- And William Ricciardella,with the Washington Examiner,

joins us now with more,William, thank you.

What is your, thanks for joining us,

what is your reaction tothe transcript of the call?

- Well, my reaction to the transcript

is there was no quid pro quo.

There was no promise.

So these initial media reports

about the whistleblower complaint,

somebody really needs to go over this.

I think asking, I think theIntelligence Community IG

has some questions to answer.

What did he think raised this to the level

of urgent concern, which is a statute.

This clearly wasn't an urgent concern,

so why would he file with the director

of National Intelligencethe whistleblower complaint

to begin with?

This seems more like a leak

rather than a whistleblower complaint.

It does seem partisan.

There has been information that came out

that the person who was the whistleblower

is indeed partisan.

But, I mean, nothing came out here.

Now you have Democrats in a frenzy.

They're doubling down onthe impeachment inquiry.

They really have no choice.

They can't come out now

and say, "Hey, look, you know what?

"We're were wrong about the transcript."

This is all political.

It looks like it waspolitical from the beginning,

and it seems it's gonna continue that way.

- Well, it's interesting,

because House SpeakerNancy Pelosi, of course,

has resisted calls fromher Party for some time now

over this impeachment issue.

Why do you think she decidedto pull the trigger now?

- Well, Nancy Pelosi,

what people aren't reallytalking about much,

is she really hedged yesterday.

She succumbed to some pressure,

probably from the far left of her Party.

They want an impeachment inquiry.

But an impeachment inquiry

is not a floor vote on impeachment.

Of course she doesn't want that.

She has vulnerable HouseDemocrats in purple districts,

and they would lose if theytook it to a floor vote.

So what she said, basically,is we're gonna open up,

it's akin to opening up a grand jury.

And don't forget,

they already have animpeachment inquiry open

in the House Judiciary Committee

where they're subpoenaing people,

and they'll probably do the same thing.

They'll try to subpoena, or thehead of the DNI is coming in

on Thursday to talk aboutthe whistleblower complaint.

Perhaps they'll issue other subpoenas,

try to get the whistleblower to come in.

But, I mean, they're gonnamake a spectacle of this.

It's unclear whether they'llbring this to a floor vote,

but I really do doubt it.

- Well, it's so interestinggiven the looming 2020 election

with all of this, what isthe risk for President Trump?

How could he come out poorly in all this?

- I don't think he doesto be completely honest.

Look, I mean, the onetime he asked for a favor

in the transcript was

to talk about election meddling in 2016.

We just had a two-year investigation

in election meddling in 2016.

I don't see there's much of a problem.

There was no pressure, otherthan friendly overtures

about looking into what Joe Biden did.

Initially, the Washington Post reported

that they mentioned Joe Biden eight times.

It turned out to be only three.

One of the times was to talkabout Joe Biden bragging

about getting a foreign prosecutor

who was looking intohis son's company fired.

I think a guy who was elected,

and most of Americans elected Donald Trump

to root out corruption, Ithink a lot of Americans

are gonna see this and go, "Yeah,

"this is what we elected him for."

I think he comes out quite well here.

I think now you'll havethe American people look

at the Democratic Party

and say, "Look, this is largely partisan."

Again, they're stymieinga president who's trying

to engage in foreign policyfor political purposes,

and I don't think thislooks well on the Democrats.

So I think this indeedhelps Trump to some degree.

- They could look

like they're overplayingtheir hand, indeed.

Charlie Cook was talkingabout the malleable voters,

how do you think thismight play with them?

- Look, a lot of people talk about voters

in the United States of America.

Most of the people between the coasts

are not ideological voters.

They're not ideologically conservative.

They're not ideologically Democrat.

You have to remember,a lot of these people

who Trump won in the RustBelt were former Obama voters.

This is why he won the presidency.

They're also fed up with this stuff.

These are Americans, they'reconcerned about their country,

and they don't like thispartisanship in Washington DC.

So I think there are voterswho were maybe, like, on the,

that perhaps were on the line before

that will go towards Trump's direction.

Furthermore, this has reallyincensed a lot of people,

and I think people whomay not have turned out

to vote before will turn out now.

It's also about turnout.

- Well, it's interesting, ofcourse, there's so much time

between now and the election.

But William Ricciardellawith the Washington Examiner,

thanks for your insights.