On today's show, Glenn and Sarah take a look at what Jeffrey Sondland said in front of the House Intelligence Committee, and how the media is going to spin it for President Trump. They also discuss why the media won't be talking about it at all.
00:00:00.000Hey, welcome to the podcast. Today is really the hearings on the Hill, and we look at what Sondland said in real time, and the way the media is going to spin this, this is going to be a victory lap for them, and we explain why.
00:00:20.440Now, on cross-examination, things also came out in the president's favor, but will the media discuss that at all? All that and more on today's podcast.
00:00:37.660You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:00:41.700All right, the ambassador who is at the center of the inquiry has just taken a seat in Capitol Hill in front of the impeachment hearing and the intel committee, and they're about to ask him some questions.
00:01:01.300Schiff has just sat down, and he's about to open those big, huge bug eyes. Can you imagine if he and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ever had a child?
00:01:38.960This is a big day. We've had a lot of, I don't know, a lot of things that you kind of would expect.
00:01:48.100Sondland is the witness. This is the playoff game. Is it the Super Bowl? Maybe it's the Super Bowl. It's right there.
00:01:56.360It's not the Super Bowl. It is the playoffs.
00:01:57.800It's a high-stakes game. And here's the thing. Sondland is the, one of the big complaints that Republicans have is you keep giving us hearsay evidence.
00:02:07.560None of these people have even talked to the president. Well, Sondland has talked to the president.
00:02:11.300All the things that have come out that have been reported as these huge bombshell negatives for the president have all been through Sondland because Sondland was the guy that talked to the president.
00:02:21.480He's the guy who was on the phone at this restaurant and all the people around apparently overheard it.
00:02:27.560He's the guy that reportedly after the conversation said, you know, Trump doesn't care about Ukraine.
00:02:33.480All he cares about is his own personal benefit with politics. So now Sondland has not said he's said any of those things.
00:02:41.380He has revised his testimony a couple of times to move it more towards the evidence Democrats have presented.
00:02:49.860So he came out and said, he's looking for his survival, I think one way or another.
00:02:55.160Well, he's a guy who's not a political kind of guy and he's looking for his survival.
00:02:59.200And if he was lying, he realized, oh crap, I'm in deep trouble.
00:03:03.020Yeah. And they keep bringing up this, you know, the media keeps bringing up the same point, which is every time they bring one of these people up, this is a public servant.
00:03:09.720This man has been worked for Republicans and Democrats. He's been in the State Department for 912 years.
00:03:14.840And they bring this up as positive. Yeah, that's right.
00:03:18.720Sondland is not that guy. Sondland was a was not a huge Trump fan initially, but came around to him in a big way and wound up donating over a million dollars to his inauguration campaign.
00:03:29.920I mean, mega donor, as is the case with every administration, the mega donors wind up getting ambassadorships.
00:03:35.540And so he's the the guy going to the EU.
00:03:37.840I want to take Adam Schiff, because he's talking about the 2016 election in Ukraine, that it was a discredited conspiracy theory, that there was anything going on.
00:03:49.260And who the president feared the most was Joe Biden.
00:03:53.840And Sondland's about to say that that's all true.
00:03:56.420In exchange for politically motivated investigations that Trump believed would help his reelection campaign.
00:04:04.040The first investigation was of a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election.
00:04:14.520No, Adam, they can both be responsible.
00:04:16.220The second investigation that Trump demanded into was into a political rival that he apparently feared most, Joe Biden.
00:04:25.420Trump sought to weaken Biden and to refute the fact that his own election campaign in 2016 had been helped by a Russian hacking and dumping operation and Russian social media campaign directed by Vladimir Putin to help Trump.
00:04:38.580Trump's scheme undermined military and diplomatic support deal with Adam Schiff's pacing.
00:04:45.700It's really deliberate, slow and weird.
00:04:48.240And then when he gets questions from other Republicans on the committee, he just stares straight forward like he's on some weird drug.
00:04:55.460Right. You notice that? Yeah, it's really creepy.
00:05:03.340You're expecting someone cares about explain him.
00:05:06.000Even his mother's like, I have no idea.
00:05:08.440He's been creepy weird ever since he was sitting at the dinner table in his high chair with those creepy eyes and that big forehead.
