. People can't understand the Mueller stuff. And I think they could if they read it. But I hope they'll bring it in and they won't leave it out. I think one thing is worth noting is that back in the, I guess it was the fifties with McCarthy, the McCarthy hearings about how many communists in the State Department, how many communists in the Department of the Army and all this. He was chasing communists, obviously, trying to make a name for himself. Right. And ultimately, and he was at war, if you will, with the State Department and at war with the Army. Does that sound familiar right now? And finally, and he had the help of Roy Cohn, who was his advisor, his lawyer, I guess. And Cohn was, by the way, very friendly with Donald Trump back in the day. Funny thing. Before Cohn died. But what I want to just mention is that McCarthy went down. He was disgraced. He was disgraced. He was rejected by both parties on both sides. Communists and not communists. Everybody, you know, he was debunked and finished. And he goes down in the history books as a real jerk. And hopefully Barg will go down. Every high school talked about McCarthyism. Yeah, they did. I don't know a history book in the United States back in the 60s and 70s that didn't talk about McCarthyism. A lesson to be learned. Yeah. Apparently he hadn't been printing that in the 80s and 90s. Well, history repeats itself. Yes, it does. Only worse. Much worse this time. That's deja vu all over again. That's what it is. I just want to say one thing. It's interesting because Donald Trump did take to Twitter about Venman. Colonel Venman. And this one is a particular funny quote because it might be true. He said, was this the same call that I was? Can't be possible. Please ask him to read the transcript of the call. Witch hunt. Well, maybe it was a different phone call. Maybe it's the real one. And Donald Trump, is this going off the transcript that has been contrived? Right. I think you're probably right. Because he believes his own lies. He lies into all of his own lies. He has to. Which is why he's compelling. That's why he's so good at it. It's why he's compelling. That's why people get sucked in is because he's very good at lying. Okay, so one of the things that the press was saying right after this kind of thing was coming up, these witnesses were coming up. And it was clear that Trump had acquitted pro quo. And Trump was trying to get this head of state to help him out and return for the release of funds that Congress had already appropriated, which are critical to Ukraine. So the press said many times, we haven't seen a strategy from the White House. The White House doesn't seem to have any strategy. And indeed Trump was off on this tangent, that tangent. And he was scattered all over the place. Okay, so now it's about two weeks later. Do we see a strategy? What is the strategy? And is the strategy effective? And do the people in the red states, the base, do you think they accept the strategy? What is the strategy, Tim? It's the strategy of lying and going, oh, that wasn't good enough. I now need to go back and fix it. Another quote about Vindman. Trump said, I never heard of him. Well, don't you think before he made definitive statements about the transcript that he would have figured out who else was on the phone call? I mean, wouldn't anyone just say, well, gosh darn it, who else was on the call? Well, apparently he doesn't do that. So now that Vindman is telling it like it is on what transpired on the phone call, Trump's now going back going, I never heard of him. He's a never-trumper. So there is no strategy. Well, I actually think there is. And I think it's a manipulative set people up kind of strategy. So it seems like it's chaos and he doesn't really have any kind of plan. But you see so much projection. He's always accusing other people of the things that he is doing. So you can really kind of gauge what he's doing by what he's accusing other people of. And so in that sense, in the same sense that a narcissist will set up his significant other to be controlled, that's kind of, I see very many similarities between the way my first husband was and the way Trump is. I'm serious. That abuse, no, no, but I'm talking about the abusive, narcissistic, control-free kind of way of thinking. Yes, I think it is. Is it working in the South? Is it working with the base? It is. Is it working in the red states? Of course it's working. It is. I was down there and absolutely it's working. Yes, it's working. Working well. Watch Fox News for a few minutes and you will see it. So how is this going to affect his electability? If we stop right now, how does it affect his electability? Well, I don't think that matters because he's going to cheat. And that's what I always say. It doesn't matter how many people vote for him or don't vote for him because he's going to cheat. Is he tarnished? Is he blemished? He was tarnished the day he came down the escalator two years ago. Yeah, he was already tarnished. He was already tarnished. Let's talk about it. There's an accepted amount of tarnish. Let's talk about Nancy. I mean, he really had been able to hold on to the Republicans in Congress, although certainly there are cracks with, for example, Cheney. That was certainly a debauchery. But what about, you know, what about the Nancy Pelosi's move on establishing this resolution that will be voted on tomorrow, Thursday? How good is that? How smart is