CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS: I don’t say this lightly, but let’s be frank, a national nightmare is upon us. The basic rules of our democracy are under attack from the president. We begin tonight with a series of admissions by the president that all but assures his impeachment in the House of Representatives. It’s a moment of truth for Republicans and they’ve been largely silent on what we’ve seen from the president. Today, he publicly called on two foreign governments to interfere in the election by investigating his chief 2020 political rival…

What you just heard is a public admission of the allegations of the heart of the House’s impeachment inquiry and at the heart of the whistleblower’s complaint. That the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump is using the power of his office to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election while doing it relying on a debunked conspiracy theory or two.

By the way, this is not hearsay, this is not a leak, this is not a whistleblower complaint. It’s not a memorandum of a phone conversation. You heard the president did it on the White House lawn. This moment should arguably be a national emergency. The Founding Fathers would have considered it a national emergency if the president publicly lobbied multiple foreign governments to interfere in the next election.