It is clear that MSNBC and Democrats, then again who can really tell the difference, want to impeach President Trump for something. They may not know exactly what they want to impeach him for, but a Wednesday MSNBC Live panel was sure that impeaching Trump is how to save democracy.
Host Katy Tur asked Third Way's National Security director Mieke Eoyang, "I'm curious, do they feel like they have lightning in a bottle right now and that they have quickly on this?" Eoyang, a former Ted Kennedy advisor, a fact that was not disclosed to viewers, answered Tur's question by declaring that there is indeed urgency and that during her time on the House Intel Committee staff, "we never received a single complaint that would have implicated the behavior of the President of the United States especially in the conduct of foreign affairs with a country that is so literally under the gun from the Russians."
Whether Ukraine should receive lethal aid is a policy question and one that previously Democrats said no to, but with their newfound hawkishness, Tur interrupted to ask, "Why do they think this is a threat to national security?" Eoyang then, like Barney Frank, accused Trump of sacrificing Ukrainian lives to advance his own political agenda and that House Democrats are saving democracy with this impeachment inquiry:
I think what you're seeing here is that the president is taking leverage in the foreign policy space and using it to his own political ends. And if the president is permitted to do this, if he's permitted to put the lives of the Ukrainians on the line, permitted to allow Russia to go unchecked in its efforts to come into Ukraine and all in the service of his political ambitions, then we've lost the sense of who we are as a nation and we really are about one man and that's the whole founding of this country was to say we are not about one man. We were not about the king. We are about all of us. We are democracy. I think that this is -- goes to the very heart of who we are as a nation.
Tur, staying on the national security theme, turned to Michael Fuchs of the Center for American Progress, asking him to explain to the ill-informed why this is indeed a serious national security matter, despite the fact that the Ukrainians weren't even aware that the aid was being held up at the time of the supposedly damning phone call, "can you jump in on that, the national security issue? ‘Cause some out there might question why is this phone call with Ukraine something that affects national security. They might roll their eyes on that. In fact, I know one person who e-mails me quite often who says -- who laughs at the idea that this is a national security issue."
Fuchs baselessly claimed that this fits a pattern of Trump putting his personal interests above national security and that the transcript "stated in black and white that the president was putting on the line an essential U.S. national security interest in order to get help from a foreign power with his own political opponents and trying to smear them." As evidence that the letter wasn't black and white as alleged, Fuchs then shifted to the latest accusation to be thrown at the wall in hope that it sticks:
also what he and Attorney General Bill Barr may have been doing in trying to get allies from Australia to the United Kingdom, to Italy and potentially others in trying to smear the origins of the Mueller investigation. So he is clearly using the apparatus, the power of the U.S. Government for his own personal, political gain.
Apparently it is okay to investigate Trump for potential wrongdoing, but any investigation into the potential wrongdoing by his critics is beyond the pale.
With that Tur interrupted to go to Trump's live press conference with the President of Finland.
Here is a transcript for the October 2 show:
MSNBC
MSNBC Live with Katy Tur
2:22 PM
KATY TUR: I'm curious, do they feel like they have lightning in a bottle right now and that they have quickly on this?
MIEKE EOYANG: I think that they feel an urgency on the issue. Right, this is a very different kind of allegation than the committee's used to getting. In all my time on the committee, we never received a single complaint that would have implicated the behavior of the President of the United States especially in the conduct of foreign affairs with a country that is so literally under the gun from the Russians. So, I think that they see this issue as a very different kind of issue than the issues we’ve seen with the president before. So I think that they recognize that this is something they have to pursue and Schiff knows how to do that.TUR: Why do they think this is a threat to national security?
EOYANG: I think what you're seeing here is that the president is taking leverage in the foreign policy space and using it to his own political ends. And if the president is permitted to do this, if he's permitted to put the lives of the Ukrainians on the line, permitted to allow Russia to go unchecked in its efforts to come into Ukraine and all in the service of his political ambitions, then we've lost the sense of who we are as a nation and we really are about one man and that's the whole founding of this country was to say we are not about one man. We were not about the king. We are about all of us. We are democracy. I think that this is -- goes to the very heart of who we are as a nation.
TUR: Michael Fuchs, can you jump in on that, the national security issue? ‘Cause some out there might question why is this phone call with Ukraine something that affects national security. They might roll their eyes on that. In fact, I know one person who e-mails me quite often who says -- who laughs at the idea that this is a national security issue.
MICHAEL FUCHS: Yeah, absolutely. I think Mieke is exactly right. Look, this goes to the heart of what national security is all about for two-plus years we have been watching President Trump act in a number of ways that are hurtful to American national security, his conflicts of interests with his private companies and business and potentially creating problems, but what we saw in that transcript that the White House released there was all of it stated in black and white that the president was putting on the line an essential U.S. national security interest in order to get help from a foreign power with his own political opponents and trying to smear them. And let's remember also, just in the last week plus or so, more has come out about this now as well, not just about him using his leverage with Ukraine for his own personal gain, but also what he and Attorney General Bill Barr may have been doing in trying to get allies from Australia to the United Kingdom, to Italy and potentially others in trying to smear the origins of the Mueller investigation. So he is clearly using the apparatus, the power of the U.S. Government for his own personal, political gain. The question I have now is especially as we learned about all of these presidential call transcripts that may be severely restricted or hidden by the White House, what else is out there? What other conversations is the President of the United States having or has had over the last two years where he might have done something similar?
