Frank bowman on procedures for Senate President ial impeachment trial. As always, we will take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. Washington journal is next. Is next. [video clip] and courage, that is how i will make you proud every day as you are nominee and as the first woman president of the United States of america. Host the gender question taken head on by senator Elizabeth Warren at last nights debate in iowa 19 days before democratic voters cast the first in the nation vote in caucuses in that state. We want to asked all of you, can a woman beat President Trump in 2020 . Democrats, 2027488000. Republicans, 2027488001. And independents, 2027488002. You can text us with your first name, city, and state at 2027488003. You can also join the conversation if you go to twitter at or go to twitter at cspanwj facebook. Com cspan for. Lets start with one of the first questions, it went to senator sanders with him to respond to the allegation made by senator Elizabeth Warren that in a private oneonone conversation in december 2018, he told her a woman could not be elected president in 2020. [video clip] as a matter of fact, i did not say it. I dont want to waste a lot of time because this is what donald trump and may be of the media want. Anybody that knows me knows it is incomprehensible that i would think a woman could not be president of the United States. Go to youtube today, there is video of me 30 years ago talking about how a woman could become president of the United States. To senatordeferred warren. It was a movement to draft senator warren to run for president. To stay back. Ded senator warren decided not to run and iran. Hillary clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes. How could anybody not believe a woman could become president of the United States . Thisy of the women on stage or any of the men on this stage win the nomination, i hope that is not the case, i hope it is me. If they do, i will do everything in my power to make sure they are elected in order to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of our country. Senator sanders, i want to be clear here. You are saying you never told senator warren a woman could not win the election. That is correct. Youenator warren, what did think when senator warren told you a woman could not win the election . I disagreed. Bernie is my friend and i am not here to try and fight with bernie. This question about whether or not a woman can be president has been raised and it is time for us to attack it head on. I think the best way to talk about who can win is by looking at peoples winning record. Can a woman beat donald trump . Look at the men on the stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election they have been in are the women. [applause] and the only person on this stage who has beaten an incumbent republican any time the past 30 years is me. Here is what i know, the real danger we face as democrats is picking a candidate who cannot pull our Party Together or someone who takes for granted big parts of the democratic constituency. We need a candidate who will excite all parts of the Democratic Party, bring everyone in and give everyone a democrat to believe in. That is my plan and that is why i am going to win. Host front page of the washington times, warren says democrats need a president to beat trump. Senator Elizabeth Warren called the men in the president ial field losers and said the party needs to turn to a woman to go up against President Trump this year. Jack in rhode island, a republican. Can a woman beat President Trump in 2020 . See. R in 2020, we shall if the economy stays strong or slightly stronger, donald trump gets reelected. As far as the 3 million more popular votes for Hillary Clinton, those were in the states of new york and california in areas that are heavily city oriented. One other final point. Sure, a woman can win the presidency, but that depends on the economy. Host because it has nothing to do with gender, is what you are saying . Caller say again . Host because it has nothing to do with gender and has everything to do with policy . Caller yeah, i was a big porter of this is thatcher mrs. Thatcher. This should bother you, the media covers joe biden. That guy stammers and stutters i dont know how many times last night. They cover for him because they want him to be the nominee. You dont say anything about that, they want him to be the nominee, but he does not have againstina to go up donald trump in a campaign. Donald trump is a ferocious campaigner that never stops working because his father he said at one point he got it from his father, sleeping is a waste of time, that is his fathers quote. Host lee roy, good morning to you. I am not very impressed with any of the democrat candidates. I think President Trump has done a lot of good for our country. Thank you very much. Insidehe Washington Post the newspapers this morning writes this. For many voters, supporting a woman for president is not an easy decision. With democrat so eager to defeat a president they say they see as a racist, sexist bully, many say they wonder whether the safest bet to defeat him is a man. I wonder if you agree, disagree with that. Jeff from indianapolis, democratic caller. Caller good morning. Host go ahead. Caller the caller from rhode island, he is trying to say people who live in cities and urban areas are less american than other parts of the country. Trump. Can beat donald i think a dogcatcher could beat donald trump. He is probably the most corrupt, flawed, immoral president this country has produced. Been accused by 17 different women of sexual assault, he is a thief, in cahoots with president putin. A woman did beat him last time, 3 million votes. Yes, donald trump is a bully and they are definitely not the party of Ronald Reagan or the dwight d. Eisenhower anymore, they are the party of reagan. Host some newspapers speculating Elizabeth Warren brought up this issue not so much to have a feud with Bernie Sanders, but to take on the question that possibly voters in iowa are mulling themselves and this is from the washington times, this has voters in iowa are mulling their options with many caucusgoers beginning to tune in and show up at candidate events. Are firmly decided on their candidate while the rest of the respondents said they are up to supporting a different candidate. Rob in new york, democratic caller, what do you think . Can a woman beat President Trump in 2020 . Caller i dont think any of the woman women running currently can beat donald trump. I am impressed with Elizabeth Warren and i would be more so if she dialed back this forceful medicare for all when it should be some kind of option within obamacare. President trump fights dirty and dick nixonlike tactics. Fighty is not the way to President Trump and i think when we saw this debate last night, it seemed everybody was nicey niceynicey. Everybody has to go low and fight against this guy fighting fire with fire. Thank you for cspan. Host a little bit more from last nights debate between senators warren and sanders on the electability of a woman and joe biden chiming in. [video clip] does anybody in their right mind think a woman cannot be elected president . Nobody believes that. Hillary clinton got 3 million more votes than trump. Who believes a woman cannot win . The real question is how do we beat trump . The only way we beat trump is by a campaign of energy and excitement and a campaign that has, by far, the largest voter turnout in the history of this country. I believe our campaign has the strongest grassroots movement. Senator warren, i want to give you the final word. I do think it is the right question, how do we beat trump. Women candidates have outperformed men candidates in competitive races. In 2018, we took back the house, we took back state houses because of women candidates and women voters. Dont deny that the question is there. In the 1960s, people asked could a catholic when . Asked if anple africanamerican could win and both times, the Democratic Party stepped up and yes i got behind their candidate and we changed america, that is who we are. Vice president biden, go ahead. Win. Agree women can the best group i ever campaign for in terms of confidence and the question is who can bring the Party Together . Afghan americans, brown, black, women, gay, straight, the fact of the matter is i would argue in terms of endorsements around the country, endorsements wherever we go, i am the one that has the broadest coalition of Anyone Running up here in this race. Host we will turn to all of you. Dan in virginia. What do you think of that exchange . Can a president beat a woman beat President Trump in 2020 . Caller i think a woman could win, but i dont think it is the ones on the stage, particularly Elizabeth Warren, she does seem like she is pulling ahead, but her statements about forgiving College Loan Debt in upsets my wife and i and my daughter, we is in college because took pains to not accumulate student debt. Intent is for them to graduate without student debt. The real problem is the cost of college. Say basically to everyone who has student debt at this point in 2021, you are forgiven, but all of those it is up to the next president to forgive . That is a huge bailout, it doesnt make sense at all. That bothers me. That is pulling at peoples heartstrings. I dont think the ideas they are throwing out address the real concerns people have. Host you said Elizabeth Warren appears to be pulling ahead, the 4 top candidates in iowa seem to can the race seems to be acrosstheboard between senator sanders, former Vice President biden, senator sanders, and pete buttigieg. They seem to be in a dead heat in iowa. We will go to james in tennessee. Good morning to you. What do you think . Caller good morning. I think the people who have to debate trump have to call him for what he is. Host who is best to do that . Will get on the stage and talk to trump like she talks to somebody else. All him a racist, call him pedophile. Rapist, a ripest everything he called everyone else. Dallas, texas, a republican. Your turn. Caller yes, maam. In reference to a woman being president , i think it is notible, but i dont think with host we are listening to you, turn down the tv. Caller in reference to a woman being president , i think it is y possible, but not beating trump, a woman, not even a man can beat trump. Host why . Caller why . All the things iump stands for, that is what stand for, that is what americans American Values are all about, trump. Was saying trump this,cheater, that he was just saying ugly things about our that he was corrupted, president is not corrupted. And that he is not a nice person, he knows President Trump knows who he is dealing with. Do you think the devil is an that he brings the devil and even the it is wellknown among religions, the devil comes in the form of beauty. Will continue our conversation with all of you, can a woman beat President Trump in 2020 . An update on impeachment and what will happen today. In the house, the speaker has decided she will hold a vote today on the impeachment managers. She will announce the managers and the house will vote on them. That will happen about 12 30 eastern time when the debate and vote will happen. Then the speaker will sign articles of impeachment around 5 00 p. M. At that point, after that, the house impeachment managers bring the articles into the Senate Chamber. This is a ceremonial procession from across the capital rotunda over to the senate. What also could happen this week according to the newspapers is the senate could swear in the chief Justice John Roberts and all 100 senators for the senate trial. Senator mcconnell has said opening arguments will not begin until next tuesday, after the Martin Luther king holiday. Tuesday, january 21, is when opening arguments could begin. What does this procession look like . Take a look at 1999 when the house managers then, led by henry hyde in the center behind the man with the mustache leading the procession of house managers, there were 13, from the house side to the Capitol Rotunda over to the senate. Lets watch. And these are the house ins is where they present this highprofile procession, the articles of impeachment. 1999, there were 4 of them. Today, there will be 2 articles of impeachment that will be brought over to the senate. Once the senate trial begins, who will be representing President Trump . According to the papers, they will be led by the white house lawyer Pat Cipollone as well as his personal lawyer and Patrick Philbin is also expected to be in the Senate Chamber along with michael, a deputy, and there is some speculation and according to the papers, President Trump would like Alan Dershowitz to be part of his defense team. We interviewed mr. Dershowitz not that long ago. He said he has not been contacted had not been contacted yet at the time about representing the president and spoke about why he did not think President Trump should be impeached if you are interested in watching that. Whether or not the senate trial includes witnesses is still to be determined. As you know, there are 4 gop senators open to calling witnesses to voting to approve that that would give includes lisa murkowski, lamar alexander, Susan Collins of maine. Open toted cruz is also witnesses. The Washington Post notes on tuesday, mr. Mcconnell met with a small group of Senate Republicans including senator ted cruz who told leaders as well as as long as democrats witness on. Eciprocity push for bolton to appear with others. Yesterday at last nights amy klobucharor. Alked about impeachment [video clip] when i look at the issue, it is whether or not we will be witnesses. E if our republican colleagues will not allow witnesses, they might as well give the president a crown and scepter. They might as well make him king. The last time i checked, our country was founded on the idea think about this trial and was we are facing, his name joseph welch from humble beginnings, the son of immigrants. He was the one who went to the Joseph Mccarthy hearings and when mccarthy was blacklisting people and going after people because of their political beliefs or suppose it political beliefs, there was only one man, joseph welch stood up and looked at mccarthy and said have you no sense of decency . Have you no sense of decency . This is a decency check on our government. This is a patriotism. Host one other update for you on impeachment according to the washington times, senator Mitch Mcconnell does have the republican votes he needs to pass rules for the senate trial we will talk more about this in our last hour of the washington journal with a