00:05:15.200The president found himself increasingly embroiled in an effort to press the new Ukrainian president that deviated sharply from the norm in both terms of policy and process.
00:05:26.080Interesting visual for radio listeners.
00:05:28.340They're showing clips of Sondland as Schiff is reading this.
00:05:52.680Someone at a goal of the White House meeting for President Zelensky, which the group deemed crucial for U.S.-Ukrainian relations or.
00:06:00.920So as Schiff is blabbing here, can I give you a preview here of this opening statement?
00:06:04.800There's some big, pretty big stuff in it.
00:06:07.640They he goes through a series of about six points here at the beginning of it.
00:06:12.360We've acquired the testimony here in advance.
00:06:16.440And what's interesting here, probably the big takeaway is his fourth point here.
00:06:22.740And he's going to go through this whole thing in just a couple of minutes, but we're going to give you a preview anyway.
00:06:27.900He says, as I testified previously, this is when he changed his testimony.
00:06:31.360Mr. Giuliani's requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky.
00:06:37.620Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 DNC server and Burisma.
00:06:44.980Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president.
00:06:56.460That's the only one that really has any real first hand credibility on this.
00:07:01.740And he's saying now, again, like you can say this is why we've made this point five thousand times.
00:07:08.380You can't set the hurdle at quid pro quo.
00:07:11.000It's a it's a dumb place to defend because there's tons of people who were all acting like it was a quid pro quo.
00:07:17.760They all seem to have evidence and and and at least belief and testimony here.
00:07:22.740That it happened. Now, Sondland is as close as we've been able to see from to the president that is saying, yes, that's what it was.
00:07:29.420Again, Sondland is not just some guy. He's a huge supporter of the president.
00:07:34.540So that is a as a big deal. And it points to, if nothing else, Glenn, and see if you agree with this, that Giuliani is going to be the focus of this.
00:07:44.300These these these people who are in this situation who are on the borderline, like Sondland, who could get in trouble or could be the hero witness are going to push this, not necessarily to the president at the end, but towards Giuliani.
00:07:57.380And if they can get Giuliani to take the blame for all of it, it may be a place where where the president and everybody else winds up being comfortable now that whether that works or not, I don't know.
00:08:09.600It's a big question of whether the American people believe that.
00:08:12.100And I think, you know, there's some evidence to believe that Giuliani does this type of thing, you know, on his own.
00:08:18.340But they he says in his testimony that we knew we didn't think Giuliani was necessary for this process, but we did not think he was acting in bad faith.
00:08:26.320We did not think he was trying to do something illicit.
00:08:34.240We just didn't really like that he was involved in our thing.
00:08:37.780So he says, finally, at all times, I was acting in good faith as presidential appointee.
00:08:42.700I followed the directions of the president.
00:08:44.540We worked with Mr. Giuliani because the president directed us to do so.
00:08:48.380We had no desire to set any conditions on the Ukrainians.
00:08:51.780Indeed, my personal view, which I shared repeatedly with others, was that the White House meeting and security assistant should have proceeded without preconditions of any kind.
00:09:00.100We were working to overcome the problems, given the facts as they existed.
00:09:03.240Our only interest was to advance longstanding U.S. policy and support Ukraine's fragile democracy.
00:09:10.060And he in the previous paragraph also talks about the quid pro quo he's mentioning, he's saying was a thing, was about the meeting, not about the money.
00:09:18.620When he found out about the money, the security assistance, he was very upset about that and did not think that that should be any part of the policy whatsoever.
00:09:31.920It's like, yeah, we were doing a, yeah, you can come meet with the president, but you got to do this investigation thing.
00:09:37.380That did happen, according to Sondland.
00:09:39.400However, he's saying when he found out about the security assistance being withheld, he was very angry about it.
00:09:46.740And he said he was adamantly opposed to suspension of any aid.
00:09:50.500He tried diligently to ask why the aid was suspended, but never received a clear answer.
00:09:54.980What's interesting about that is it means the quid pro quo that he's talking about, according to Sondland, did not have to do with the money.
00:10:04.340He never got an answer as to why the money was suspended.
