On Thursday's edition of MNSBC's "The Beat," anchor Ari Melber and White House correspondent Francesca Chambers discussed Mick Mulvaney's attempt to walk back his admission of a Ukraine quid pro quo.
"I was just reading this new statement from the White House that they rushed to us right before they knew that we’d all be going on television for primetime to try and clean up his remarks," said Chambers. "He goes on to say that 'there was never any condition on the flow of aid related to the matter of the DNC server.' As we heard, you played those clips, that is not what he said when we were sitting in the room today."
"You’re building such an important point, I just wanting you to slow down on it," said Melber. "You’re saying that part of what he is saying now is a lie. I’m not asking you to use that term but I’m going to use that term because I’ve got the statement. He went out, we just played it, and admitted to a funding quid pro quo bribe for the investigation of this DNC stuff and now we have a new statement where he’s telling everyone that didn’t happen?"
"Well, the White House says it's reporters who are misconstruing his words, which is why I go back to those clips that you played where you heard the question and you heard the direct answer to those questions," said Chambers. "And I was also going to add that that was the first briefing that we’ve had, of course Secretary Mnuchin has briefed a couple of times, but we haven’t seen the White House press secretary. This was the first time in a very long time we’ve seen someone brief from that podium. So they were clearly trying to answer the questions surrounding his involvement in what is a billowing scandal for the president of the United States, and then had to even go back to that and play cleanup with the statement we just got."
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