historian about impeachment. We will take your questions and comments then. For now, we are focusing on last. Ights democratic debate gender was brought up several times. Senator Elizabeth Warren is saying the question needed to be taken on head on. Sherry in california, independent, good morning to you. Go ahead. I have never called before. I think a woman could be president. Afters point, i think trump, we need a woman to be president. They comment the comment i wanted to make was about obamacare. If ita heart attack and was not for obamacare, i would not be alive. I seriously think if trump could change the name from obamacare dumpety doo, he would not have such a stink about it. He does not like anything with obamas name on it. Host which candidate do you trust to support the Affordable Care act . Socalled obamacare . Which of the candidates do you trust . Caller i am seriously confused. Y all of them i really am. I have not decided who i will. Ote for at this point i dont think we should be running to get trump out of office. He has been impeached. They should go there in the middle of the night and take him out of there. Host do you have any hesitation on voting for a woman . No, i dont. I did, but i dont. These women do understand the workings of washington, the importance of how we handle our our allies and russia. I dont think these are stupid women. I think they are very smart and it would be nice to have some integrity in the white house. Host david in maryland, democratic caller. Caller good morning. A woman can be the president of the United States of america, but just like joe biden said last night, what we really need is someone who can bring the country together, someone who can unite the country. We dont need an egotistic person. Trump is a corrupt man, he should be taken out of office. Why should we continue to be in a racist country . Sayingan from texas is america stands for the values of trump. Is she saying america is a racist country . Form. Vil will come in any trump is the devil. Man who said i protected preexisting conditions, a big lie. He knows he is going to be prosecuted once he leaves office for all his crimes. What should he do . He should stay in office so the time period expires. I think democrats really need to come together. And unity isgether the major thing americans should stand for. Host kim in new jersey, republican. What is your comment . Caller i think the question is wrong. It is not can a woman, it is which woman and i dont think there is anyone Strong Enough, man or woman on the democratic side that will actually beat. Rump thank you for taking my call. Host tell us why. Why dont you think there is a Strong Enough candidate, man or woman . Caller i dont think there is enough unity within the party on the democratic side. You have people who are extremely progressive and anybody who is more moderate, byy are actually beaten down various aspects of the media. I think they are leaning more towards a progressive landscape. Host as a republican, are you open to voting for someone else besides President Trump . Caller i actually think he is doing a good job. You dont have to like the person. What he is doing and through policies and the people he has, things are working out. I just received from information from my Retirement Fund and did very well and doing very well. Even if you are not looking at the dow, the s p. I am a retired nurse, on disability. I went from 6 figures to know figures to disability. I have been all the way across the gamut. I am seeing good things happening. Our family is made up of nurses, engineers, teachers, police accountants. Ines, everybody is voting for trump. I dont know who in the world they are getting to respond to these polls where it is only 50 . I think there is a lot of people that are the silent majority and they are afraid of being worse for or supporting trump. Host would you be open to another businessman, that being Mike Bloomberg . Caller no. Not bloomberg. Like a just as i say nanny state. I think he has done some good things. I forget which medical school it was, but he is paying for people to go through medical school at no charge. I think he has done good things, i just dont think he is the person for the position at this time either. Host we will go to mike, niagara falls, new york. Democratic caller. Caller hello . Host you are on the air, it is your turn. Caller thank you. I agree with your republican caller that was on the air, with a lot of what she just said. I am a 60yearold democrat whose father was a local Campaign Manager for john f. Ennedy i have been a democrat my whole life and i am so embarrassed by liberal democrats, not all democrats, liberal democrats have behaved that it makes me sick. I voted for donald trump the last time he was elected because i could not see us headed towards open borders and many other things the liberals want. I am going to vote for donald trump again because i dont like the way he has been treated by the press or by the liberal democrats. Paying people to protest, all kinds of Different Things that go on. The man is a bad communicator, but his ideals are good. He has the right state of mind. That is what brings you to believe nobody can beat donald trump in the next election, man or a woman. That is my thing. Host the president at his rally yesterday in michigan also had something to say about this exchange or this back and forth between senators warren and sanders about gender. Here is what he told the crowd. [video clip] according to elizabeth , who hasas warren somewhat less indian blood in none. An i do, and i have we hit her hard. I hit her too early. She is not going anywhere. According to her bernie said i dont believe he said this. I dont know him. I dont particularly like him. He is a nasty guy, but i dont believe he said it. It is not his deal. She said bernie stated strongly a woman cannot win for president. A woman can win for president. That could happen. Who knows. She said a woman cant win. I dont believe bernie said that. It is not the kind of thing he would say. If you want to keep america safe, just about republican. We are doing so well. We are doing so well. Host trump last night in wisconsin. The president talking to his supporters. If you missed it, you can go to our website, cspan. Org. Can a woman beat President Trump in 2020 . James, independent, what do you think . Isler i think that trump absolutely despicable and i definitely support his agenda. He is exactly right. Liar. Is not a guarantee you warren is making that jazz up. She is an absolute liar. Look at the things she lied about, got fired because she was pregnant, she is native american, that is a bunch of bs. I absolutely think a woman can be president and probably will years. He next 15, 20 none of these will be. If the democrats wanted to elect a woman president out of this bunch this year, they should have gotten behind tulsa Gabbert Gabbert because she has common sense. Host that supports emilys list tweeted out after questioning womens electability, i hope we can put the debate to the bed and acknowledge what we learned last cycle, women can and have won all across the country. Independentom mike, in georgia, gabbert is the only woman who could beat trump. She will never be supported by mainstream democrats because she does not agree with all the giveaways. Denise says what America Needs is a real president , not one with an ego, childish, causing feuds, etc. , someone who has leadership. Mike freeman, the house demonstrated their ability to conduct fruitful investigations and pass bills. Is time to robert, independent. There is this report bernie said he could not win. Is there any audio or video recording of him having said it . If not, where did the support come from . Host it is a he said, she said situation because there was just the two of them in the room. Senator warren saying he said it , there was a conversation about who could beat President Trump and he said he did not think a woman could beat President Trump and she said she disagreed with him. Caller in any event, there is no recording, so we do not know how the phrasing went. That is my question. Hi, democratic caller, anthony. Caller hi. Host good morning, go ahead. Caller i think a president could be the president , especially a president that lies 60 of the time. Trump is a big liar and all republicans need to wake up. Host here is what senator klobuchar, the other female senator on the state had to say about a woman being president. Caller [video clip] i hear that. That is why i have addressed it from the state. You dont have to be the tallest person in the room, James Madison was 54. You dont have to be the skinniest or the loudest person, you have to be competent and when you look at the facts, michigan has a woman governor and she beat a republican. Kansas has a woman governor and she beat kris kobach and her name, i am very proud to know her and her name is governor kelly, thank you. Be confidente to to win and know what you are doing. When you look at what i have race i have won every every place every time. I have won in the reddest districts, suburban areas, rural areas, brought people with me. They know i bring people with me and finally every Single Person i have beaten, my republican opponents have gotten out of politics for good. I think that sounds pretty good with the guy we have in the white house right now. Mississippi,in independent. Can a woman beat President Trump in 2020 . Caller they could, but i dont think it is going to happen. Gabbard was a good one, but she has too much sense. I find it rich they are calling trump the devil and telling people to go to church when they are wanting to murder babies in the womb. Have a good one. Republican. Iana, good morning. Caller good morning. Thank you very much that you are taking my call. I am a strong supporter of mr. Trump because whatever he said,. E did it becausecan be president a woman has the same quality. People that called over here and say mr. Trump is the devil and all of that, look at the alternative. Tv and hewas on threatened the ukrainian people and all of that. Nd he got away with it the bottom line is the sad thing is look at the alternative. You dont have to like President Trump who he is, just look at what he has done. That is my comment. Int lets go to al illinois. What are your thoughts . Caller thank you for taking my call. Only childther of my in iraq when they were attacked. I am completely alone in my situation. Were no us there casualties there, but my only child. I dont know if he is alive or he is dead. Damn trump. God damn trump. Host i am so sorry for what is happening to your family and not knowing what is happening to your son. The issue of iran is one that could be debated this week in the senate. The house passed a resolution limiting the presidency the president s use of force against the regime. Leading the charge is tim kaine, mike lee and they write an opinion piece in the Washington Post, the senate owes our troops a debate on war powers and what they write is this. They have it backwards, congressional debate and deliberation are designed precisely to protect our troops and their families. After more than 18 years of continuous wars, we know too well the sacrifices made by our best and brightest. Is to ordertates our troops into harms way again, we should at least have a debate. Our resolution puts a simple statement before the senate, we should not be at war with iran unless Congress Authorizes it. If senators are unwilling to have this debate because a war vote is hard or opinion polls suggest their vote might be unpopular, how dare we order our troops to courageously serve and risk all. This vote could come next week. It does have the votes to come to the floor. 4 in the Republican Party have defected, that includes susan lee,ns, todd young, mike rand paul will support with democrats this resolution to limit the president s use of force against iran to 30 days unless there is an imminent threat. Here is the president last night in wisconsin talking about his decisionmaking and iran. [video clip] the democrats are doing Everything Possible to disparage what we did with the hit on this monster. Many of the young men and women you see Walking Around without arms and legs were done by soleimani. That is what he loved, he loved the roadside bomb. That is what he loved. Thousands and thousands and thousands in iraq, afghanistan, roadside bombs. Great percentages of people do not have legs right now and arms bitch. Of this son of a [applause] and the democrats should be outraged by soleimanis evil crimes, not the decision to end his life. He was a general, he was this. Number one, he was not supposed to be there. He was a designated terrorist by president obama, who did not do anything about it, as usual. As usual. They dont do anything they designate and they dont do anything about it. He should have been killed 20 years ago. Here is the story with. If i did not kill him and lets 3, 4, 5 embassies or bases or thousands of people or hundreds of people or two people were killed, they would have said trump should have taken him out. Anything we do, they go the opposite. We kill him, and that was precision. Some people thought it went too fast. We kill him and they say what a horrible we did not kill him and they say what a horrible thing. Host President Trump at his rally yesterday talking about iran. Back to our conversation with all of you about last nights democratic debate where the issue of whether or not a woman afterwin in 2020 came up allegations were made by senator warren that in a private conversation with senator sanders, he told her he did not think a woman could win. Catherine tweets wondering if we can stop with defining a, schmitz by gender. It is not like accomplishments by gender. Democraticfemale candidate can beat trump because of ideology issues. Have other messages from our viewers, joe from new york, i say it is time for a woman to be president. They cannot screw it up anymore than the men have the last 250 years. I think a woman could win, i did not like warrens attack on bernie. A candidate should win on policy, not on gender. Jeanette in georgia, what . Doyou think in georgia, what do you think . Caller bernie did not say a woman could win, bernie pointed out that sexism is a problem in our country and what i find infuriating. I am a bernie supporter and i was happy with Elizabeth Warren, i would have voted for her if she was the nominee. I would have voted for a joint ticket between bernie and warren. Smearingts me because bernie with something Hillary Clinton said was part of the reason she did not win was sexism and