Mulvaney fiasco lays bare the Trump administration's 'scattershot' operation fighting impeachment: reporter

On Thursday's edition of MSNBC's "Hardball," PBS NewsHour White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor broke down how White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney's admission of a quid pro quo in the Ukraine scandal, and subsequent efforts to walk it back, reveal the complete lack of preparation and planning at the White House for the impeachment battle.

"The White House has really been trying to develop its impeachment inquiry strategy, but they haven't really settled on anything," said Alcindor. "At one point they were trying to hire former congressman Trey Gowdy, then the president was surprised by the fact that he couldn't start until January, which is going to be well into the impeachment inquiry, and so you have a White House still trying to formulate itself."

"I've been talking to attorneys that worked for Bill Clinton back when he was going through an impeachment inquiry and impeachment process, and they said that White House had a very clear strategy," continued Alcindor. "They hired outside lawyers, had a messaging strategy. They also made sure Bill Clinton wasn't really thinking about the impeachment inquiry. What you have is President Trump really laser-focused on this, and what you see today is Mick Mulvaney trying to defend the president but making the surprising announcement that the president was trying to withhold military aid from Ukraine because he wanted them to look into the DNC. So because of that, you have a really scattershot strategy that seems to at least not be working for the White House very well."

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