that? How does that address the problems, the defense, if you will, that Trump and his friends have raised? Will it work? Well, you remove the check mark. You remove their basis of protest. And maybe it's something that she didn't have to do by statute, but she's doing it. And then you're going to follow down the cookbook recipe for what's involved with the steps of impeachment. And this one didn't have to happen, but it's going to happen. Well, I think she's smart to do it because they've got a little bit of a base of information already under wraps, basically, that can now be released to the public throughout this, through this resolution. And it also sets some rules and it keeps it in the house. And I think that's really important because, you know, the minute it gets to the Senate, it's going to die, you know, in Mitch McConnell or, I should say, Moscow, Mitch's, you know, great wasteland of bills. And that's what will happen with this also. So they need to get as much information out to the public as they possibly can before it goes up to the Senate. What's interesting is they don't have to do this, as Tim said. They don't have to do this. They don't have to. This is way beyond, it hasn't happened before. The fact is they could have the whole thing in secret if they want. Right. And then, you know, present it later. But they have been attacked for a secret proceeding. And those 24 Republicans showed up, some of whom were actually on the committee. Yeah, I could have been inside. No, I know. Disceptive. It's ridiculous. So she says, well, okay, what's good enough for the goose? You want openness? I'm not obligated to give you openness. The Congress doesn't have any duty to give you openness. It's not provided in the law. Or in the precedent, what we're going to give you openness? Bon appetit. You know, you can have what you wanted and see if you like it that way. All right. Well, so I had lunch with a good friend of mine yesterday. And I told him, I thought it was really smart for her to do this. Because it's, you know, what's good enough for the goose and the gander and all that. And this is the way you respond to these incessant attacks of secrecy. And he said, don't be so optimistic about this, Jay. This was lunch yesterday, 24 hours ago. And he said, what's going to happen is the Republicans are going to attack the resolution. They're going to say the resolution is unfair. Even though the resolution answers and gives them what they were asking for before. And damn, he was right, wasn't he? As soon as it hit the deck, they were attacking the resolution. Well, the rules within the resolution is the thing. Because they want to be able to question the witnesses themselves. But one of the rules now has been put in there, that they will be questioned by staffers. So that instead of a, you know, a congressman sitting there for five minutes, giving you a bunch of smoke and nonsense, and then finally ask a question, you won't be able to do that. 90 minutes. Yeah, there will be some kind of continuity to the questioning that goes on. On its face, it's fair. Oh, way more fair. What the Republicans have been saying for the past 24 hours is, it's not enough. It's not soon enough. It's not enough. And you should have given us this kind of transparency from day one. The obligation to do that. Right. You get to the counterpoint. You stick to your points. It's not been done before. We're doing something that you've asked for. So be happy. No, just kidding. Well, no, but you've got to stay to your talking points. Right. Yeah. Moving out to the larger context on this, though. As Cynthia said, it's not likely that the Senate will have a trial. Yes, but it won't be a mock trial. It's not going to be a mock trial. It'll be phony. Right. And they won't convict. And we'll have to try to figure out, as we go following on Trump week, what that all means to the electorate and the country and the way the country looks. You know, the optics of it are the ultimate effect of it. But what's interesting about Nancy's maneuver, and think about this, she's opening it up just the way they want for a public spectacular. We are now going to have a trial. The Constitution says the trial is in the Senate. Nancy is shifting it to the House. We're going to have a spectacular trial. There's going to be 80 million people watching every day, maybe 100 million people. And we're going to see this whole thing play out. And if he is convicted, which I think he will be in the House, that's going to lay a big, a big shadow on the Senate. So the House convicts, essentially. I mean, it's, you know, by virtue of this procedure where the witnesses and the examination, Trump will not testify. I know he will have the opportunity. He won't testify. Now we get to the Senate. And for reasons they cannot articulate, they acquit him. Well, wait a minute. Didn't the House just have a trial and convict him? You know, most people don't know the distinction between the impeachment inquiry in the House and the trial in the Senate. And they're going to say, how come it is that the Senate doesn't agree with the House after the House had this big differential? Well, it's all about putting somebody on record. That's why I think they're actually going to have the formality of a vote on the process. Because after this, after the vote, it goes to the committee, the judicial committee. Then they take their votes. And if it's affirmative, then