Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion On Threats To U.S. Political System 20240713

You should have copies of the constitution at each of your seats. So if theres anything that comes up during the course of the conversation where you need to refer to that legal document, feel free to do so. [laughter] think aboutp us these issues we have for distinguished experts. Senior fellows a at brookings, writes a column for the wall street journal and is the author of antipluralism, the populist threat to liberal democracy. Molly reynolds is a senior fellow at brookings and is the author of exceptions to the role, the politics of filibuster limitations in the u. S. Senate. Elaine kamarck is a senior author of a book about a Senior Process on nominating and the United States. Is a seniortes fellow at brookings and is a coauthor of a forthcoming book entitled on making the presidency, Donald Trumps war on the most powerful office. Host i want to start with bill. He has paid a lot of attention to the Public Opinion aspects of impeachment. There were three recent National Surveys that came out, nbc, abc and fox news. They all showed 49 of the American Public want trump impeached and removed from office. Then bill wrote a post a few days ago talking about how support for removal drops in some of the swing states. Bill, where are we now and what should people be watching for . Funny you should ask. [laughter] let me just take two or three minutes to summarize the state of Public Opinion on these questions. Is, to begin, majority support for the congressional inquiry into the president conduct. It is averaging in the low to mid 50s if you look at most of the surveys. Toyou said, when it comes actually in teaching and removing the president , the country is split almost down the. Interestingly, if you look at change in Public Opinion, on this question, most of it occurred in the first week to 10 days after the initial revelation on september 23. And as been quite stable since then. Additional information that the American People have received has not moved them one way or another very much. There are very sharp and intensifying partisan divisions on this question. I just took a look at the latest issue, of polls on this corrected for paul quality quality. For poll it showed 84 of democrats in favor of removing and impeaching the president. Only 11 of republicans endorsing that position. An independent stood at 45 . See thehically, you expected racial, ethnic and gender divisions. White americans, on balance, are opposed to impeaching and removing the president. Africanamericans are strongly in favor of it. Latino latina americans in favor , but much less strongly than afghan americans. And many more women than men in favor of removing him from office. You mentioned geography. Interestingvery New York Times poll that came out a week ago that took a look at six key swing states and found public sentiment in those , a majoritypposed of those voters were opposed to impeaching and removing the president. That is important because those tong states will be the key President Trumps either successful or failed bid for reelection in 2020. For in the you look weeks ahead . Number one, look for significant change in President Trumps job approval. There is a very common question that survey researchers ask, do you approve or disapprove of the job that president x is doing as president . Here, hot off the press from the and bc and wall street journal survey are the results. Of 2019, 45 of americans approved of the job that donald trump was doing as president. September, week before the matter broke wide open, 45 of americans approved of the job that donald trump was doing as president. , accordingast week to nbc in the wall street journal, yes 45 of americans approved the job the president was doing. There is a concept in investing known as the market discount, which is a measure of how much of the market has already taken into account in our bad news. And what this tells me is that this news has not really changed settled expectations among the American People very much. They already understood that he was fully capable of this conduct. And they have drawn the expected conclusion from that. For,d thing to look opinion among the republican rank and file. That has not changed very much either. It is up a few percentage points. But as i indicated from a very low base to a very low total of just 11 now, and many sermons have it in single digits. The third thing to look for, a republicane ranks of elected officials at the national level. Boatu probably saw on the touthorize vote authorize a formal impeachment inquiry, not a single republican member of the house of representatives voted in favor. Not one. Obviously, the crackle battleground will be the senate. Battlegroundl will be the senate. And here, we have not heard a people on this question from the five senators in the most tough, contested races. Not from gardiner in colorado or thom tillis in North Carolina or Susan Collins in maine or Martha Mcsally in arizona or joni ernst in iowa. Not a peep. What about the very prominent Senior Republicans who have elected to retire in 2020 . Not a people from pat roberts nor mike enzi, nor lamar alexander, and nothing as far as i know from Johnny Isakson either. It is possible that there will be a huge shift in response to the public hearings and other information, such that 20 republican senators, the number needed to remove a president from office, which is to vote in that direction. But as others of the current, as of right now, the signs of that are few and far between. Host ok, thank you. Molly, it looks like the how soon will move to public hearings. Today we saw the release of the first two transcripts. We are likely to see more tomorrow and the rest of the week. Tell us how these hearings will unfold in the house, what the rules will look like, and how they will lay groundwork for articles of impeachment. Molly ok. So, where we are in the house in the process is ending the stage of gathering of evidence by the house and moving into the stage that will focus on the presentation and consideration of that evidence. Have seen over the past several weeks a series of depositions conducted by the House Intelligence Committee working with the House Foreign Affairs and the House Oversight committees. That state has been the subject of much republican angst. There has been a lot of discussions about the fact that it has been behind closed doors i think it is worth remembering in particularly the clinton impeachment, the last comparison case we have, that kind of investigative work, the gathering of the evidence was largely done by ken starr and came to the house of representatives in hundreds of boxes. We are dealing with a different set of circumstances here. We are nearing the head we are nearing the end of that process. Two depositions were released this morning. There is a list of individuals these committees would still like to hear from. I think it is increasingly unlikely they will get compliance from those individuals. The individuals they have yet to hear from who they would like to generally fall into the category of folks whose incentives are more closely aligns with those of the president. We did have the series of witnesses whose committees wanted to hear from whose incentives were not necessarily closely aligned with the president. So were more willing to reach some kind of agreement to cooperate. Once this series of depositions to onelete, we will move or more hearings, open hearings, in the House Intelligence Committee. The resolution the house agreed to last week that set out some procedural parameters for where we go next, provided for these hearings. Do not know how many there will be. There will be one or more. A couple features of those that are worth noting, they will start with a longer than usual. Of questioning controlled by the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and the Ranking Member , up to 45 minutes per side. Thenis much