she is using it as an attack against bernie when she is low in the polls and we are three weeks out from iowa, it is a sexist attack in and of itself. Sexism exists in this country, racism exists. We have to stop attending pretending as if we dont have societal problems. I prefer to hear about policy and that is why i support Bernie Sanders. He is going full bore into what the ailments are in this country and he is the only candidate fighting for all of us and not just trimming the fat around the some or only Holding People accountable, he is going all in for all americans and for her to attack him like that is sexist in and of itself. He never said that and it is disrespectful and disgusting she would do that just to win. Host democratic collar. Lily also a democrat in fort lauderdale. Your turn. Good morning. In fort time for lily lauderdale. Let me move on to brent in new york, independent. Caller good morning. I am a ross perot independent, a viewer of cspan since the early 1990s. Cspan was a catalyst for me becoming an independent voter. I would like to know where all these people that are against the vote to limit the war powers of the president , where they were the last two administrations. All of a sudden it is a problem with President Trump. As far as can a woman win, i believe a woman could, but if it is a democrat or establishment republican, i dont see how because that is who has been running our country for how long now . Lopsidedto all these trade agreements, our jobs were nafta. Erseas, when it comes to war, both tied ourrations hands. Ahnds they had free reign to kill our people and nothing was done and we sent pallets of cash over there. Have none of the callers mentioned this moment, but it played in the papers. At the end of the debate where Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders approach each other. He reaches out to shake her hand they have ars note pointed conversations, but they never shake hands. They leave the stage and the handshake never happens. The papers playing that moment up from last nights debate after they sparred over what was said in the oneonone meeting in december of 2018. Michael flynn, the former National Security advisor for President Trump is withdrawing his guilty plea according to lawyers in a motion filed late tuesday. He cited the vindictiveness in breach of the plea agreement one week after the justice sentenced him to up to half a year in prison. That is the latest on his trial and sentencing. Mark in New Hampshire, republican. Hi, mark. Caller how are you doing . This is a great topic this morning and i believe a woman can win and beat trump to be our focused first u. S. President and that is why i am throwing my support behind Tulsi Gabbard. She is the only woman and person who can beat trump. She will end these endless wars in the middle east and bring that money back home to america where it is needed. With roads and bridges and health care, people should be covered, and with education, our teachers need help in the classroom and we need money for this country. It is time to stop policing the world and destroying and building up these other countries when our schools are lacking and need help. She will be the first democrat i ever vote for for president , Tulsi Gabbard in 2020. Ost in illinois lets go to illinois, go ahead. Caller you guys have a great topic this morning. I am sitting here watching the thought maybe i should call with my input. There are a lot of Trump Supporters i have been hearing and i definitely think a woman can most definitely be president , god willing. It may not be this election because there is a hidden agenda, but it will be soon and i will see it in my lifetime. A lot of people were saying you dont necessarily have to like trump to agree with what he is doing, but you have to judge character in the white house. That goes handinhand. He makes the choices he makes because of who he is as a person. You cannot be a bigot, a racist, any of that. We need a feminine touch. Females in general are more integral than men. Emales are more caring that is what we need right now. Today we are expecting movement on the impeachment front, nancy pelosi announcing yesterday that today the house will vote on house managers. She will announce who her picks are to prosecute the case against President Trump in the senate trial. That will happen around 12 30 p. M. Eastern time. You can watch the debate and the vote. There will be about 10 minutes of debate and around 5 00 p. M. , the speaker will be signing the articles of impeachment. After that, we should see the highprofile procession of the house managers walk from the house side over to the senate side. Also this week, we are expecting, according to reports in the paper, that senator Mitch Mcconnell could have the senate swear in chief Justice John Roberts, who will preside over the senate trial as well as all 100 senators. Opening arguments for this senate trial will not begin until next tuesday, january 21st after the Martin Luther king holiday. That is when this will really trial. N the senate we are also learning from the Kansas City Star this morning out of missouri, senator roy blunt, who heads up the rules committee and is a member of the gop leadership has a quote of no cameras, no cspan, limit access during the trial. There will be restrictions to public and press access during the impeachment trial including periods when the Senate Chamber is clear of reporters. The bulk of the trial will be broadcast on television. The senate will go into closed session. The Missouri Republican told reporters. As all of you know, we dont control the cameras in the House Chamber or Senate Chamber, we bring you the gaveltogavel feeds of the chambers uninterrupted, unfiltered every single day. Ispan is the house, cspan 2 the senate. When he says no cspan, that is what he is referencing. Today kicks off the beginning of the senate trial when the house will vote around 12 30 p. M. The house managers and then the procession. Two articles of impeachment will begin from the house side to the senate side. Rob in michigan, independent caller. What do you think . Last night debate featured whether it or not a woman could be whether or not a woman could be president. Caller i definitely think a woman could be elected president. There is one woman i think could end the polarization and help us find Common Ground and that is condoleezza rice. Run as an independent. Call your party Common Ground or something. That is my thoughts. Host ellie in ohio, democratic caller. Caller good morning. I have been listening all morning and i definitely believe a woman can do a better job. Host why . Caller why . Look at what the men have done over 250 years. How many wars . What for . Host tony in texas, republican. What do you think . Caller thank you very much. It is sad to say, but i think i finally understand our country. As been taken over we are not being handled by republicans or democrats, they are all one group and they are all making the wrong decisions. Why are we doing all this hateful stuff for israel . We are going to war and killing our soldiers, we are not even at war with nobody. Why dont we bring our soldiers home . Host lets stick to the question. Can a woman beat President Trump in 2020 . Caller Tulsi Gabbard could be the president , but everybody else is on somebodys payroll and they are sold out to america. We cannot trust them. Host nate in las vegas, republican. Caller a woman will never be president until the house of resentatives is 50 woman women. The same thing goes for buttigieg. When the house representative is 50 gay and the senate is 50 gay, then we will have a gay president. Until that happens, it is not going to happen. We are not on the popular we will end the conversation there and take a short break. When we come back, republican congressman Roger Marshall joins us to discuss President Trumps of the of phase one u. S. China trade agreement. Over the next two weeks on on the newe focusing hampshire primary and the Iowa Caucuses. Sunday night, long time New Hampshire union leader and now publisher at large talks about the history of New Hampshire politics and the current state. New hampshire is always different. It appreciates being first. Highest turnout states at least in primaries in the country. If it was not representative of the country, with the exception of bloomberg, who has not cited that, why are all these other candidates coming to New Hampshire . At 8 00 sunday night p. M. Eastern on cspans you q and a. Students to toss us the issue they wont president s to address in the 2020 campaign. Students from across the country are putting the final touches on their entries. We are awarding 100,000 in total cash prizes. Plus a 5,000 grand prize. For more information go to studentcam. Org. Washington journal continues. Host congressman Roger Marshall at our table. Member of the agricultural committee. Here to talk about phase one of the china deal. First of all, why is it phase one and what does the agreement do . This is a great day for kansas agriculture. It was an economic depression for five years, we have mountains of grain with nowhere to go. What this phase one will do is help us move more and more grain from kansas to china. It is moving to mexico and canada because of the trade deal with japan, south korea. This is a great day for us. Phase one will be more. Get thisdent could wrapped up in one vote. 20ight be moving billion 40 billion from this country in grain. Because of the trade wars the president has had with china and other countries, is he partially to blame . Guest absolutely not. It started over five years ago when the farmers were getting the short end of the stick in trade deals. This president was the first person to stand up and say enough of these unfair trade practices. Enough of what china is doing to cheat american farmers. They are continuing to stand by the president today. Completed trade agreements with 50 of our economics. More details for our viewers and what phase details includes. The u. S. Will cut the tariff rate in half on certain levies on 120 billion in chinese products including shoes and apparel. China has to stop forcing companies to transfer technology for market access. Intellectual property, measures aimed at stopping china from devaluing its currency as well. Senator schumer, who has been a vocal critic of many years, heres what he had to say on the senate floor about phase one. Theor all the turmoil over past few years, the deal President Trump will sign tomorrow hardly seems to advance the United States passed square one. It fails to address the deep structural equality in the trade relationship between china and the United States. China has stolen American Intellectual property. It will force Technology Transfers of our companies. The president deal does not address this issue. China has routinely subsidized its most important domestic justtries, not laborintensive industries but even Industries Like huawei are subsidized to gain unfair advantage over american companies. China has dumped goods illegally into our market, manipulated our currency to keep prices low. The president s phase one deal does not address any of these issues. Failedy does this deal to make any meaningful process towards ending chinas most flagrant abuses, what it doesnt change on the agricultural side may be a day late and a dollar short. China has already made longterm contracts with other producers of soybeans and other goods. In places like argentina and brazil. American farmers have already lost billions over the last two years. Watch markets disappear. Too Many American farms have gone bankrupt and the time it took President Trump reach this deal. Host your response . Guest obviously senator schumer does not have any agriculture in his state. Must not have much manufacturing either. This phase one deal is tremendous for kansas agriculture and agriculture across the country. This is what does not make sense. The democrats have said on the usmca trade agreement for over a criticizings President Trump for not being quick enough. It is incredible what President Trump has done. Get over 50 of our trade Business Done in three years time. It is incredible. I disagree senator schumer. Thank goodness President Trump has helped our farmers out. The wall street journal said this. Offer some nice words on intellectual property. Trump couldve have died two years ago without tariff damage could have had that two years ago without tariff damage. Ways tot has negotiated deal with china so we could quickly reimplement these tariffs. China has a history of saying one thing and doing another. This trade agreement will give us the bielby the ability to if china does not do what it said it would do. Host according to the treasury tariffsy, there is more that could be rolled back in phase two, what are you hoping for . Guest i think free of reciprocal trade has always been our goal. It has always been President Trumps goal. We want to solve intellectual property theft. We want to make everything fair and even. If we give them unlimited access to our markets they have to give us the same reciprocal access as well. Lets go to joann, good morning to you. Caller thanks for taking my call, i wanted to say how themer has been working on floor of the senate bragging about how he worked on this for 20 years. What has he done . Absolutely nothing. Just like everybody has done nothing. That is why trump is in. I dont know how anybody will beat trump. You look at what he draws, the crowd he draws to his it. Ies, i dont see there is no one with any fire in their belly on the democratic side. I guess i dont have any questions. That was just all i,. All a comment. Guest we had the democratic debate, it looked like a funeral. President trumps rally was going on the other channel. I walked into the house after a p. M. , meeting about 9 00 my wife said the president is on fire tonight. His base is fired up, america is fired up. The average American Family has a 7,000 more to on whatever they choose. It is a new day in america. A great day. The president is doing super. Policies are working. Host john in new jersey. Caller i think a bunch of monkeys in the marketplace could do better than the republicans and the president. Where are intellectual property rates going to . China is selling ideas that shouldve been placed in a the collections for the fory they stole from us using our ideas . Hurting. Rs are that is because of donald trump. They dont need to have marketplace prices jacked down by the president. It should be done by congress. Everything should be done by congress. War powers and the rest