from there it goes to the floor of the House. But let's get, you know, Nancy's no slouch. Let's get the Republicans in the House of Representatives on record with their vote. Because that will tie right into the vote record of the Senate. Yeah, they should be worried. The Republicans should be worried about what the country feels, including the base. How they perceive all of this. And when all the evidence comes out and, you know, they have these open hearings, transparency, cross-examination, what have you, argument, debate, remember? That's part of the resolution. Oh boy. So, but I want to talk about another aspect of Trump's defense, if you will. First thing he does is over the weekend he makes an announcement that something big going to happen 24 hours from now. I think he announced it on Sunday morning, was it? Yeah, Sunday morning. Whole country is on tenterhooks. And they killed back daddy. Oh, they? Okay. All right. Okay. But can we analyze that for a minute? Is that, that arguably helps him? It shows you, yes, he's doing business here. He's doing what presidents should do. But I think, you know, I think it's clear that it's part of his defense. It just happened to happen now. Right. And so he's using it. But there's a lot of things that are phony baloney about. Yes. What he did and how he presented it. Go ahead. Oh yeah. Well, you just said it yourself. This should have helped him. Immensely. By the time he put all his spin and baloney and, you know, rugged day, she has, you know, I don't even know if it's true or not. Because now he's put so many lies into this and hyperbole into the story. It is true. But did he have to do that? Of course not. But is that Donald Trump? Of course it is. Yeah. If he would have just been factual and just stated the facts and got off the podium, this would have led to a very, very popular away for him. But it didn't. And he lied. And all of a sudden, didn't he? He boxed it up. He lied saying it was all Americans that did it. And it wasn't. I mean, the inside man was through the Kurds. And so he barely gave the Kurds credit. And the first time he didn't, he got some backlash about it. So he came back out and said something about them. But it was all about, you know, look what I did. I did this. He didn't do it. He didn't really have anything to do with it. Except to say, okay, go ahead and do it. He's already in place. It is already in place. It was the army. And in fact, if anything, he messed it up. He messed it up. Yes, if anything. He messed it up by getting out of Syria that quick. Yes. He became much more dangerous. Much more dangerous. He became way more dangerous for everybody involved. Yeah. And yeah. So I'd like to add one other thing. The Kurds, you know, have been our friends. Yes. The information and the assistance we got from the Kurds in the killing of al-Baghdadi was after Trump had turned his back on them. Right. And they still did it. So, you know, you really have a mixed bag there. One is, are they so much our friends that even after we dump on them, turn our backs on them, they're still willing to help because they were there. They were there. Is that something or what? Is that something or what? I don't think it's that they're friends. I think they just were committed and so they followed through when we didn't. They love America. Those Kurds love America and what America stood for and stands for. They do. Still? Yes. I mean, I've seen pictures of them getting, you know, having rotten fruit thrown out of them. Well, yeah, but you have to understand the context behind that. Right. There's a lot of people getting down with Kurds and some of the PPK during dinner and you'd see they love this country and they love for everything it stands for, freedom and, you know, the American and not electing dictators and presidents. There's a lot of Christians involved in that culture too. That's not just, you know, Muslims, there's a, or Islam, there's a lot of there's a lot of Christians. You talk about loyalty. So one possibility, one quirk of this dilemma is that even after he turned his back on them, they still helped us. Yeah, right. Which means, you know, they don't take him seriously. I mean, it's a very serious matter but they don't take him seriously and they love for the country, their alignment with the U.S. is strong, so strong that they know he's a short-term. The other possibility and maybe both possibilities took place is that Trump paid him off because that's what he does. So you guys, we need your help. How about a million bills to each of you? I'm making this up but it just strikes me as a logical possibility to get them back in because he knew how important it was to go on this mission and he knew how dangerous it was and how much we needed them especially because he'd blown the timeline by his maneuver the week before. So I mean, that's one major thing that he that he made it harder for us. And of course, as you mentioned, using words like what did he say? He was he was afraid, he was whimpering, whimpering, screaming, crying the whole time, yeah. We got him like a dog. We got him like a dog. We got him like a dog. Something like that. The Department of Defense said we have no information about that with you. We're really saying who all the world is that Trump made it up. What he talked about. Yeah. First off, these guys are trained to blow themselves up. Yeah. There's not a lot of whimpering, nibbling, whining