longer certainly the usual five minutes on and even longer an extended periods already provided for in house rules. Both the chairman and Ranking Member can choose to yield back time to staff, so we may well see staff counsel conduct that initial. Of questioning. Period ofitial questioning. Once those are complete, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee will work with the chairs of the intelligence and oversight many to write a report on material. Athered and the other investigative materials that have been collected will be transferred to the Judiciary Committee which has jurisdiction over president ial impeachment. The Judiciary Committee will then have its own series of hearings. They will start with an initial presentation of evidence. The president s council will be able to ask questions during that as well as members of the committee themselves. There may be the presentation of additional evidence. There may be additional witnesses. These are all things that are provided for in the procedures of the house adopted last week. They willnow how shake out. The Judiciary Committee will also have this longer questioning. , where there will be an opportunity for more questions longer questioning period. We may also see the possibility that the Judiciary Committee preventll be able to the president s counsel from exercising some of the Due Process Rights afforded to him under these new procedures if quote unlawfully refuses to make witnesses available or produces documents. Again, we do not know exactly what that means our exact they what that would look like. But it is clear that the house is preparing for additional obstruction on the part of the executive branch. And that they are at least up someng to set procedures that would allow them to exert leverage. Again, it is hard to know exactly how that will shake out. I do think that we will continue to see a lot of process oriented, plates about how this process oriented complaints about how this is unfolding by republicans. We see this going back to the letter i white House Counsel sent the hell indicating the president would not be cooperating with the appeasement inquiry. There are certainly potential for a fair amount more conflict and angst. But we have now a better sense of what we might expect is likely to happen procedurally over the next several weeks. Elaine, you have written about the history of impeachment what do we need to know about the andrew johnson, Richard Nixon and bill clinton impeachments and how they might inform the current effort. Elaine lets start with andrew johnson, the first impeachment. The interesting thing about that was how momentous the issues were. In 1868. Because the union had just won the civil war. And yet there was the question, what do you do at the southern states. We had abolished slavery but we had not guaranteed the rights of full Citizenship Rights of africanamericans. So the issues when you go back and read much of this, which i have been doing lately, the issues are momentous. Andrew johnson all was a kind of accidental president , because he became president when lincoln was assassinated or he had been a democrat but he had been a prounion democrat. Which means that lincoln thought ok, and you can see this was part of lincolns reconstruction idea, lets put a bipartisan ticket. However the Republican Party never liked him very much. And it was what the Republican Party that impeached a republican president over these big issues. One of the things that comes up in the polling and Public Opinion, is that a lot of americans would rather deal with the president through the election process than through the impeachment process. Convictionjohnson be by one vote in the senate. But the timing is interesting. The articles of impeachment were voted on in may of 1868. The Republican Convention convened in chicago in may of they unanimously unanimously nominated former general youth lessees s grant on the first ballot. So date unanimously nominated Ulysses Grant on the first ballot. Johnson got less than 10 votes on the democratic side. We see in themes in Public Opinion. We do not have to convict him because, guess what, the butters and his own party is going to. And his own party is going to. The voters and his own party is going to. Impeachment, there is clearly obstruction of justice. Impeachment weon forget there is clearly in the next impeachment there is clearly obstruction of justice. We forget that lots and lots of people went to jail. It took until 1974 for the smoking gun taped to finger the president himself. The nixon hung on and hung on and hung on until that tape and it was a matter of days. And nixon resigned. Once the tape came out, the Republican Party, goldwater leading the delegation walked into the oval office and said, we do not have the votes to prevent your impeachment, we do not have the votes to prevent your conviction in the senate. And he was gone. So i think we need to be aware of just how quickly things can change. Finally, the impeachment of bill clinton was looking a little bit like this one in that the Impeachment Vote was just absolutely bipartisan vote. In the senate, however, there were some republicans who cited the democrats. And of course, he was not convicted, he was acquitted. ,he interesting thing there there were two articles of impeachment, one on perjury, one on obstruction of justice. But the fact of the matter is, nobody considered this a constitutional issue. Rising to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. The substance of it, was the fact that Newt Gingrich who was speaker of the house when the articles were voted in resigned on1998, january 3, 1999, because he was having an affair with a woman 23 years younger than himself while he was still married. What . That sort of took the air out of the republican balloon, so to speak. Congressman Bob Livingston was the acting speaker. He was fully intending to run for speaker until, guess what . He was revealed to have been engaged in an extramarital affair. At three other members of the housework. Members ofe other the house were. And all of a sudden this issue went away. Bill clinton was acquitted and went on to have very high approval ratings. And he went on to pick up democratic seats in the 1998 democratic midterm elections. Each one of these things tells us a little but about what is coming. We can certainly cross marital ofidelity off the list impeachable offenses. That one we have got. Have all established precedents. Their presence in the house and precedents in the senate. And we know that the chief justice of the Supreme Court essentially turns the senate into a judicial body. When this trial begins. Ando have some precedent some interesting politics and legal precedents. So,ben, you have off third a trick article author. Nd article for the atlantic over the weekend President Trump tweeted 75 times about impeachment, so it seems to be on his mind to some extent. Right now the president seems fixated on uncovering the identity of the whistleblower. How should we evaluate what trump is doing now if we go to impeachment . Benjamin i want to answer this question with some of the poll data that bill started with. Understand cannot the strategy of the president s impeachment defense that reference to that poll data. I think that is the ultimate defense. Has driven four defenses and a sometimes indiscernible the launch of all four abouternible melange four. The first is denial. The second is character assassination. The third is process complaints. And the fourths prerogative. Go through this individually. Each has mostly failed. Which brings us to the fifth and real defense. The first one is denial of the facts. When the president started out by saying, no quid pro quo, the call was perfect, various iterations of factual claims, i suppose the call is perfect as a matter of opinion. But that there was no quid pro quo, the factual defensive have all proven to be untrue. They are certainly fading away against the impressive quantity of