of this stuff. Not the president down. Host lets get a response. Guest i think the president is doing exactly what you are hoping to do. If you look at the United States mexico canada trade agreement, it is the Gold Standard by which all future trade agreements will be judged. That includes intellectual Property Protection for americans. It is a huge step up in the right direction. It is amazing it took us 20 years to renegotiate that and fix it. The same principles will be applied to these other trade agreements. The president is doing exactly what you are wanting him to do. Chinas culture is so different than ours. They dont respect intellectual property. That is why the president has negotiated some Quick Response when the chinese do things that we ask them not to do. Host larry in california, good morning. Caller as far as the agriculture, americans are really too lazy. We have to hire all these illegals. Look at trump. See how he is doing anything. He is making a fool out of america. We have to impeach the guy. I think the president s policies are working. It is the greatest economy of my lifetime. Record low unemployment, record wage growth. This president is doing an incredible job. Try to take a little emotion out of it. The policies are working. Democrats, republicans, independents all have their lines, we have a fourth line for farmers. As well,rom kansas welcome to call in on that line. Joe in north carolina, independent. Caller most people dont really talk about after the Second World War europe and asia was completely in ruins. We were the ones who rebuilt everything. We were the ones who fed everybody from china, russia, japan, everywhere. Our Big Companies went through the Marshall Plan and subsidized everything in the world. They got rich. We did not go ahead and rebuild our roads, bridges, factories. The prophet was overseas. Now that we stuck ourselves in the corner everybody is saying trump this, nafta this. We stuck our neck out and took care of everybody else and now we are crying about it. Yes, you have to have a level playing field. Who produced it . Japan. Guest we could always learn from history. There is some great history there. The bottom line is if you want great infrastructure, we do need to work on it. Bridges, highspeed internet needs to be all over kansas. Im seeing infrastructure that is 90100 years old that needs to be replaced. Thank goodness we have a strong economy. Getting allard to of this impeachment stuff out of the web so we could talk about infrastructure plan. Know the president things we need more infrastructure as well. Looking forward to having a conversation about that but thank goodness for this great economy to pay for that infrastructure. Host in the wall street journal , what isa headline happening between the eu and the United States with the United States threatening tariffs, with that impact farmers in your district and state . Caller of course, what the European Union is trying to do is lockout agriculture. They know european farmers cannot compete with american farmers. We are too good with it. We have a blessed with resources. Trumpgoodness president has said that is a nonstarter. Agriculture needs to be included if you want americans to buy or to buycars, you have american agriculture. The president saying that will not happen unless we level the playing. Bob lighthizer in the president standing up for u. S. And kansas agriculture. Caller good morning. Just wanted to chime in here. It is refreshing to see somebody sticking up to for americans trade has been unbalanced for so long. We had essentially years under were wea administration talked about chinas original influence that they were taking advantage for manipulation, those types of practices. On your so fixated administration. Im not the biggest trump fan personally, if you look at the ,ccomplishments in three years the chinese lack consistency. With someone as unpredictable as they have said they are frustrated because they cannot figure this man out. Farmers and others may take one step back, i think we will take two steps forward. Host when will we see that two steps forward . It has already happened. Prices are going up. We are moving grain, it is already happening. It has been a great couple months for agriculture. Host robert in new york. Caller im wondering what is going on as far as the republicans are concerned. It is staying in china, the parts cannot possibly be manufactured here. Business where you come in and pay 25 more for items that are now on sale because of the tariffs. Epublicans standing by trump we know he has bankrupt companies. Why theng to figure out farmers could possibly be happy. I would like to hear the response from that in seeing what you guys do about the situation. Appreciate the several questions. Farmers, agriculture are supporting this president. Back, they say this president is doing a great job and we are standing beside him. You probably have to reach out to your local congressman and have them reach out to secretary mnuchin and talk about some of the exemptions on these terms you are talking about. We have had some success in places and kansas getting those removed. A lot of the supply chains arent moving out of china. We are seeing more jobs moved back to kansas, move back to tradeountry, usmca agreement alone will move thousands of jobs back to kansas and hundreds of thousands of jobs back to this country. It doesnt happen overnight but in the long term it will work. There is a shortterm pain but longterm gain opportunities. If we want our children to have a successful america, this is the time to stand up to china. The president is doing a great job saying enough, we are protecting our childrens future. Caller congressman, the moral code of america is very important to america. Donald trump not only ruined his company but he is ruining the moral code of the United States. To your you explain children that he is possibly a womanizer, possibly a rapist, possibly a criminal. You continue to stand there and act like you love him. How will you explain that to your family . Host congressman. Guest i think a lot of that is fake news. Regardless of how money comes the press says those things, it is fake news. My core values are very important. I think i have tried to live that life. Tried to protect those values that are important to kansas, important to america. The president s policies are working. Our military is in great shape. The apology tour is over with. The president said lets make America Great again, now lets keep it great. Host joe, democrat line. Respect,ith all due every time a republican has been in the presidency, he has dragged us into so much debt that when a democrat takes over they have to dig ourselves out of it. I know you are a real fast talker, it just seems like all talking points. It just seems like all talking points. How dare you lay the fake news thing on this. Talk about the deficit. All you did is scream and yell about it. Have us in the whole the next president will have to dig us out of. Allt you that you will start yelling about the deficit again. Please, slow it down a little, will you . Are you concerned about the amount of spending . The president approved the latest spending package that was approved by the house and also the senate. Of course i am concerned, that is why i voted against one of the packages. I thought it was too big. The one thing that keeps me up at night is the National Debt. The National Debt is the biggest threat to us. I want to talk about solutions. We could keep blaming each other but lets talk about solutions. We needed a strong economy. We have record amounts of money coming into the government now. Washington does not have a taxing problem, it has a spending problem. 20 of the federal budget is being spent on health care. Im working handinhand to figure out how to provide quality care and care for existing conditions while lowering the cost of health care. We will never balance that unless we take care of health care. There are other things we could do as well. We need to keep encouraging people to be involved in the economy and help them find the job. Promised thishas will be a high priority. Working with him to develop that policy. We got to kansas next, roger is a farmer there and a democrat. Good morning. Caller good morning. Was all midwest farmers, i getting up and i was going out a feed cattle and i saw representative marshall on. I believe trump is moving in the second right direction. Ive seen these tactics the last 40 years. They would make big borders and find something wrong with it. We would be stranded with a bad situation. Them stick toe their word. Them stick to their word. I guess when i was watching schumer said they have already made other deals with other countries, we know from the past a lot ofal with china times means nothing. The other fact he is addressing his health care and farmers. That is the biggest thing we are challenging. I have a friend who wants to bring both of his boys back into his farm. He has a nice operation. They have cattle, they are wellrounded. The biggest challenge is to put together a health plan just for his family, we will have to come up with about 50,000 a year. That is incredible that a family has to go through those struggles. The president needs to address some way through our alcs office, farmers could somehow pool together a Health Care Plan that would help everybody. That is something i think we could work on. That is about all i have to say. Host when you get the health care, just explain ascs. Guest thank you for your comments. Every time i see the president he says tell your farmers thank you for their support and that i love them. Connected with kansas agriculture. You could not have explained it any better then i could have ever. China has manipulated commodities in the past. Health care, what the president has done, they have the association Health Care Plan you could sign up for thanks to the president changing some of the rules. The office is a federal office the farmers work with on a lot of the products and programs. Host he is hoping to get health care through that office . Guest that is what he is suggesting. I think there will be better local solutions. Kansas farmers have Great Solutions locally and i would encourage him to check with manhattan, kansas with the farnborough and talk to their association. When i talk, especially with Young Farmers about their concerns. The price of wheat, the price of cattle, number two is the price of health care. It might be the biggest item they have in their budget as well. Host where are they getting it . Are they going on the exchanges . Guest the exchanges have been a miserable failure. They make enough money that they cannot be subsidized by the federal government. They are going to the individual markets. Right now, i believe there is only two or three Insurance Companies offering individual plans. That is why they responded to the association Health Care Plan. Acrossre other coops state lines as well that are very important to the president. Host chuck in colorado, democratic caller. Caller good morning. Thank you for cspan. Evert think we will regain the export of all of our agriculture prospects. It is on amazon right now to cultivate more soybeans. The tax credit is still in effect that allows u. S. Companies to hire all of their chinas and set up shop in or some cheap labor company. I dont think american taxpayers should be funding that kind of stuff. We are still using clay for say round up on our products. We even use it on wheat to allow more production. When wheat isnt fully dry it so they gums up spray it and kill the plan to dry it out. They do the same thing with cotton. Thing about big agriculture right now is it is socialism. Are payingnsumers these tariffs and trump is taking the money and bailing out big ag. Host congressman, do you agree this is a bailout for farmers . Guest the farmers were hurt more than anybody else for the past two years on the trade tariffs. Shortterm pain we are talking about. Every time i go back. Helpsay thanks for the they got. Every time i talk to the banks, credit unions, they are saying the federal government helped a lot of farmers through these tough times. I think the small farmer benefited as well as some of the larger. It cannot make agriculturally with a 168 acre farm. A lot of these families have come together so the farms are larger. Thisig corporate farms, connotation is people are talking about yes, they are larger than before. They are typically family farms that have come together for a lot of reasons. They share their resources. Caller good morning, if im not mistaken when they were talking about the deficit, i heard the his vote went towards the wall instead of social programs. I find that troubling in itself. Funding social programs over the wall. Africanamerican Unemployment Rate is at its lowest ever but still extremely high. They need these social programs. These social programs can teach trade and other things that can help them get employed and have a sufficient life. You know what im saying . Guest i agree that i want every american to have the same American Dream that i got to live. I became a First Generation College student. Want to make sure every american has that same shot. Local programs will probably fix this better than the federal government. Community colleges, technical colleges can quickly help people navigate to new highpaying jobs and encourage people to use local programs. Anyone who doesnt have a job right now in this economy probably has a Substance Abuse issue or the wrong education. Congressman, before we let you go, the front page of the newspapers today, several of them reporting including the New York Times that there is evidence that shows the president had knowledge and consent according to a note from Rudy Giuliani of the desire for an investigation into bidens. Dozens of pages, notes, and Text Messages laid out work between Rudy Giuliani and his associates that include a sheet of hotel paper in vienna that mentioned getting president zelensky and ukraine to announce an investigation into joe biden and his son. You voted no against impeachment but are you concerned . Guest im not. The same basis facts are still the same. We did ask ukraine to investigate corruption. It is not the president s fault with joe ends up biden. The president never asked any exchange of services, or anything out of ukraine. The facts have not changed. Benefitedould not a politically from an investigation into his political rival joe biden . Guest i did not say that. We cannot stop an investigation because the person happened to be