Rachel Maddow Blows Up Mike Pence's 'Ignorance' Spin On Ukraine
Last night, Rachel Maddow pulled apart the rationale being peddled by Mike Pence's team that Pence had no idea that Trump was trying to extort Ukraine's to get dirt on Joe Biden.
"Quote, 'officials close to Pence insist that he was unaware of Trump's efforts to pressure Zelensky for damaging information about Biden. That means Vice President Pence is conceding, he is admitting to telling the president of Ukraine that their military aid was being withheld," Maddow said.
"He admitted to tying that to demands that they do some sort of investigation related to some sort of corruption. But he is trying to say that he didn't realize when he was pressing them about investigations having to do with corruption that that might have been perceived as a demand having something to do with Joe Biden. That's the limits of the vice president's defense here. Well, how credible is the vice president's defense here? Why might Mike Pence conceivably have known about this demand recently made by President Trump, that Ukraine needed to give him something he could work with against Biden for 2020?
"How could Mike Pence have possibly have known about the content of that conversation between President Trump and Zelensky and Trump pressing Zelenskiy specifically to give him something on Biden? How could Pence have known about that? Well, quote, 'perhaps most significantly, one of Pence's top advisors was on the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelenskiy when Trump made that specific ask about Joe Biden.'