witnesses that of comport intensified. That have come forward and testified. The second was particularly directed at the whistleblower andalso at the human scum the individuals who have given testimony. This is a defense that has, in general, works pretty well for the president. Tothe past he has managed make a lot of people believe that the fundamental problem with the restaurant fundamental problems found in the russia investigation where a bunch of messages by fbi agents. He made james comey into a a billion villian in the eyes of many people. This is a substantial tool in his arsenal. It is interesting that it does not seem to be working in this context. Has, of course, not been outed. The whistleblower has not been outed. And the anonymity is an interesting feature here. And when fox news and some of the president s defenders one after Lieutenant Colonel ven men week, even liz cheney had to repudiate that and say this was not acceptable. There is a dynamic there that the sort of attack the attackers thing is maybe working less weed to well than it had been in the past. The third is process objections. They are spending a lot of time on this. Is, i think, a recently effective strategy with respect to people who already do not want to believe it and want Something Else to talk about. But i do not see a lot of evidence that it is persuasive to anyone on the margins. The evidence of that is the data that bill cited about the degree to which people who are not precommitted bidens of approval of the president S Performance people who are not precommitted to approval of the president S Performance. Few are put off by claims of shifty schiff or undo secrecy. And those claims will fade further as more and more the transcripts are released and more and more the hearing take place in public with reasonable time for people to ask questions and raise concerns. Final, and me to the i think the real defense, which alln assertion that this is a fine thing for the president to do. When the president says i have the absolute right to ask investigateo corruption, when he is really saying is i dare you to say that this is unacceptable. That is, i think the real defense. President as a support for the impeachment process asymptotically approaches the president s disapproval numbers at heb get the test of that defense, i think we get disapproval numbers i think we get the test of that defense. Averagethat low 40s stays, that is an acceptance of this latter defense, that it is fine if trump does these things. If you start seeing cracks in that, that is the surest sign that the president s defense is not working. As long as that number holds, the president s strategy, ultimate defense strategy, which is to hold an fa support that it is politically impossible hold enough base support that it split claim possible or dangerous enough for republicans to break with him will be an effective strategy regardless of how ridiculous the organs may sound. Bill, if i can ask you to put on your prophet and respond to ben. You have seen what the polling looks like compared to the polling with nixon and clinton. Moving forward, what if anything has a probability of changing the current dynamic . Is the current dynamic likely to stay pretty consistent . Bill youve invited me to make a fool of myself on national television. Didnt work for you i would refuse to answer the question. [laughter] host there is no executive privilege. Judgment, fory what its worth, is that what comes out during the public face of the hearings phase of the hearings would have to add quite significant lead to the publics baseline knowledge in order to move needles significantly. What extent will the American People be glued to television for the public hearings the way elaine and i were in our graduate student days during the watergate hearings. Right . S one question, are americans interested enough. Do enough of them believe they can gain Additional Information and insight from the public phase of the hearings to tune in and reserve judgment . That would be one really interesting indicator, that is to say the ratings for the hearings and whether they start right . High and stay high. Whether they start high and go down sharply or whether they start low and never budge. That is one thing to look for. It is possible, i suppose, that something as earthshaking as the smoking gun tapes would emerge. I wouldnt bet on it. But, obviously, no one can rule out that possibility. My own view for what its worth is that the extraordinary increase in partisan polarization that has occurred in the past generation is going of thet the response American People taken as a whole to Additional Information to the extent that that Additional Information contradicts their overall worldview and their overall view of the president. We tend to forget opinion about Richard Nixon, support for his impeachment and removal, which began at 19 in may of 1973 ended at 57 at the end of july of 1974, but that during that period when the Political Parties are much less polarized than they are now. When, on the two critical articles of impeachment between and 40 of the republicans in the house Judiciary Committee voted for them. I would bet money against that house Judiciary Committee. A over of their number of a republican supporting impeachment in the house is zero. Im ready to be corrected by a real congressional expert, but just for the record, that is my estimate. So, the long and the short of it is, i can imagine a big change but the odds are against it. Molly, if the house goes to impeach trump the articles were impeachment will go to the senate. Tell us how that part of the process will work and also whats your sense in terms of majority leader mcconnell and how he will lead the process and the senate . Molly so, i think when we think about the process when we moved to the house to the senate it is important to delineate the things that we know and the things we dont know. Know that the Current Senate rules for conducting an impeachment trial are phrased in pretty mandatory terms, in terms of the senate needing to have one. Senates impeachment rules are littered with the word shall. But we also note the senate can waive or alter those rules to change them formally would require 2 3 votes, but they have the ability to change specific parts of the or set specific parts of them aside with fewer votes than that. Thelso know that just as constitution doesnt specifically prescribed a lot of what is to happen in the house in an impeachment inquiry. Weekthe house voted last to approve certain procedures for the impeachment inquiry, they were not required to do so under the constitution or the rules of the house. So, as thats the case, the constitution similarly does not require certain aspects of an impeachment trial much beyond preside, justice must senators have to taken oaths at the start, and that 2 3 is required to convict. We know that under the Current Senate impeachment rules, the chief justice, john roberts, will be presiding and will rule on questions and evidence and on motions. To appeals from the full senate, like most things that happen in the senate. So, there are some things we know. What we dont know is a lot of the details of how exactly this will play out. Point he wass making about the rise in partisan polarization since the late 90s and the clinton impeachment, there are important parts of what happened during the clinton impeachment trial that were made by the senate on unanimous basis. So, basically in january of 1999, when the senate was trying to decide how they were going to proceed with the trial, senators 100 and dashel sat all said, wedown and are going to figure out how to do this that is respectful for the senate traditions. They came to unanimous agreement proceduralthose very questions. The idea of that happening in the Current Senate is pretty hard for me to fathom. So, theres a lot of the details that really i think will remain to the filled in. On this question of majority leader mcconnell specifically,i