a candidate for a future position. Host he only mentions investigating joe biden. He didnt mention corruption at large. Guest i think he used a more general term. If america reads the document they will see the president is not in the wrong. Host how will you vote today . Guest of voted to support the president and vote no on the house manager. Host that will be taken around 12 30 eastern time . Guest that sounds right, 12 30 means probably around 1 30. [laughter] host we will take a break. When we come back democratic congressman Kurt Schrader of oregon discusses surprise medical billing. Loman author frank explains how an impeachment trial will work. We will be right back. Campaign 2020, watch our continuing coverage of candidates on the campaign trail and make up your own mind. Watch our live coverage of the Iowa Caucuses on monday, february 3. Campaign 2020. Washington journal mugs are available on cspans online store. Cspanstore. Org. Host congressman Kurt Schrader at our table this morning. Emme kraft from oregon and a member of the energy and commerce committee. Prescriptionabout drug pricing, what would hr 3 do . Would try to reduce drug price increases for americans. We hear again and again on the campaign trail that prices and Health Care Costs are the Biggest Issue for americans right now. This would allow the United States Government Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices. We negotiate drug prices in our private lives, with unions, businesses, why cant seniors or americans negotiate . It is a marketbased principal. Republicans and democrats should be able to agree to that. It limits outofpocket cost. If your cost go beyond a certain point, both democrat and republican bills would limit that to 2000 or 3000. It puts transparency into the system. Energy and commerce investigating took place in increases. There are a lot of Different Actors playing to these cost increases. We need more transparency to make the right moves politically to make sure these increases dont affect what we have had so far. Side,on the business which companies will be impacted by that type of negotiation . Guest first and foremost, probably pharmaceutical companies. Benefit managers that help negotiate prices for Different Companies in different groups would be affected. Hopefully beld affected in a positive way at the end of the day. Taxpayers would not have to pay as much outofpocket. Of people that would be affected along the supply chain. Pharmacies are cop between and they have to pay back after the fact dollars to various companies that these pharmacy benefit managers negotiate with. Lots of folks will be impacted. Tot how do you respond republicans and others who argue this would kill innovation. Pharmaceutical companies are not incentivized to spend the billions they have to spend on research to find new drugs to prevent and possibly cure diseases. Guest i think that is a little bit of a bogus argument. Probably not, you have to weigh that against the decreasing cost in the american consumer. If you could reduce these increases from 15 20 a year year,o 2 , 3 , 4 per that is a huge savings. Most of the medications and drugs, theyw orphan work for very targeted types of diseases. It only affects 100,000 people. The cost could be hundreds of thousands of dollars to the taxpayer and the system. You have to weigh that back and forth. They will spend a lot of money on research anyway. That is the breadandbutter. There will be great medication coming to market. Host there was a story yesterday about a new way of paying for costs of these very expensive drugs that treat these niche diseases. One of the ways is allowing Drug Companies to pay it back. What you think about allowing the market to take care of it . We have a two fold the porch approach. This should be able to limit the inflationary increases Going Forward. As one of the leaders in health conversations, i believe it is a fair way to go as well as protecting the and sumer consumer. Host what is that . Guest if you come up with a drug that will cure Something Like hepatitis c, maybe you get the full 50,000. You could also advertise that. Instead of paying 50,000 of, which would bankrupt a lot of small coordinated Care Organizations in oregon, you take money per year over the lifespan of that individual. Orthat decreases your pain fromes the mortality rate 25 years, you get paid a little bit less than the full cost of the medication. Theres a lot of emphasis on companies to get to solving all problems with the rising cost and escalating cost of pharmaceuticals. Host what did you make of President Trumps attempt so far to reduce Prescription Drug prices. One of his idea was to compare it to the International Index of what we pay versus what other countries pay. It seems that did not go into effect. Is that a good idea . Guest that is what hr three tries to get at a little bit. The president tried it on his own, why did we have to set it to european standards . We are trying to get at that in a slightly different way. Anyond hr three there is opportunity in the Senate Finance bill, Senate Health committee bill, Senate Judiciary committee bill. We have seen it on the house and bipartisan support to reduce these costs dramatically. Maybe we can get to the negotiation piece this session. It is important to bring it is important to bring up that American Consumers realized why cant we negotiate . We can limit outofpocket costs. We can do the transparency piece and make sure drug prices for existing drugs dont increase beyond inflation. Inflation is 2 inflation is 2 g prices are going up 5 , that is wrong. Host do you think any deal could address a surprise medical billing . Guest i certainly hope so. It is a big deal back home. You are trying to get insurance, you stay in your network, doctors, hospitals, you going for your surgery only to find out the anesthesiologist is an in network and you have a 20,000 bill and you oh my gosh, what is happening . That is not fair. The consumer has done the right thing. The way the arcane structure of health care is, they have this huge bill at the end of the day. With a really good approach. Is, who does pay what at the end of the day . The insurers had one idea and the doctors had another. Us rightally likes now. It is a good approach where there is a bit of an Index Benchmark we should be thinking about for the cost of these outofnetwork. If there is a lot of disagreement you could go to arbitration. New york has had great success. In oure are interested viewers joining the conversation as well, what experiences have you had with Prescription Drug pricing or surprise medical billing . Lets go to tina in virginia, democratic caller. Ler host go ahead with your question. Recently went to my physician for an annual physical. , 2019. October 29 i have been going to the same Family Practice for over 10 years. Never had to pay for a physical. This time i came out with a 254 charge. I have been in contact with the sinceal corporation november 16 when they first sent me a bill with no satisfaction. They are telling me that they are charging me jordan 64 for advanced directory counseling. It is supposed to take 30 minutes on the bill. If you have been to the doctor you know you dont spend 30 minutes therefore anything anymore. I was there 10 minutes. I did not get the service they are saying. , whatung lady asked me would you want to happen if you had an Emergency Reaction here in the office . Would you want resuscitation, i said yes. Cpr was what she said. I said yes. She handed me a form to fill out that procedure, not counseling but directives. That was handed to me. There was no discussion about what i should do with it, who should help me fill it out. I have been talking to them. They told me i am responsible for this 254. Blue cross, blue shield will not pay for it. I do not have medicare. I cant afford 254. What am i supposed to do . Off. you got ripped that is why we are trying to get people universal access to basic health care. That physical, if it is once a year, it is free. If they are trying to charge you for that, that is wrong. You could take them to court. , ithe advanced directive havent heard that game played before. Unfortunately we will probably see more of that. I would get a different doctor at the end of the day. Endoflife planning is a basic thing everyone should do to protect their family. It should be incorporated in any exam. I think that is egregious. Certainly seek some legal regress. Cross and to the blue say this was basic health care information, it should be totally covered with the annual exam. Host go ahead, for the congressman. Caller [indiscernible] good morning, thank you for taking my call. My issue is about us spending that theugs drugs we are taking now in stead of solving the problem, creating problems. Host like what . Caller theyre making you sick, getting cancer. We dont have the medical to take care of the added problem of the medication is causing. Host you have to turn on the television. It is causing confusion. Im a veterinarian. In real life i spent 30 plus years as a veterinarian. Im aware of the side effects from a lot of medications. A lot of the newer medications is more powerful. Effects thatside end up making you take other medications which are probably wrong. Will you have to do is have a conversation with your physician about side effects medication is having on you. Is there a less potent but helpful medication you could take . So it wouldnt set you up or cause the side effects. One of the things you need to do very carefully is read these labels and question your doctor on side effects for many medications they prescribed for you. They could be life saving. They keep us at home and out of the hospital. ,hey extend the quality of life thankfully for the most part. You have to make sure you have the full understanding of what those are. Host we will go to milwaukee, patricia is watching there, democratic caller. I am calling because i called on the democratic line, has no, medication party. , we might spend a lot of money on research and countries, but other doe canada and other places negotiate with the pharmaceutical countries as to how much they will pay in order to do business with them. Why this sois difficult for us to also do the same thing . Epipen. Things like the the young man who purchased the right to that, it won from one price and it skyrocketed. I want to understand, why doesnt our government prevent those kind of things from happening to our citizens for our drugs . Not democrat, it is not republican, it is not independent. People beingr of able to afford access medication. I would like you to respond to that. Thank you very much. Question, veryd thoughtful. I totally agree. AndUnited States of america americans should not subsidize the cost of drugs around the world. Everyone should pay their fair share. We should be able to negotiate prices. What will happen, the secret a lot of pharmaceutical Companies Want tell you, they will raise the prices on the folks in europe and other places. To make sure they could make a profit so they could do innovation that they want to do. We should not be subsidizing these people in a it begs the question why not negotiate for the drug prices . The department of defense negotiates drug prices, we negotiate drug prices and medicaid, why cant we do for citizens, why cant we do for everyone . There is no defensible answer for that. We need to come up with an approach to assure people it will lower the cost and get the europeans and other countries to pay a little bit more. To your point on some of these bad actors, Hedge Fund Managers that by pharmaceutical companies and check the price up like they of theepipen and some other medications. We went after them. , i work with a good friend from mine on florida on the bipartisan bill in last congress that would make that not something they would want to do because we put competition in the marketplace. If there is a drug out there, we allow Different Company that wants to make a competitor go to the head of the line, get quick approval and dried that price right back down. Host wanda, republican in florida, you are next. Caller good morning, thank you for taking my call. I agree with the former caller who said there is no party regarding prescriptions and health care i agree. I tried to call the democrat line and couldnt get through. The reason im calling is four 2010, a small amount has been deducted from my check each month for what they called late enrollment penalty. Ive tried to resolve it. I called my representative and her expert on the issue said theres nothing we could do about this. I tried to explain the logic of this. If you have a late penalty under , it isu take care of it done, you dont pay for it the rest of your life. I think this is a very unfair aspects. The notice i received last year about how much i would be getting this year, because it is information about your medicare Prescription Drug plan cost, it is no longer calling it a late penalty. This is astounding. I take a drug that has been around for decades. Hypothyroidism. It cost me 15 a month and hit his men it has been around 70 some years. Drug taking another because i do better. The brand name cost me 40. I had to cut back on expenses. This is ridiculous that these drugs that have been around for decades, the Drug Companies are still getting monumental amounts. They should be like an aspirin practically. Although aspirin is pretty expensive these days. What about those two and shoot . The cost has been around for decades. The late penalty for enrollment im not sure if it happened, it is ridiculous. Thanks for taking my call. Guest good issues. A lot of folks face those. I assume you are a senior on medicare. There is a late enrollment penalty if you dont sign up exactly when you are supposed to. It goes on for the rest of your life. I agree with you, totally unfair. You pay your fine for the mistake you made. Not when it comes to signing up for medicare. We are trying to fix that. Got a bill out there, we had a big hearing just last week about medicare and roman penalties and what we can do about it. A lot of folks think they still have coverage through their job. That ends and they cannot enroll for another year or two. What to they do about Health Coverage in the meantime . Not right, not fair. I dont think folks read the fine print. Supposed to sign up for or 67. E when you turn 65 sometimes people get wrong advice period advice. We will probably have a markup on a number of bills to address the medicare penalty. Sometimes you can get that reduced if you make your case to the federal government. You have