00:10:11.700The Democrats will certainly push on that to see if they can get something else to pop out of it.
00:10:16.480But that is, that's, it looks like that's the direction, the sort of, the window he's trying to fit this into.
00:10:22.080So he says, with enthusiasm, we return to the White House May 23rd to brief the president from Ukraine.
00:10:27.420The important, strategic importance of Ukraine and the value of strengthening the relationship with President Zelensky to support this reformer.
00:10:36.100We asked the White House for two things, a working phone call between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, and second, a working Oval Office visit.
00:10:43.160In our view, both were vital to cementing the U.S.-Ukraine relationship, demonstrating support for Ukraine in the face of Russia aggression and advancing broader U.S. policy interest.
00:10:55.820He expressed concerns that the Ukrainian government was not serious about reform.
00:11:00.360He even mentioned that Ukraine tried to take him down in the last election.
00:11:06.240Our response to the persistent efforts to change his views, President Trump directed us, talk with Rudy.
00:11:12.020We understood talk with Rudy meant Mr. Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer.
00:11:16.900Let me say again, we weren't happy with the president's directive to talk with Rudy.
00:11:20.660We didn't want to involve Mr. Giuliani.
00:11:23.180I believe then, as I do now, that the men and women of the State Department, not the president's personal lawyer, should take responsibility for Ukrainian matters.
00:11:29.640So do I, but unless there's something else going on.
00:11:50.360Schiff show with the goo-goo-googly eyes.
00:11:54.180I first communicated with Mr. Giuliani in early August.
00:11:57.660He emphasized that the president wanted a public statement from Zelensky.
00:12:03.480Mr. Giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election.
00:12:08.180Burisma and two things that were important to the president.
00:12:11.640We kept the leadership of the State Department, NSC, informed about our activities.
00:12:14.920We included communication with the director of Secretary of State Pompeo, his counselor, his executive secretary, all within the State Department, communications with Ambassador John Bolton, Fiona Hill, blah, blah, blah.
00:12:29.220They all knew what we were doing and why.
00:12:33.200Well, that doesn't look good for them.
00:12:35.520Because they all kind of said they didn't know what was going on.
00:12:39.600I mean, you can tell there is seemingly animosity between Sondland, again, who's not a State Department guy, although he does believe in the State Department and had a big role there, between him and Giuliani.
00:12:52.880I mean, they are throwing a lot of this on Giuliani.
00:12:56.040And, you know, while they're saying, like, there's a big, you know, segment kind of that you mentioned there where he is saying, look, we didn't want to do this.
00:13:19.340So he gets to make those decisions, and Sondland respects them here, but is pointing out over and over again that he did not like the idea, the road it went down.
00:13:27.980So it really looks in this testimony so far that you haven't heard yet, but we're reading ahead on his opening statement.
00:13:37.680And his opening statement, at least as far as we have read, I'm halfway through page, the 24-page document and reading it as we are telling you about it.
00:13:49.080He is, he looks like he's going after Rudy Giuliani.
00:13:53.300Giuliani is, looks like he's going to be the fall guy.
00:13:59.920Can we take Nunez and his opening statement?
00:14:56.940The Democrats on this committee spent three years accusing President Trump of being a Russian agent.
00:15:02.860In March 2018, after a year-long investigation, Intelligence Committee Republicans issued a 240-page report describing in detail how the Russians meddled in the 2016 elections and making specific recommendations to improve our election security.
00:15:21.440Denouncing the report as a whitewash and accusing Republicans of subverting the investigation, the Democrats issued their own report, focusing on their now debunked conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to hack the elections.
00:15:40.040Notably, the Democrats vowed at the time to present a further, quote, comprehensive report, unquote, after they finished their investigation into Trump's treasonous collusion with Russia.
00:15:53.960For some completely inexplicable reason, after the implosion of their Russia hoax, the Democrats failed to issue that comprehensive report.
00:16:07.160This episode shows how the Democrats have exploited the Intelligence Committee for political purposes for three years, culminating in these impeachment hearings and their mania to attack the president.
00:16:18.680President, no conspiracy theory is too outlandish for the Democrats.
00:16:26.760Time and time again, they floated the possibility of some far-fetched malfeasance by Trump, declared the dire need to investigate it, and then suddenly dropped the issue and moved on to their next asinine theory.