think also to appoint it bill made earlier about some of these republican senators we have yet to hear from. Both senators who are in close reelection races in 2020 and some Senate Republicans who are retiring. I actually think, to me, where they stand to be most influential, absent some big lead folkshat would to vote for conviction, is in the behind the scenes, before the impeachment trial would start, negotiations with is mcconnell about what is important to them to a process to look like. What does it, what does the trial need to look like for them to feel like this and it is fulfilling its responsibilities as part of this process . I think there are a number different ways that can play out. I dont know how exactly it will. To the extent of that i think that we may see some of these kinds of republicans that bill mentioned earlier play a big role in what happens, it is going to be in this process of working with mcconnell and then mcconnell working with minority leader Chuck Schumer to figure out what will the very detail oriented parts of this look like. Host you mentioned the crucial role of the courts in the nixon impeachment. So, we, of course, remember the famous lawsuit involving the release of the white house tapes. They ruled the tapes should be released and that produced the smoking gun tapes. Right now there are current lawsuits involving the principle of executive privilege. We know there have been a number of Administration Officials who refused to testify before the house. On related to the impeachment. But we just had a new York Appellate Court that ruled that years oft release 8 tax returns. The question is, on the trump impeachment, how do you see the role of the courts unfolding, either one, on the impeachment front or to take place within the next one or two months and therefore not be relevant or, what is your expectation in terms of the role the courts going into next years election . Elaine that is a great question. One, of course, difference is that trump has already admitted to having the phone call. He things is perfect. Ben is absolutely right. This will be fought on the appropriateness of that phone call and whether people think it is appropriate or not. With nixon it was a long slog getting to nixon. The courts were critical. I do not see this Supreme Court having as big an impact on this impeachment trial as it did on the nixon trial. However, there is another court involved and that is the Southern District of new york. They just today again, we have had rulings, they should release has that announcer trump to release his tax returns. The reason i think that is important is a goes back to the question bill answered. What, if anything, would break loose the public, ok . And, of course, one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Trump Campaign and presidency has been his actual financial status. Nobody in new york where i lived for many years can, nobody in new york city can figure out where this guys money comes from. No, really, honestly, nobody can. Finances, in fact, reveal something surprising. That could be the sort of thing that would move some of this Public Opinion. It would also, if you go back and you think about crime. Crimes always need to have motives. There needs to be a motive for wrongdoing. If you look at trumps history with russia and of course this ukraine thing is only a part of a bigger history with russia, on the one hand you can say, yes, president s have the right to change american foreignpolicy and bring it in a different direction. On the other hand, this has been such a strange way of going about changing american policy that we have all been wondered for some years now whether or not there is something going on there between trump and russia. And one of the things that could break that lose is the tax returns break that loose is the tax returns finally coming to light. Mentioned the role that chief Justice Roberts in presiding over the senate trial. Ben, you are longtime observer of the court. What do think roberts will be like as a presiding officer of this trial . Ben really interesting question. Like, nobody seeks to be o nthe thereme court or seeks to be chief justice so that he can preside at the senate at an impeachment trial. [laughter] know, if you are john roberts and you are really trying in a polarized rtvironment to keep the cou somewhat insulated from the political fray, having to go into the senate and sit there while, you know, people throw food at each other is the kind fleshortification of the that im sure he is not looking forward to. And im also confident that i his, you know, dignified institutionalist kind of hatwearing way he would want to do impeccably. So, remember, this is the guy who, when he flubbed a word in Barack Obamas inauguration, he went to the white house the next day to do the oath of office a second time to make sure they had gotten literally every word of it correct. And so, its actually a bit of a challenge, i think. Senateyou preside at a trial that is going to be as ugly and as bitter as this one in an environment that is quite toxic involving a highly toxic personality, and not grossly stain the institution that you represent . And heres the other thing. Bill rehnquist, his predecessor in the clinton impeachment, novel lucked into a solution to this problem which was that the ben majority leader and minority leader, i believe it was trent lott and tom daschle, is that right . To everyones surprise, when in a back room and came up with a very detailed list of procedures and answers to all questions that they had each presented to their caucuses. And the result was that the entire trial proceeded on the basis of unanimous consent. All the questions were kind of result that way. I think you can pretty safely say and the result was that rehnquist presided but really he did not do anything which was fine with him. He sat there in his robes and look to dignified and that was the end of it. I think we can pretty safely predict that that is not going to happen here, and that the two sides are not going to agree on a great deal. And that means that john roberts, at least in the first instance is going to have to issue a lot of rulings. And, so, i think that actually makes the problem worse. Hell be initially deciding the answers to a bunch of questions, subject, i believe, molly, correct me if i am wrong, but i think the rule is the presiding officer rules and then can be overruled by a vote of the senate. You could really imagine a situation in which roberts kind of upsets everybody. Rulings toserial over rupees judgments. But i think it is going to be a difficult situation for the chief justice, honestly. And i, judging also, again, with respect to the toxicity, you can really imagine the president tweeting bile at hime for every ruling against him. And so, i dont think that is moment, ifattractive you imagine those tweets, it is not a sort of attractive moment for comit between the branchesy relationshiprt of between the executive branch and the courts institutionally. So, i think it really is an interesting question and we will learn a great deal about john know, very his, you famous Political Savvy by how he navigates the situation. Host on that point we remember during the kavanaugh hearings i believe trump was calling and advice to the nominee during various breaks. Just wondering if trump would do the same thing with the chief justice. [laughter] ben one would hope the chief justice would not take those. Host bill, look into the future, how do think this and peace when affect the 2020 election . How does impeachment compare to other issues such as the state of the economy, cultural issues, immigration, the trade war and International Affairs . Bill [sighs] another call for a prediction. Thanks, boss. Let me just in no particular hand, when youne listen to the reports from the field about what the Democratic Candidates are hearing as they go around in the early states, they are all saying that they are not getting a lot of questions