a good reason, youre misinformed or whatever. I urge you to follow up on that. To the rest of the drug problem, the main thing is being able to have an opportunity to have that negotiation at the end of the day. Limiting price increases. As a veterinarian i prescribe a bunch of drugs, they are very inexpensive, not costly at all. They become unprofitable because they are very inexpensive. Drug Companies Want to go to the big blockbuster. There is more money in that, i get that. We are capitalist. There should be a way to still have access to key drugs. Drug shortages are a huge issue in the veterinarian field, the human field, we are trying to address that. There are Innovative Solutions coming forward. Nonprofit groups, maybe some of the manufacturers themselves. Hopefully over the next 68 issue,it is a bipartisan we will be able to get bipartisan support for reducing these costs and making sure there are suppliers when the shortages identified seek and get medication you need. Im sympathetic to the fact that you require a brandname drug. I have medications in my clinic that were forfeited and they required a brandname drug to get the results. We should make sure those costs are driven down. The most recent trade agreement helps us out a little bit in that area as well as hopefully the whole issue of getting lower drug costs. There is bipartisan support for that. The Senate Health committee has almost all of the same things we had in hr three but it would limit increases Going Forward for a lot of folks. Work has been done on increasing competition in the generic marketplace. To prevent these oneoff rates we are talking about. We have passed all of those bills out of energy and commerce on the house side. There is a lot of bipartisan support out there. Michigan, in independent. What is your comment . Caller good morning to both of you and the whole world out there. Use drugs right now, Prescription Drugs. That is because you will not be able to have to at certain points. Im on medicare now. , iot thrown off medicaid owned too many items in equity. Worked all my life or that i cant enjoy that. I will not give you the hardship case. Thought of a system that out as a bided system. It could be fair for everybody and supply and demand guest we all negotiate in our daily lives for best price, different stores, different Insurance Companies, auto, health, you name it. We should be able to do that on a regular basis. We shop for different insurers that offer us the best deal that cover most of our medications or health care needs. We need to be able to do that more directly with pharmaceuticals. The problem is weve got this weird chain of command, if you will, thats grown up where the Drug Companies mainly increase the price of drugs a couple Percentage Points and pharmaceutical costs have not gone up that much in recent years. What you pay at the end has gone up dramatically. Theres pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers and hospitals and all these intermediaries that take a cut of the pie and cost a bunch of money. Like the farmers. Hes still selling the same number he did 20 years ago but your costs have gone up dramatically because of all these middle men in between. What we need to do is address the supply chain and look at where the costs are legitimate and see where people are taking an extra profit and where consumers should have more information to negotiate a better deal for them. I think thats the goal here. Were raising this issue for the first time in 20 years in the United States congress, getting a lot of play. Folks like you are paying attention, and i truly think that bidding on various drug costs is the way to go. Pharmacy benefit managers shouldnt do spread pricing and should be focused more on per unit pricing because thats what matters. A bigger discount doesnt mean you pay less. A bigger discount on a higher cost drug means you should be paying more on a lower discount on something that maybe costs 10 or tsdz 20. 10 or 20. If the Veterans Administration can negotiate prices and the d. O. D. Can, why cant medicare folks and seniors who have frankly made our country very, very a great place to live. Why cant they benefit from just negotiation, simple american marketplace principle. Host thank you, sir, for the conversation this morning. Guest thanks, greta. Host well take a break and turn our attention to law professor and author frank bowman and discuss the president ial impeachment trial and how it will work. He wrote a book about it high crimes and misdemeanors, a history of impeachment for the age of trump. The house votes today on impeachment managers and will send the articles against President Trump on abuse of power and obstruction of congress to the senate for a trial. One of the first actions by house managers will be walking the articles from the house to the senate. Before the end of the week, Supreme Court chief Justice John Roberts is expected to be sworn in as the presiding officer for the trial and senators will take an oath as jurors. Former senator Barbara Mikulski of maryland spoke about the oath she took in the 1999 clinton impeachment trial. You silt as a jury of 100 to render partial justice. The chief justice of the Supreme Court presided as the chief judge. At this time i will administer the oath to all senators in the chamber in conformance with article 1, section 3, clause 6 of the constitution and the Senate Impeachment rule. To be sure no vote would be party and take an oath three times to render impartial justice. Ne as a group. Then as an individual. Mcdaunte culpepper ski. I do. Then third you go into the well and sign a book where i hereby, Barbara Mikulski, u. S. Senator from maryland, do pledge to render impartial justice in the matter of impeachment. Your handshakes with that kind of historical commitment. The impeachment of President Trump. Today the house votes on impeachment manager, sending the articles on abuse of power and obstruction of congress to the senate. Follow the process live on cspan. Org impeachment. And listen on the free cspan radio app. Journal continues. Host frank bowman joining us from missouri this morning, law professor at the missouri of auckland, author of the book high crimes and misdemeanors, the history of impeachment from the age of trump. Lets begin with what we know will happen today. The speaker has announced that she will let us know who the house managers are soon, around 10 00 a. M. Eastern time. And then around 12 30 p. M. Eastern time the house is going to vote on these house managers, run a 10minute debate and then vote. Why is it that the house votes on impeachment managers and then you see that procession on your full screen happening after 5 00 p. M. Eastern time, that procession of the house managers from the house to the senate. Why does that happen . Guest taking the last point first, i dont know that a procession is entirely necessary but it does emphasize the solemnity of theo cakes and also theres a tradition here that goes back literally centuries because this whole idea of having house managers, that is to say representatives in the lower house presenting the case for the impeachment in impeachment in the upper house goes back to British Parliament and thats exactly what happened in those days, the house managers would proceed from the Lower Chamber to Upper Chamber with the articles of impeachment in hand and knock on the door and be admitted formally to have the that the impeachment articles are received and read and so forth and so on. So some of it is just tradition and ceremony, which emphasizes the solemnity of the occasion and i think given our current political environment is not a bad thing. As to whether or why the house votes on the identity of the managers, i suppose they might not have to but after all, this is a representative body which is governed by the will of the majority, and the people who go over it must be remembered. The house managers are representing the house of representatives as a institution, although as it turns out in this case, theyll all be democrats. They need not be. They, as i say, are representing the house of representatives not any one party and therefore the house of representatives could and should approve the people who will represent it over in the trial. Host in 1999 we saw the high profile procession occur with 13 house managers carrying over the articles of impeachment against president clinton at the time. Why were there 13 . Is it necessary to have that many . And what is their role in the senate . Guest theres no necessary number. There could be as few as one or two. But again, their job is to be prosecutors. Thats what they do. Their job is to represent the house of representatives, present the case in favor of the articles of impeachment in the senate. So i would suspect the number might be smaller in this case but theres no way to know. In some respects, having too many could be unwielding because what youre creating here is a trial team. You dont want so darn many people on it theyre getting in each others way. Host what role how did they break up the work in 1999 and do you think that that how does that help them present their case in a senate trial . Guest honestly, i dont remember exactly who did what jobs in 1999. But i think some managers were certainly more prominent than others in terms of what the jobs that they took, whether or not they were really more or less involved in questioning or making arguments, making public speeches and so forth. And others were more in the background. This relates, i suppose, to the controversy that has sort of swirled around this process over the last four weeks. Youll recall, of course, that after the house vote to impeach mr. Trump, there was a period in which Speaker Pelosi said shed hold off transmitting the articles and identification of the managers pending at the very least some better sense of how the senate was going to conduct its trial. To some made sense degree because depending on whether or not youre going to have a trial thats heavy with witnesses and the necessity for examining and exoksing crossexamining witnesses and whether youll have a trial about extended legal arguments, that might drive the kind of person youd pick. Because some people are going to be better at just making speeches and others, and relatively few people, frankly, few people in congress, will be very good at questioning witnesses. Thats a professional skill that only lawyers have and frankly, lots of lawyers arent very good at it. Host what are your thoughts about the other sigh of side of this case, the defense team for President Trump . We read in the papers this morning it would include the white house lawyer, his personal lawyer, along with puties, Patrick Philbin as well as the president wants Allan Dershowitz on his team as well. Your thoughts . Guest the lawyers you mentioned excluding dershowitz, are likely to be competent representatives including mr. Sekulow is very interesting because it appears at some extent, at least in a regular court trial he might actually be a witness because he may have been involved in some of the Communications Concerning ukraine and other matters. And i think in an ordinary trial it would be an odd choice to make. But theyre all competent lawyers with the exception of mr. Dershowitz who frankly even in his heyday was never a trial lawyer. He was at most a behind the scenes appellate lawyer or trial strategist and these days hes become something of a carkechur of himself. Caracter chur of caricature of himself and mr. Trump would like him to be there as part of the trial seem. Trial scene. Host whats the format of a senate trial . Guest i dont think we know. All we know is after the formalities, the identification of the managers and the procession, there will be some additional formalities, the senators themselves will have to be sworn in, the chief justice will take an oath to preside. The articles will be read, so forth and so on. What happens after that is very much up in the air, i think. My best guess is that sometime either at the end of 24 week or beginning of next, senator mcconnell is likely to present for the consideration of the senate a sort of governing resolution that will cover some of the details of how the trial will be conducted. That after all is what he and Speaker Pelosi have been jousting about the last few weeks. Certainly at this point it does not appear there will be anything like what happened in clinton, which is to say an agreement between the two parties, unanimous agreement on how things should be conducted, rather i think mr. Mcconnell will produce some resolution that will be approved by a Party Line Vote of republicans. Advanced at least the notice of whats likely to be in that resolution proves to be the case, what its probably going to say is that there will be a period which will probably turn out to be several days on each side in which the house managers and president s counsel will present when a trial would be Opening Statements and then and only then will be a vote by the senators as to whether or not to hear live witnesses or try to secure additional evidence or exhibits. Thats a weird way to proceed, as anybody who has even watched a trial will realize barr its essentially saying to the lawyers, ok, we want you to give your Opening Statements but well not tell you whether or not youll be able to call witnesses and frankly, were not even going to tell you what evidence ultimately will be admissible. And its quite peculiar but think thats what will happen. Host the Senate Majority leader says he has the votes to pass a senate rule package that looks like what youre describing and says theyre going on precedent from the 1999 clinton trial where the house impeachment managers and the clinton defense team each had 24 hours to make their case. The senators were then allowed 16 hours to question, a vote was held to dismiss. If the case wasnt dismissed, then they voted on having witnesses. Why did they do that then . Guest the thing to understand is in the clinton case there was universal agreement there would be at least depositions taken of the three witnesses. Mainly those are witnesses that had already been heard from either in the grand jury or other forums, threw was universal agreement that would occur. The other thing radically different is clinton was tried on what lawyers would call stipulated facts, by the time the case moved from the house to senate there wasnt any serious doubt what the facts were. Everybody knew what president clinton had done. They knew hed had sex with an intern and they knew he lied about it. The only question was its