00:16:39.460A sampling of their accusations and insinuations includes these.
00:16:47.180Trump is a long-time Russian agent, as described in the Steele dossier.
00:16:54.020The Russians gave Trump advance access to emails stolen by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
00:17:00.420The Trump campaign based some of his activities on these stolen documents.
00:17:05.420Trump received nefarious materials from the Russians through a Trump campaign aid.
00:17:10.580Trump laundered Russian money through real estate deals.
00:17:13.480Trump was blackmailed by Russia through his financial exposure with Deutsche Bank.
00:17:21.020Trump had a diabolical plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
00:17:26.100Trump changed the Republican National Committee platform to hurt Ukraine and benefit Russia.
00:17:33.220The Russians laundered money through the NRA for the Trump campaign.
00:17:37.620Trump's son-in-law lied about his Russian contacts while obtaining his security clearance.
00:17:45.380It's a long list of charges. All false.
00:21:54.340I think it's important to kind of talk about what we're doing here today, which is I think you can go probably all over talk radio today and get people telling you that, you know, oh, these guys are all it's all a sham and it's a hoax.
00:22:07.920And and there's nothing going on here.
00:22:09.820And you can certainly go on every media source today and they're going to say this is the worst thing in the world.
00:22:13.860What I feel like it's important for us to do today is to look at this and see how is the media going to take this?
00:22:20.360How are they going to push this to the American people?
00:22:23.120What the truth is and what what is still speculation?
00:22:26.580So and what what is the approach the Democrats are trying to take here?
00:22:44.720It's about the national interest on what happened in the 2016 election and deep corruption in our State Department and former administration.
00:23:03.460What's going to happen is the media is just going to pound Sondland's thing into the ground saying, yes, those who question if there was a quid pro quo,
00:23:12.500I can tell you, yes, this does, I think, potentially provide an off ramp for Trump on that defense, which is to say, wait a minute.
00:24:24.840He didn't want anything to do with it.
00:24:26.460So there again is a reason in national interests to withhold the money.
00:24:33.160And that backed up Trump's sort of telling of this, which is it was for the national interest and not for personal, private, political benefits.
00:24:40.820So we're talking about a couple of things.
00:24:42.660We're talking about how the media is going to run with it.
00:24:47.560How the legal case should be run here by the Republicans.
00:24:52.720But I don't know what the Republicans are doing.
00:24:56.300And what this means for the deep state.
00:24:59.560Now, yesterday, we had some pretty incredible things happen yesterday with the witnesses that were there.
00:25:13.320Vindman is a guy who was pursued by Ambassador Sondland and Rudy Giuliani.
00:25:24.320He was a guy who said there was no national interest in this.
00:25:29.720If Ukraine was engaging in U.S. election interference, colluding with Obama, and Bidens were using the power of the government to make millions of dollars with a known corrupt oligarch.
00:25:41.960He didn't hear about it, and it wasn't in the national interest.
00:25:45.180Well, that doesn't make any sense at all.
00:25:47.980It showed that the three amigos were Sondland, the guy who's testifying now, Vindman, who testified yesterday, and the whistleblower.
00:26:04.800Vindman was on the phone call, and we found out yesterday that when he finished the phone call, he immediately ran out and talked to the whistleblower, and I believe Sondland, right?
00:31:16.300And I think it was a testimony this morning that not only is it correct that the President brought up with you investigations on the phone the day after the July 25th call,
00:31:26.540but you would have been surprised had he not brought that up.
00:31:29.340Right, because we had been hearing about it from Rudy, and we presumed Rudy was getting it from the President.
00:31:34.840One of the big things you're seeing here from Sondland, in his testimony, he said the conversation after the phone conversation at the restaurant,
00:31:41.620where he said he doesn't care about Ukraine, is not included in his opening statement.
00:31:46.860And you see the tricky shift tactic there, which is to say, are you familiar with his testimony?
00:34:55.740If this didn't happen, he would not have a meeting with Zelensky.
00:35:01.180Now, he later tied that to the aid, but that is hearsay, because that was something that the ambassador said, I just assumed that that's what it was.