about impeachment. There are getting a lot of question is about health care, guns, and a bunch of other things that democratic primary voters are passionate about, but theyve sound is a price they have not gotten more, more questions or more demands on engagement. On impeachment. So, is it possible that even among democrats, this issue has a somewhat lower priority and will have less of an influence on the outcome of the election than many people inside the beltway suppose . I mean, we are focused on this issue to an extent that is not typical of the American People, as a whole. Keep an essential fact in mind. If the president is impeached by the house but not moved by the senate, he will be the first president in American History to be running for reelection with that sequence of events in t backdroph. Richard nixon was in his second term. Bill clinton was in his second term. Andrew johnson wasnt going anywhere. Molly could not get nominated. Bill right. Exactly. There has now, been a lively analytical debate with surprising people taking surprising sides on the question of whether the impeachment but nonconviction of bill clinton turned out to be a decisive disadvantage for al gore in the year 2000 because gore was in affect running for bill clintons third term, although he refused to admit that factor alain and i can continue to. I can that elaine and continue to debate that. Some people argue that but for the clinton affair gore would have been elected fairly easily. Others, including a lot of Political Science say the division in the popular vote was almost exactly what would have been predicted in the absence of that. And so, the one reasonably contemporary example from which we now draw some lessons yields no clear lessons. It is also the case that assuming even a relatively slow timetable, the senate trial will be over by early federal, early to mid february. Outnt see it stretching longer than that. Certainly by the end of february. Which means that there will between eight and nine months between the end of the trial and the actual vote. There are times for not only passions to cool. They wont cool, but they will simply be displaced onto other objects and areas of contention. And that is another reason to believe that it may not turn out to be decisive. And i go back to the point with which i began. The lateump is what tom wolfe would have called a man in full. And who he is, for for better and for worse, is so much a matter of public inspection and Public Knowledge that i wonder how much even this cataclysmic event is going to add to that, right . And it is possible that a house impeachment along party lines, a Senate Acquittal on party lines, will change a lot of peoples minds, but my hunch is it wont. Host so, molly, how do you think impeachment will affect the Senate Elections . We know mcconnell has a very near majority at this point and as several people mentioned there are number of vulnerable vulnerable, a few democrats as well. Do you think will be decisive one way or another . Molly it is a good question. I mean, i tended to agree with bills analysis of the the effects on the president ial race. I will also remind folks that increasingly the outcomes of senate and house elections in president ial years are correlated with what happens to the in the president ial race. In 2016, for example, it was the startedme since we popularly electing senators at the beginning of the 20th century that there were no states with a Senate Election where the Electoral College both led to a president ial candidate of one party and the senate, won by a candidate of the other party. They said that people voting behavior is, excuse me, correlated. They dont split tickets anymore p a lot of bills of whats happening at the president ial level was sort of filter down to the senate. That is not to say there are not some situations where it could matter. It is worth remembering that senators, the senators that are up for reelection in some of these close republican states, you know, they have different, takenaken they have different approaches to navigating the political challenges that are presented to them. Bill mentioned senator tillis before, who in general has continue to tack to the right in North Carolina. Then you have folks like Susan Collins in maine who has staked out a somewhat more moderate voting record in the senate this session in part to bolster her credentials and the as an independent. It will be difficult, i think, for some of the senators to exactly navigate these particular waters, but at the end of the day, a lot of what is going to happen for them and their races is going to be about what happens in the president ial race. Host if that were the case, then cory gardner and Susan Collins would both be toast because donald trump not going to win either of those states. Molly particular in the case of collins, that is why we have seen her not so much on the impeachment question, would do other things to differentiate herself. Its, colorado has been trendling blue more or less since gardner six years ago. Toall the democrats path taking control of the senate is not an impossible one but it is a tricky one because they also have to do things like defend the seat in alabama. Ine, you have written on threats to the integrity of the 2020 election in terms of hacking into Voter Registration databases, using social media to sow societal discord, spreading disinformation through facebook and twitter. What are the greatest threats that you worry about as we head into 2020 . Elaine well, darrell has written about these, too. From bookingsook on this topic. I think i look at this in two different ways, ok . On the question of the county itself, and protecting the actual voting day information from hacking, etc. , there has been quite a lot of movement in the state. More than half, more than half the states now have paper ballots. They have some protocols for what is called risk limiting audits which can be done right after the election. So, they have been working hard. But congress appropriate it 380 million last time around, too elections, but18 a lot of states have that money, and after a lot of groaning and delays, they have appropriated more money for this cycle. So, on the one hand, i think been a huge amount of progress since 2016 on the county itself. Problematic is more is the more generic issue of disinformation and what i would call digital voter suppression. Here i think the russians, the nians,e, the ira everybody in this makes have gotten more sophisticated. Likenk that the platforms facebook have not been able to catch up with this and have not really filled anybody with confidence that they can control this or they can weed out bad actors. I would applaud twitter for getting out of the political ad business altogether, which they did. But i think there and the dis information we are currently playing catch up. Years ago when i was in the government we worked on drug interdiction. Of course, what you learn about all these things is that the minute you find out a loophole someplace, the minute you find out where drugs are getting in, guess what . They just go to another place. It is just a constant thing. I think this is what we are facing on the, when it comes to disinformation. The one hope i have is that the voters themselves would get increasingly sophisticated and sophisticated and skeptical about this stuff they are seeing online. I dont know that there is any way we can judge that at this given but it is frankly, how quickly campaign moves, it is probably our only hope, because i do not have much hope that the disinformation part of election interference can be countered by the fbi, by legal, the normal legal means. It moves too quickly. It comes in then it disappears into thin air. So, im hoping that the voters will be appropriately skeptical. Host one last question for ben. Then we will open the floor to any questions are comments from the audience. Tomorrow the roger stern trial begins. You have noted in other contexts