David Gergen

If the President himself was personally engaged, it's a big deal.

What did the President know and when did he know it?

This has to be the worst day of the presidency so far for Donald Trump.

If you have evidence that the President directed most of this, he directed Giuliani, he directed Mulvaney on - on, you know, on - on a variety of issues, if you have that kind of information, even though you may not have obvious intent or…

It seems to me they want to get past this pretty quickly.

Mick Mulvaney is I think the weakest Chief of Staff in modern history.

The Chief of Staff is not going to make a decision, absent presidential direction of such weight and so controversial without taking it to the boss to start with.

I think it's important for the country that we not have a secretary of state who seems compromised or potentially compromised in a very, very serious situation.

It gives the granular view is much more sobering and distressing than what we had heard before today. I think the details show you this became a cesspool. Our own State Department became a cesspool.

I think they have a point. Look, is there an information pipeline to the White House from Republicans? Yes.

It has been central to the Republican defense that there was no quid pro quo. One more defense has been knocked down on the Republican side.

The next question to them will be, was it appropriate? And on that one, I don't think they can possibly say it was appropriate.

The counterargument is that the impeachment process is expressly laid out by the Constitution.

No president is above the law.

However this comes out. But I think that's what we're pointing toward.

Zero members of his party broke. I think that's a really interesting, important distinction.

The founders didn't want to do this very often.

This judge has taken a sledgehammer to the stonewall that the administration has tried to erect and maintain.

I think they'll do everything they can to stop him. His testimony is significant, Anderson, because Taylor had delivered this blockbuster testimony, but it's very much in conflict with Sondland.

I believe for some time that right from the beginning the Democrats could have played this differently and should have.

I think it's important -- it would have been helpful to call witnesses of their own for their period of the process, when everything is secret.

historians are going to look back and say this was another John Dean moment, when someone went and opened the curtain to what we could see of a president of the United States, the mendacity we have seen here.

It did, it did, Anderson. And I do think you're right to talk about the respect in which Mr. Taylor is held widely.

Instead, what the president listened to with Putin and Orban and Giuliani and it soured his view on the Ukrainians.

It's now apparent from what we've learned from these courageous State Department officials as well as others that this was a very big deal. It was central to his presidency.