constitutional consequence. Will the fact as we know amount to an Impeachable Offense. This is quite different, though i think the facts that emerged from the House Intelligence Committee and Judiciary Committee are quite clear with respect to mr. Trumps impeachable misconduct. Nonetheless a critical defense being raised by mr. Trump and his team and republicans who support him is the notion that mehow or another somehow or another there is an absence of direct evidence that he in fact gave commands that ukraine be extorted. Of course the direct proof of that point would come from the people in the white house, Nick Mulvaney, john bolton who mr. Trump has refused to permit to testify. The very people that the Democratic Senators would like to call. So whats different between now and then is then all the facts were really quite well known before the thing got to the senate. In this case, the republicans themselves, mr. Trump himself, will argue there are factual gaps. Therefore it seems at least a little peculiar that the republicans are likely to insist there are factual gaps and at the same time resist filling them with the exspeed enzi of calling witnesses to do it. Host lets get to calls. Rebecca in michigan, republican caller, youre up first. Caller good morning. Yes, i do have a statement as far as the impeachment goes. Pelosi is supposed to be the middleman between the republicans and dems, and all ive seen is that she has gotten into this tightrope, a noose around her neck to where its her bullying along with the democrats with no matter what President Trump does, they are going to find fault in it. And these are issues ive been seeing since even before he was put into office. I voted for obama for two terms that i did not like where our country was going so i said ok, we need a change. I knew he was a businessman. I knew he did not have any political or any aspirations as far as that in his history of schooling or anything like that. Hes just a businessman and was voted in it. I dont like his tweets but i intend voting for him again because i do see changes. Host ok. Rebecca, ill leave it there. Frank bowman, is this just politics . Guest impeachments are always political in the large sense because when the framers put impeachment into the constitution, they intended in the end it be a political judgment about whether or not the president had behaved in a way that made him unsuited for office, that made his continuance in office dangerous to constitutional values, angerous so the republic itself. Beyond that the caller makes a point which is a common theme Many Republican speeches. That is the democrats have been critical of President Trump and indeed have talked about impeaching him from practically the time he took office and therefore the current proceedings can be discounted as part of a long Running Campaign against him. Its true the democrats have been very critical of President Trump in the beginning and some of the more intempered ones began suggesting impeaching him practically from the first day he took office which is of course rather simply, but it doesnt change the current circumstance up substance and doesnt change the fact the house of representatives has decided on some particular occasions and for some particular reasons the president has engaged in conduct that violates our an itutional values, is abuse an abuse of power, is of one of the types thats traditionally been found impeachable and moreover in the second article of impeachment is that he has improperly refused to cooperate with the houses investigation of that behavior. So whatever criticisms democrats have made in the past and however, frankly, hasty and intemperate some of them may have been at the beginning, we are where we are. The question that confirms the senate is not whether democrats have opposed him from the outset the question is whether he did what hes charged with doing and whether it is sufficiently serious to merit his removal. Host by the way, the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi, will be making the announcement of public managers before cameras at 10 00 a. M. Eastern time. Well have coverage of that on cspan 3 on our website cspan. Org or listen with the free cspan radio app. Seal be announcing at 10 00 a. M. In a News Conference who the house managers will be for the impeachment trial in the senate. Frank bowman, this from lloyd in new jersey who is wondering, how does the senate trial enforce a subpoena, he asks if john bolton refuses to testify. John bolton said hes willing to testify but lets take the question and change it to Nick Mulvaney. Guest its an interesting question adged at the end of the day, if Somebody Just refuses to testify, theres only a couple things that either house can do. One, they could consider that person to be in contempt of the senate and could try to refer the case then for criminal prosecution. But that has to be given to the Justice Department and its unclear this Justice Department would actually take the job and they can decline and have sometimes in the past and can file a similar lawsuit for civil contempt but would take heaven knows how many ages or they could actually hold the person who refused to show up direct contempt and in fact send the sergeant in arms of the senate in this case to go arrest the person and confine them in the basement until such time as they decide to comply. I dont know how practical the last alternative is. There really is a fourth alternative and that is one i think that explains a great deal about the standoff between Speaker Pelosi and the Senate Republicans. The other possibility, if somebody simply refuses to testify based particularly on some direction from President Trump that they not testify, then thats a pretty direct defiance of the power of the senate given to it by the constitution to try impeachments. And that in and of itself would be an Impeachable Offense and that after all is the basis of the second article of impeachment mr. Trump is now facing. Heres the tricky bit for republicans and one of the reasons i think they dont want to authorize subpoenas. If they do authorize subpoenas for white house insiders and those people show up, i think the odds are pretty darn good what white house insiders are going to say wont be good for mr. Trump. But otherwise if they had exonerating information i think they would rely on it they would come. The other possibility is the Senate Issues a subpoena, the white house witnesses refuse to show up and that would blow a great big hole in the basic republican line with respect to the second article of impeachment and a great bill hogue in trumps defense, with his basic line with regard to the second article of impeachment is well, i didnt have to allow my people to come and testify in the house because what was going on in the house was a partisan witchhunt and im entitled to ignore that. Truth is hes not. The house, whether controlled by republicans or democrats is half of a coequal government and as president has to comply with subpoenas from them. But more importantly if the Senate Issues a subpoena and white house people refuse to show up, then how does mr. Trump explain his resistance from a subpoena coming from a body thats actually controlled by members of his own party. I think Senate Republicans are desperate to avoid the dilemma of subpoenas created in that case. Either subpoenas are honored and bad testimony from trump comes forward or subpoenas are denied or resisted and faced with a defiance of the own authority of their own body rather than that of the house. Host mike benton from kentucky, a republican. Caller hi. Thank you for taking my call. My question is doesnt the congress have to have a bipartisanship bill to pass not a bill but impeachment before they can send to the senate . Host professor . Guest no. Theres nothing special about impeachments in the house at least in terms of how an impeachment is approved. Its just like any other kind of legislation or other kind of legislative act. The house doesnt have doesnt have filibuster rules or doesnt have anything of that sort. Basically actions in the house are approved by a majority vote. So if you get a majority in the house of representatives who approve articles of impeachment, theyre approved and the particular partisan identity of the people who voted for or against it doesnt matter. After all, if you take the look of impeachment from a historical perspective, when the framers wrote the constitution and wrote the impeachment provisions into it, they were quite fearful of the whole idea of Party Politics and indeed they very much hoped things like parties would not arise and feared the rise of Party Politics. Certainly they didnt write the constitution with any specific provisions in it about whether this party or that party had to support one thing or another. Thats just not the way it works. Over in the senate, practically speaking, to get a conviction in these days is almost certain to require some bipartisanship. Because in the senate in order to be conviction, there must be 67 votes or 2 3 of the votes of the nors present. And unless one party happens to ave a 67 vote supermajority at the time when impeachment occurs, then youll need some votes from the party opposing the president. But the constitution doesnt make any specifications about the Party Identification of any voters on either side of the house or the senate. Host carol, rockaway, new jersey, independent. Caller yes. Id like to make a comment at this time. The intent to overthrow the presidency, that hasnt even happened yet around the time of trumps Inauguration Day as advertised by the headlines in the Washington Post, advertises the fact that these politicians intended to sedate to treasonously overthrow the presidency of the United States when it occurred. The intent to overthrow a government in my mind, and the definition in a dictionary would be called sedition. Why arent these people being labeled as is he dishes. As sedicious. Host go ahead, professor. Guest the idea of bringing impeachment against the president as being seditious is unfounded. Impeachment is a mechanism written in the United States constitution by the framers of that constitution. T is moreover a vehicle that legislatures began using in the British Parliament in the 1,300s, its not sedition or treason but in fact is part of the checks and balances written in the constitution. It is there in order that a legislature can place a check or president who in its view is misbehaving. Now, one can disagree with the proposition that what mr. Trump is charged with, either happened or that amounts to high crime and misdemeanor and therefore an Impeachable Offense. But to suggest this is sedition or treason or that kind has no constitutional basis at all. Again, impeachment is part of the constitution. Its there as part of our system of checks and balances. Host professor bowman, what do you make of the news this morning democrats want to present new evidence in this senate trial according to the New York Times, dozens of pages of notes, Text Messages and other records lay out work conducted by Rudy Giuliani, mr. Umps personal lawyer and include handwritten notes squalled on a sheet of hotel paper at the ritz carlton in vienna that mentioned getting mr. Zelensky of ukraine to announce an investigation of former Vice President joe biden and trump, quote, had knowledge and consent of this communication. Guest first of all, the idea that theres something odd or illegitimate or peculiar about introducing what you called new evidence in the senate trial i think needs to be addressed. Make happens in the senate trial what should happen in the senate trial is there should be an effort to determine the truth of the allegations against the president and articles of impeachment. There is no limitation in the constitution or rule or precedent on the evidence presented whether it being new, old, introduced in the house, not introduced in the house. The Senate Proceeding is a new proceeding, just as if in a criminal trial you were to say a prosecutor cant introduce any evidence in the actual trial that wasnt presented to the grand jury that indicted the defendant. Well, thats not the rules, never been the rule. It would be the same as if to say in a civil case that the plaintiffs lawyers or defense lawyer, particularly plaintiffs lawyers couldnt introduce any evidence they didnt already know of at the time they filed the complaint that started the case in the first instance. Thats just not the way the law works anywhere. Theres always going to be some period between the initiation of a case and the time when the case actually has to be tried to the finder of fact. An evidence thats discovered in that interval is universally allowed so long as its relevant and so long as its probative and should be the question here. The question shouldnt be was it something that actually was presented formally in the house before they voted the articles of impeachment. The question is, is it relevant, is it the kind of thing a fair minded factfinder would want to hear when making a decision about these articles of impeachment. As to the particular items you mentioned, ive seen the news reports and read some of the handwritten notes and so forth. I dont know enough about the s and ulars of mr. Parne his connections with Rudy Giuliani to know how important that evidence is or might be. I just think the general principle what should go in the senate trial is evidence actually relevant and probative and would be in the mind of a fairminded factfinder. Host john from gold beach orient, independent. Caller good morning. I have two issues, thoughts, questions, actually, as far as Mitch Mcconnells early statement of when the impeachment was done, he willingly admitted he was willing to work with the administration hand in hand on this impeachment. Like that at seems would not allow him to be an independent juror in the coming trial and i would feel that would be grounds for censure. And my second point is the importance of the Supreme Court justice ruling over this trial and, you know, all trials are past to go back on old precedents on past impeachments, it doesnt seem quite right and would seem as though the Supreme Court justice would have a way on how its to be conducted. Host professor bowman . Guest lets take the second point first, the role of the chief justice. Chief justice presides only in one kind of impeachment trials, that is impeachment trials of the president. Impeachment trials dont just apply to president s, Vice President s can be impeached and all other civil officers can be impeached, meaning lesser