that some of the reductions we saw in the Mueller Report is based on evidence that apparently prosecutors wanted to present in this trial. Youthere any surprises that think would change the current political dynamic coming out of that trial . Ben well, the way you have asked the question the answer is no. The surprises are unlikely to change the current dynamic. There are i do think things we are going to learn in the presentation of evidence in this trial to it so, there are reductions in the Mueller Report that appear to relate to the roger stone trial that involve the president very personally receiving information about wikileaks. And there is a particular scene in which she is in a car driving to the airport he is in a car driving to the airport, and there is a call about a wikileaks release. Most of the defenses around us are redacted i think because of the roger stone case. And so, i think we are going to learn some interesting stuff butt, you know, not the emails, the interactions between Trump Campaign folks and wikileaks folks about the distribution of those emails directly or indirectly. Will it make a difference to anybody . Surely not. I think the people concerned about this, as bill described, this people know exactly what they think of donald trump and information handling and wikileaks and emails and the 2016 election. , short of roger stone standing up and saying yes, i did it, i colluded, i dont think it will change the way a lot of people think about this. Darrell ok. Lets open the floor to questions. Upfront, there is a gentleman with questions. Theres a microphone coming over. My name is peter. I would like somebody to address the issue of how the courts can be used to play this thing out beyond the point where it makes much different. Difference. Decisions oftwo threejudge panels at the court. The losing side would probably appeal to the full circuit and then the losing side at that level would probably appeal to the Supreme Court. The nixon tapes case took about 90 days to go from start to finish. Im wondering what the scenario would be in this particular instance. Thank you. Ben so i have bad news for you. Litigation is flawed. It is not a process that is designed to mediate realtime political disputes between the legislature and the executive playh, and it will not that role efficiently. Thats the bad news. Heres the good news. Might have a useful role to play anyway. The reason is twofold. The first is that this process is dragging on, so not addressing it efficiently doesnt necessarily mean not addressing it at all. The second is it is really, really important to establish some law in this area so that it is not possible in the future to be quite as defiant as the beingt administration is with congressional subpoenas. One of the problems, i guess some of you are enough to remember when the presidency was a little more normal [laughter] president sway they and congress resolved these issues was not through litigation, it was the combination of threats of litigation and withholding legislative consent to a judicial nominee or executive nominee, or withholding and appropriations request, some leverage within the normal four corners of the separation of powers. Ms sult was that immense numbers of these disputes got resolved every president ial term without a lot of formal law being creative. Created. We have the traditional legislative branch way of looking at the questions and traditional executive branch way of looking at the questions, and the result is a push and pull of politics. Now we dont have that anymore. One side says we will not negotiate anymore, we will define all subpoenas. That forces you to go to court. One thing about going to court is that it does actually make law. That donu find out mcgahn cannot simply refuse to by the way, i will do a prediction. The courts are not going to say its fine for don mcgahn to just refuse to show up. There is an authoritative the. Ial finding on it is much harder for the next person to do that. It is important for that reason. Finally, there is this one other thingshat can speed up significantly. Unlike an Appellate Court to which you have to appeal, so you litigate at the District Court level and then the right to appeal to the d. C. Circuit judge the second circuit, but the Supreme Court, you dont have the right. They have discretionary review over these cases. Everyone is assuming the Supreme Court will hear all these cases. Im confident that will not happen. They may hear one of them. The larger posture of the Supreme Court is to let the Appellate Courts just be the final word. So which one will rise to the level of the Supreme Court . Ben thats a level of prediction that i dont get in. [laughter] let me give you an example of one that i think is probably the other direction. Sure if i were a justice that i would be particularly interested in hearing one of these cases over the president s tax returns. A situation inr which there is some sort of meaningful Division Decision in the lower courts where there is a live question that requires you get involved. The bad news is it is going to be slow. The good news is, it is going to accelerate. With bensuld agree diagnosis on the difficulty on the part of congress using the a means to advancing congressional oversight goals in the short term. We knew that before this episode. Think would add is that one of the major consequences of the shift in the focus to what happened with the ukrainians is a differented up and new set of witnesses from whom congress had been able to get information because they do as have the same incentive don mcgahn does to align himself with the president. , and again, i agree with ben on the macro level about why these matter quite a bit, but in terms on of advancing the narrative of where we ended up, some of these fights are less important than they were if we didnt have this new set of facts about ukraine that came out in the past eight weeks. Darrell over here, a gentleman with a question. Eric hirschhorn. I have a comment and a question for the comment is for the two of you, at least. Al gore lost the election because he ran away from eight years of peace and prosperity. Thats my view. The question is, assume im donald trump and im looking at all this, i know that nothing thats happened before now has affected my base, my popularity, president , rating as and i say to myself, six months of this enables me to attack the democrats because im going to be acquitted in the senate. Six months of this enables me to attack the democrats for wasting the Congress Time and the peoples time on impeachment monday could be helping me build a wall, doing all the things that a lot of americans who dont like trumpcare about. Can you comment on that . Any member of the panel. I will be happy to comment on that. You just stated my worst fear, the fear that has led me on numerous occasions to write ,ublicly about why i thought from a political standpoint, moving to a formal impeachment process would be not good for democrats. I have not changed my view on that. What the net political effect is going to be, i cant tell you. I am afraid that democrats who think this will be a big political crux for them are fooling themselves. The information that has come out in the past week about attitudes in the swing states only fortified that judgment. In thees, and ill aisle. Im from one plus one media in ukraine. I have a question about ukraine in the process. Mr. Trump every day says it is a perfect call, and mr. Zelensky repeated many times there was no pressure on him. Possible good reaction for ukraine in this process to save bipartisan relationships them, and what could possibly go wrong . [laughter] withkraine become again, or without israel, and and flirt influencer in u. S. Politics . Great question. Lots of things. I suspect lots of us can have a view on this question. Let me just offer a few thoughts at random. What we have learned just in the past couple of weeks suggests that there is an important piece of what we