going on. They know what button to blow themselves up. That's all there is to it. I still wonder if he did. I mean, they said they found DNA. Because you don't believe anything Trump says. That's right. Yeah. Okay. What else we got here in the waiting moments? Katie Hill going down representative from California has been accused. Well, first, her ex-husband leaked some pornographic photos of her. And so they let them out to the public. And then if they found out that she was having an affair or a relationship with one of her staffers, so she was told she needed to step down. The interesting part about all this just came out today. George Papadopoulos is campaigning for her seat. Well, he said that this seat was going to be open days before the pornographic photos came out before the information about the staffer came out before any of the information about her leaving or needing to leave came out. George Papadopoulos is tweeting about it. So what does this suggest? And now he's well, it suggests that somehow there was some sort of something behind all of it and somebody knew about it. And he's a Republican. Hmm. So, and he's got a big mouth. So I think he knew and he tweeted when he shouldn't have. Was she attacking Trump? Yo, yes. She's very much against it. So this is Trump's many ways. I've kind of heard in the legislature. Do you have rid of anybody that he can in the Democrats so the Republicans can take back the house? Even pornographic pictures. Even pornographic pictures. Yes, absolutely. And that's what it says to me. How low we have gone, how low we are slung now. I mean, it's still a possibility that he will win this election. There's still a possibility. Yes. It was a great possibility. Is he a cheat? So what is, what is the, okay, that's a statement I was going to ask. What's he going to do now? He's got more witnesses coming. Nancy is inexorable. She, and what's his name? Chef. Chef. They're going to do a real yeoman's job on conducting the rest of this investigation. They might even do it in a timely way, you know, to beat the holidays. And we're going to have a real, we're going to have a real shindig here against Trump. What is Trump going to do? Remember the 25th Amendment. And remember the fact that he's a narcissist. And remember the fact that, you know, he's got very strange psychiatric problems. What is he going to do now? What can we expect next week? You can expect Donald Trump going in for medical care because he's going to have a lot of blisters on his thumbs tweeting all his rage as this stuff comes more out. And he'll be on, he'll be on a little Twitter factory. I think he's going to be more dangerous because always when you get a narcissist back in the corner like that, they become more dangerous. So every day that everything mounts and the news tightens, every day that that news tightens, he becomes more dangerous. He may say something he'll regret because he doesn't have his attorneys with him all the time. And you know, the attorneys have very little influence over what he says and what he tweets. So that's a good point that when he gets back to the corner, he starts saying all sorts of outrageous things. And some of them have a kernel of truth to it. And you don't know what those kernels are until he utters them out. But look for something that he said that he didn't mean to say. Yeah. Well, I think going forward, we can expect more of the same. But I think we should never forget that he's got one hand over here trying to set the agenda in the press and among the people. Trying to be, you know, the first 20, 30 articles in every newspaper in the country, the world. Trying to be on the news for, you know, six, eight, 10 hours a night. He's he's our entertainment already. It's not just me at home watching all the news. I think all of America is at home watching all the news. He's, you know, commanding the agenda in a funny way. That's an important part about what Nancy did. She is now in charge of at least part of the agenda. But what I want to say and I think we should continue to watch is while all this goes on, all these shenanigans lying in the deception and the bizarre conduct and the outrageous moves and the attacks on government itself on the State Department, on the Army, on everybody else, he's got the other hand behind his back that he doesn't tell us about. And the press has to work very hard to find out about. And he's dismantling so much of the apparatus that has existed to protect us, protect the country, do the right thing. That is still happening. And I think we always have to watch that with him. And it's going to be very hard to correct it later. In the 60 minutes interview Biden made, he said something really profound and we should leave it here. He said, he said, if Trump is thrown out of office now or at the election in 2020, there'll be a tremendous amount of damage that we have to fix. But we can fix it. If he succeeds to another term, very questionable or whether we can fix it, he will have, for all practical purposes, changed the country in a bad way forever. And we won't have an easy opportunity to fix it. And I think you have to agree with that. I do agree. That was very wise, regardless of his position as a candidate. True. I agree. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you. Nice to be back. Happy to be back with you guys. We have these discussions. All right. See you next week. Yeah. Read the paper.