back in some way that didn't even make sense.

So what Mulvaney originally said was genius, and I will paraphrase it to improve it even more. Basically what Mulvaney said is if you're having a conversation with another world leader, it's always quid pro quo. That is exactly the right framing. If you took the quid pro quo out of the equation for any two leaders who are having a get-together or a conversation, what would you have left? No reason to talk. If you took the quid pro quo, and here I'm talking about the implied quid pro quo that's always there. Because remember, the president is not being accused of directly saying if you do this we'll do that. Everybody agrees he did not directly say that. But everybody also agrees that there's always an implied quid pro quo. I've got a little something here waiting for you. There's a little something I want later. It's always there.

So what would be even the point of meeting with another world leader unless both leaders came to it with an implied quid pro quo? And the implied part could be even general, which is hey, if you play nicely with us on this topic, I'll sort of owe you something for later, right? Doesn't have to be direct. But if you took the quid pro quo out of the meeting, there's no point in talking. Then that's the only reason to talk. Am I wrong? There's literally no reason to have a conversation if you take that out.

So Mulvaney got close to what I said. Now let me be immodest here. May I be immodest? The way I said it is the end of the conversation, right? If you put me on the stage with somebody who has the other view that it's the end of the world and you should be impeached, and I say that you know there's no such thing as a conversation between leaders that doesn't have an implied quid pro quo, if you were to take that out there's no point in having a conversation ever, any leader, no point in talking about anything ever, even socially it's a waste of time. What does the other person say after I say that? Well, they better change the subject because it's the end of the conversation. All right. Mulvaney was right there. He was right on the edge of saying it as clearly as I just said it. It's still good. I would say he still did one of the best jobs except for the president in making that case.

Now the president's version is it's a perfect call. Here's the transcript, see for yourself. There was no quid pro quo in the sense that I did not directly ask for something. That's pretty good. It's pretty good. But then everybody finds all this little evidence of conversations before and they're tracking the timeline and all that. So the president's approach, which is pretty good, pretty good, just coming around and saying yes that's exactly what I did, I had that phone call, see for yourself. But it did leave him open for a little bit of criticism because they find the timeline doesn't match and you know who knew about the funds being withheld and all that.

Whereas the way I did it, there's nothing left. I've removed all of the opportunity for criticism because I just said yeah, that's every meeting between leaders. You couldn't take that out if you wanted to. You couldn't remove the quid pro quo. It's not possible. And then on top of that you'd want to say it is a top, this is also something Mulvaney didn't quite say but he could, I think he had it but you could do better, then it is a top priority for any president to find out if anybody's compromised in our government. And Biden certainly is, at least plausibly, he's on the cusp of looking like he could be the next president. So finding out if that guy has any entanglements with foreign countries is pretty close to the top priority for the sitting president. You got to look into that. So totally appropriate call.

The funniest part is that after the Mulvaney thing, I guess Mulvaney used the phrase "get over it," meaning that yeah, leaders talk this way, just get over it. So the Trump campaign, which is the funniest campaign of all campaigns ever, Brad Parscale I think probably is behind a lot of this, they did a t-shirt. This it just says "Get Over It" and there's a little Trump haircut sitting on one of the, the first letter of "get." Just "Get Over It." Now the Get Over It shirt is again right on message because you know you heard everything I said, which is this is just how leaders talk. You couldn't re