call the back story, and that is President Trumps antipathy to ukraine that was 2016,f the struggles in aided and abetted by some of his aides such as his former Campaign Manager paul manafort, trying to shift the blame from efforts tokraine for undermine mr. Trumps campaign. This, ukraines new president has found himself in an almost impossible situation. Visavis the white house. Thats the bad news. The good news, and we saw this andork in a very practical effective way in september, is that the congress of the United States, both my cracks and republicans, is much more both democrats and republicans, is much more sympathetic than the president is. They made it clear to the white house that having authorized the military assistance for ukraine, having appropriated the funds that the white house had better release those funds to ukraine, and it just took a few days of bipartisan outrage and pressure to get almost 400 million released. Think in the battle for public a very, ukraine enjoys significant advantage over russia. Most americans are aware of the fact that russia seized crimea, that russian backed forces have initiated and continued an andult against the unity territorial integrity of ukraine, and there is not a lot of sympathy for the russian side of this story. I think if mr. Zelensky is smart , he will make sure that there is a steady stream of senior officials talking with Senior Republicans and senior democrats and perhaps not worrying so much about the white house. Frankly, i dont think theres anything president zelensky can do to overcome President Trumps antipathy to his country. I say that with deep regret. Near the back, a gentleman with his hand up. Two procedural questions. Might the presiding justice have the authority to rule the vote is confidential . And secondly, is the required number to convict two thirds of the senate or two thirds of those present . On the second question, i believe it is two thirds of those present, two thirds of the senate itself. There are relatively few Senate Procedures that apply to senators chosen and sworn as opposed to senators present and voting. On the question of could the chief justice rule that the vote it was allt wasky related it articulated earlier that the chief justice doesnt get to decide what the questions that he rules on and the motions are. Voteuestion of whether the could be under the existing rules, many of the deliberations will be secret. That is the kind of default position. Of whether the vote itself could be secret runs into one of the few Senate Procedural questions prescribed in the constitution itself, which senate to of the force a recorded vote. I dont really see a possibility of the vote ending up secret, putting aside things that folks like mitt romney said, if a vote was secret, it would be a different story. Elaine i have one small thing to add. In the clinton and speech impeachment, senator Arlen Specter did not nay, he voted not proved. Rehnquist had to prove that meant not guilty. Senatorsmagine some were voting abstain, not proved, you know, a variety of things. Then chief Justice Roberts has to decide how to count that vote. Molly at the end of the day, i dont think the ultimate outcome of this whole episode is going to come down elaine not going to come down to it. It is just something to note that there are things out there. And of course, there is the question which bill brought up some weeks ago and a wall street journal piece, which is, if a vote to convict fails, would there be a censure vote . A censure vote in the senate is 50 plus one as opposed to an Impeachment Vote. The other question then is would they move from that vote to a censure vote . The reason i think thats important to keep in mind is that we have talked a lot of politics and Public Opinion, but theres another issue here, which is congress has to decide, do they want to lay down some markers about how president s can behave . Up thiswant to give much and let this president s behavior on this issue establish a precedent for future president s . That is the bigger issue. It is not likely to be an issue the public will give much guidance on. Yet, i think its the kind of issue that would resolve in maybe a profile encourage here or there in the senate, and unexpected vote. As theres a remarked, reason why profiles encourage is such a short book. [laughter] elaine you can see bill and i have been back and forth on this a lot. Darrell all right. Near the back . Good evening. I would like to know how you see the role of Artificial Intelligence in securing the election 2020 . Thank you. Elaine the role of what . Artificial intelligence. Im not sure i see the relevance and that in terms of how it will play out. Certainly in terms of disinformation, ai, and bots did play a role in disseminating false narratives, and i would expect continuation of that going forward, but its hard to prove the election is caused by things like that. I personally dont think the 2016 election was decided on things like that and i dont think the 2020 election will be decided on that either. Let me add my Worst Nightmare to that answer. Many of you have probably been following the development of what are called deepfakes, and application of Artificial Intelligence to especially video recordings such that it becomes to manufacturesy videos of public figures saying things they never set, and it becomes harder and harder to detect the fake. 2020 is thatabout there will be a proliferation of such video interventions into our president ial campaign. Liehe old saying goes, the can make it halfway around the world before the truth gets out dead out of bed. Darrell another question. My name is valerie. Im a student at washington adventist university, a communications and Honors College major. A good resume. [laughter] i have a question for mr. Bill. He mentioned the dynamic can change with the ratings, changing in Television Journalism. We hear a lot about fake news right now. We have Television Journalism being judged on all sides. How can we apply robinsons theory to theo reliability or credibility of information to the public . Will the drama be what swings one way or the other way in the impeachment . The microphone was a little fuzzy. Im not sure that i heard the full question. Could you just in one or two sentences restate the heart of your question . I know you have prepared a cantion, but see if you speak straight into the microphone so i can hear it. Im not as young as you are. [laughter] thank you. What im asking is will the public, their opinion, that 45 , with Television Journalism and the video media theory, will that swing the vote . Will that change . Will d drama, the pessimism already in society towards trusting television, towards trusting news networks, will that be something that swings the boat vote, especially with everything President Trump says about fake news . Sure,obviously, im not but here are a couple of sobering thoughts. First of all, there was a survey that i found a survey result week, andt saw last if i were back in my office, i could come up with the accurate citation for you. As i said, i found it deeply disturbing. Asked, do you think that what President Trump has done is something unusual, or do most politicians behave this way . Six in 10 said most politicians behave this way. This pervasive cynicism about political conduct i think is one of the things that per firstly perversely is shoring up the president s approval. A lot of people who think hes think itscharged business as usual and therefore doesnt rise to the level of something that a president should be removed from the office for. The second discouraging note is that people have divided up based on the news outlets that they find trustworthy and credible. That maps almost perfectly onto partisan preferences. Disturbingly few americans over the next year are going to turn to news sources they disagree with the first sources of Additional Information. That suggests to me that they are much more likely to be reinforced in their