David Axelrod: “He called Pence a wimp, or worse, for not going along.”

I think the darker interpretation of what we saw today is that they were setting up a pretext, he and the vice president for walking away from Ukraine and blaming Zelenskyy for it.

I think there's a lot of concern among Republican officeholders. Governor Pawlenty could speak more readily to this than me.

I mean, he's president of the United States. He was elected. They should be there.

There's no doubt about that. But I also want to say this. You know, all presidents sort of feed off of perceptions of the person who came before and they want to position against what people found lacking in the person that came before.