current views than they are to have those views changed. The only thing that can change something that occurs in a neutral medium like cspan, which is trusted across the board, and that would have to be simply watching public hearings and saying, oh my god, i didnt know it was this bad. Torell are you sucking up cspan because they are broadcasting this . [laughter] bill i have been on cspan four times in the past week. Sucking up to them is not something i feel necessary. [laughter] darrell we like cspan. Right here is a question. Thursday microphone coming right here. There is a microphone coming right here. Im jonathan. It was mentioned earlier that Party Divides are much deeper now than they were in the past. However, if we listen to some of recently, especially with the crisis going on in syria between the kurds and the turks, we have seen people from both sides of the political spectrum agree that President Trumps actions were deplorable. Do you think this could lead to possible cross party teamwork during the impeachment hearings . No. Thank you. [laughter] you ask a yes or no question, you get a yes or no answer. Partisanship is not perfect. Even perfect partisanship is not perfect. Is, however, remarkably pervasive. I think the striking thing about the syria withdrawal announcement is that it came in ,he midst of the ukraine matter get offended the president s base, including key members of both houses of congress, and it affected the relationship with the ongoing ukraine scandal not at all. Exampleally picked an that we have a kind of weirdly controlled test of. If this were a situation where they have to defend him over here, but then he pierces the bubble, the air goes out of the balloon, it has a cross pollination effect with willingness to consider an impeachment process seriously, surely whats happened over the last three weeks would have been the place where we saw that. We didnt see it at all. Darrell ok. I think we have time for one more question. If you can get the microphone over to him. If the senate votes not to what, inhe president , your view, will be the longterm impact and consequence on the Republican Party and its popularity and on the Democratic Party . Darrell that was a great closing question. What do you think . Elaine well, i think very shortly after that, we will have an answer to that, because we will have an election. I think if they vote, which is likely at this point, not to convict him, then i think all the action will turn instantly to the 2020 elections and we will see. If, as bill fears, there is damage to the democrats, or if things simply president this is a who is unique in many aspects, but one particularly relevant. He has never passed 50 in approval. Aspect to lopsided this because of course, california is skewed, it skews the whole country because it has gotten so big and favorable to the democrats. Trump is not even he is so hostile to california, he doesnt even want to give them money for the wildfires out there. This is an odd situation. The fact of the matter is we will see in 2020. If there is a democrat elected, i do believe the democrats will take the house. Then i think there will be a real selfexamination in the Republican Party. Their demographics are not good. They have their highest levels of support. Trump has his highest levels of approval among people 65 and older. Donehave consistently not well in the younger portion of the population, with the people in the middle kind of splitting 5050. If in fact this place out and in fact trump loses and the democrats take the senate and keep the house, then i think there is a real turning point in the Republican Party. But bear this in mind, american Political Parties dont tend to die. They just tend to kind of morph into Something Else. Partywill be a republican around, it will just probably look different if this happens. This sounds like a good exit question for all of us. Let me just offer some concluding reflections. I think whats at stake is the future of the Republican Party, but more than the future of the , here isn Party Something for all of us to think about. The American Republic is now in its 230th year. The first 184 years of our had one incident of impeachment. , we havest 46 years had three. Is this telling us something . My fear is that it is. Unusual number of president s elected during this period with less than a majority of the popular vote. We have had two president s who have taken office with less than a plurality of the popular vote. When you piled that on top of the extraordinary increase of polarization that has occurred during this period, i think it would be overthetop to talk about a legitimation crisis. I do think this is pointing to that allemic problems americans, republicans, democrats, independents, and the leaders thereof are going to have to think about seriously in the years ahead. Im not sure how long we can go riskingway without serious damage to the entire constitutional order, not just one political party. Darrell on that note, i want to thank bill and elaine, molly, and ben for sharing their views and thank you for your great questions. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [chatter] chaircer today, former of the dnc donna brazil and former White House Strategic Communications rector mercedes slap examined todays Divisive Political climate and what can be done to restore civility. They will be speaking at an event at Shepherd University in west virginia. Watch that at 6 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. This evening, President Trump will hold a Campaign Rally with voters and supporters in lexington, kentucky. Watch his comments live at 7 00 p. M. Here on cspan. On facebook, 120 6 Million People were exposed to russian manipulation attempts in the 2016 election. 20 Million People on instagram, 10 million tweets on twitter to 6 million followers. We know russia attacked voting systems in all 50 states. We know they targeted misinformation at specific people. Americans some misinformation in the final weeks leading up to the election. Thats what we know. What we dont know is what effect, if any, this had on the election, on the 2018 midterms, what effect it will have been 2020, and not just in the United States but liberal democracies around the world. Announcer tonight at 8 00 on the communicators on cspan2. Announcer heres a look at our prime time schedule on the cspan networks. Starting at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan, remarks by former president bill clinton, former secretary of state hillary clinton, and Supreme Court sstice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on nomination and her experience on the Supreme Court. Then, a discussion about current threats to the u. S. Political system and how to safeguard. Cspan3,hursday on protests in the vietnam war era. Announcer cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that you. T coming up tuesday morning, former Florida Republican congressman Bill Mccollum will join us to discuss the politics of president ial impeachment. Also, nancy soderberg, former Clinton Administration National Security official, talks about the National Security implications of the ukraine phone call. Then executive director gabe ross will share the findings of a new poll on public understanding and opinion of the u. S. Supreme court. Watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern tuesday morning. At cspan. Org, we are making it easier for you to watch cspans coverage of the impeachment inquiry and the administrations response. If you missed any of our live coverage, go to the impeachment inquiry page at cspan. Org impeachment for video on demand. We have added a tally from the Associated Press showing where each House Democrats stands on the impeachment inquiry against President Trump. Follow on our webpage at cspan. Org impeachment. It is your fast and easy way to watch cspans unfiltered coverage anytime. Next, a discussion on what is being done to combat extremism and domestic terrorism