officials in the executive branch. Judges can be impeached. In fact, thats the class of officials that most obvious have been impeached. In all of those trials except for those of the president , the chief justice, indeed no other judicial officer is involved at all. Chief justice only comes into the trial and the basic reason he does come in is because the normal presiding officer in one of these other impeachments would be the president of the senate. Who is the president of the senate under the constitution . It turns out, though the people often forget this, is the Vice President. So the framers recognized among other considerations that they certainly didnt want the Vice President to be presiding over the trial of the president in a situation where if the president is convicted the Vice President would get the job. Thats a pretty obvious conflict of interest so they needed someone else to convince them, someone that didnt have a partisan or personal stake in the outcome and for that among other reasons chose the chief justice. The implication of that is the chief justice doesnt have any more authority in the case like this than any other presiding officer would have in other kinds of impeachments. And the truth is that what controls who controls the rules, even the evidentiary decisions about a trial in the senate are the senators. Under the senate rules, the presiding officer, here the chief justice, when presented with questions of evidence and subpoenaing the witnesses and whatnot can make provisional rulings on what he thinks should be done, the evidence should be admitted or not admitted or if any senator disagree with that ruling then a vote of the senate is called and a majority of the senate can overrule the chief justices professional decision. So the truth is the chief justice, though he brings a sort of air of solemnity and to of judicial impartiality this process, frankly doesnt have a lot of real authority, and whats more, i think, theres a good reason to think Justice Roberts is going to so far as he can, avoid making rulings that seem to favor one side or the other because obviously this is a politically quite explosive process and the legitimacy of the institution with which hes principally concerned, i say the Supreme Court, is going to be his major interest and i think hes going o try to, as far as he can play things absolutely down the middle, recognizing at the end of the day the majority of senate controls what happens. With respect to Mitch Mcconnells declarations of sort of failty to the white house is a statement that hes going to cooperate carefullyly with the white house and frankly the statement of some number of other senators that to some degree or another have prejudged the case perhaps should concern us because, after all, all the senators have to take an oath to judge the case impartially. But there isnt much to be done about that because theres no way of disqualifying mr. Mcconnell or indeed any other senator by virtue of being senators, theyre there and theyre entitled to participate in the decision. One reason to think about the fact we dont disqualify senators for indications of perhaps prior partiality is the recognition that to disqualify a senator from participating in a trial, participating in the deliberations in an impeachment trial is not merely to exclude one person from participating in those deliberations but basically to exclude 50 of the representation of an entire state from participation in that decision and frankly there isnt any mechanism for disqualifying senators in the first instance. So while mr. Mcconnells declarations of allegiance to the president and in his plain lack of impartiality should perhaps concern us, practically speaking is not a lot to be done about it. Host talking to frank bowman, author of high crimes and misdemeanors, the history of impeachment from the age of trump. Hes also a law professor at the university of Missouri School of law. Well go to elfred in missouri, democratic caller. Caller good morning, how are you doing . Host good morning. Caller i was wondering why if we wanted a fair and equitable trial why the house Speaker Pelosi didnt allow cross examination and evidence presented in her house and why it is impeachable for a president or any member of congress to withhold evidence when Hillary Clinton destroyed her emails and server after it was subpoenaed to be turned over and was against the law to begin with to have it in her bathroom or bedroom or wherever she had it in her personal household, why didnt the democrats allow a fair and equitable trial in the house . Before this all started. Host ok. Mr. Bowman . Guest the notion that the speaker or democrats who certainly has the majority in the house didnt allow fair proceedings, the caller suggested there wasnt any provision for crossexamination , so forth, just isnt true. The proceedings held in front of the House Intelligence Committee were proceedings in which the relevant witnesses came before the committee in public on camera, swore to tell the truth, were both examined on both direct and crossexamination by lawyers for both democrats and republicans and were examined by both the democratic and republican representatives. The kinds of tly procedural protections that the in the as talking about house proceedings. He notion this didnt happen is a peculiar myth about all this and it started of course with the early phase of the investigation into the ukraine matter when the House Intelligence Committee, along with a number of other committees conducted private depositions of various potentially relevant witnesses and the argument that republicans made somehow or another that this was unprecedented, improper and somehow or other were excluded from the proceedings. They werent. Three committees conducted even those private depositions, the membership of those committees was combined with something over a hundred and 40 plus of the members of those three committees are republicans, all of whom were swilingtsed to participate in those entitled to participate in the depositions in the basement and some of whom did. So in fact the republicans had ample opportunity to rticipate even in the pleist private investigation and when the witnesses were presented publicly the republicans were there and their lawyers were there and staff were there and all requesting questions. So the process was precisely the sort of process one presumably a caller would hope for. Its what happened. Host green bay, wisconsin, betty is watching on the line of independents, on the line with professor bowman. Go ahead. Caller good morning. Thanks so much for being there. And ive been listening and i hope people are listening to hat youre saying. Years ago i worked for nixon. I was there through the watergate, i saw the whole much worse ump is than nixon because i just feel , hes how would you say been doing too many things that are not doing the right thing and helping the people but people dont they just instead of saying youre a republican or democrat, you should be an american and listen to whats really going the people like who are trying to help help us, hes not helping us. Host betty, professor bowman has what the president did in regards to ukraine reach the level of high crimes and misdemeanors . Host in my view, yes, it certainly does. The first article of impeachment charges abuse of power. It also contains allegations that can be read as being bribery but principally its about abuse of power. Abuse of power is a category of president ial or executive branch behavior that has been impeachable, one of the high crimes and misdemeanors that both the British Parliament in the 14th century and the american framers and later the American Congress has always understood to be impeachable in an appropriate case. Abuse of power is the proper category. The question is then did mr. Trump abuse his power . I would say the evidence is clear that he did. What power did he abuse . Well, he abused the power that military ontrol funding, the power that he has as the nations chief diplomat and a variety of other vorts that he gets under the constitution. Thats fair enough. The people should understand this, when we talk about abuse of power, were not talking about a president doing something of a kind he isnt allowed to do and isnt a part of his office. What were talking about is the situation where a president takes powers the constitution gives him and misuses him. He had the authority to General Authority to regulate military expenditures, foreign aid expenditures, generally speaking he has the power to help administer that. He has general power to deal with foreign officials. But when you take that power and use it not for the nations benefit but your own personal benefit, thats the definition of abuse of power. Host did he break the law, though, professor . Did he break a law . Guest the constitution is a law. The constitution says that a president and others is impeachable for treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors. Abuse of power is and has been understood for hundreds of years to be a high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he broke a law. He broke the constitution. The question implies somehow for someone to be impeachable the conduct has to violate some preexisting criminal or civil statute and thats just not true. Its very clear and always has been clear, certainly the framers understood it to be true and all congresses that have responded to or dealt with impeachments in 240 years since have understood you dont need a violation of a preexisting statute in order for something to be impeachable. As it turns out, the behavior mr. Trump engaged in with respect to ukraine is probably a violation of at least the modern bribery statute and may be a violation of a number of statutes but in the end its a red herring. The question is did the president engage in behavior which is an abuse of the powers we give him under the constitution . I think the case for that is extraordinarily powerful and very convincing. So yes, i think he committed an Impeachable Offense. Also theres article two which in some way is even more important. The second article as the original, i assume you know, charges him with obstructing the congressional investigation into the abuse of power. Thats critical. Because if the impeachment mechanism is to work at all, congress has to have the ability to demand of the president the evidence that is necessary for congress to decide whether he did wrong or did not do wrong. If a president can say to a congress who is investigating impeachable conduct, im not iving you any information, phooey, go away, the whole idea of impeachment is a nullity and thats ridiculous. The framers put in the constitution as a critical bulwark against potential executive tyranny. Its one thing to make the judgment, by the way, and distinguishes in articles 1 and 2, one can conclude perhaps, although i disagree, mr. Trumps behavior with respect to ukraine, you can say its not an abuse of power, you could say it doesnt rise to the level of high crime or misdemeanor, ok, but i think even someone who makes that judgment should be very concerned about a president who essentially says to a coequal branch, im just not going to help you do your job at all. Im simply not going to submit to one of the constitutionally delegated powers that you have. Im just going to tell to you go whistle. Thats very, very dangerous. I think even mr. Trumps most ardent defenders should step back for a second and say would i feel the same way about this if the president were somebody i didnt like . A democrat perhaps. And that president had simply said to congress, no, im not cooperating with you, im not giving you any information at all. Im not even going to argue about the details, im just not giving you anything. Thats very, very dangerous. And that, too, is impeachable. Host randy, brandonton, florida, republican. Caller good morning. I feel slightly interested that this gentleman was talking about evidence being brought. The court system could very well have subpoenaed these people and if theyd done Due Diligence instead of pushing this thing through the system but they were in a rush to push his through and in reality shouldnt allow witnesses and why should the senate allow witnesses when in fact it should be a grand jury that basically comes out of the house and the senate prosecutes that and now suddenly this house does not have enough evidence so now they want the senate to provide evidence they couldnt themselves. They shouldnt have ever voted hearsay third party type evidence they had. Host two questions it sounds like, professor bowman. Hearsay ill articulate a question, why didnt the house pursue the witnesses in court . Guest its a good question and a reasonably fair one. I think the answer is that there is something to the notion that the house feels and ense of urgency here in the sense they believe they have, what it to say certainly the democrats together with one former republican who voted for impeachment, they certainly feel they have a strong case of impeachment based on the evidence they already received. And they had to make decision given that they feel theyve already got a strong case, the senate for judgment or do they additional n some spaces by subpoenaing folks from the white house and then pursuing those subpoenas hrough the courts. The question is trying to pursue these witnesses through the courts would be futile if one wanted a impeachment trial in the senate any time within the next year or more. The practicalities of trying to get subpoenas enforced in the courts are that it would take months and probably longer, many months. First you go to the district court, argue your case there, win up there, President Trump inevitably appeal also the court of appeals. If you win there, you appeal the Supreme Court. At each one of those stages youre going to end up with weeks or more likely months of delay and then even if you get a case all the way to the Supreme Court, youre probably not going to be done because courts dont just take the general question should the house be able to subpoena people . They take specific questions about specific witnesses. So to take an example one of the claims mr. Trumps witnesses had made or mr. Trump has made on behalf of his witnesses is any of them have an absolute privilege not to testify. Theres no legal ground for that. And thats buying challenged in a case working its way through the courts but hasnt made its way all the way through the courts yet but lets suppose it gets all the way up to the Supreme Court. That issue alone would certainly not be decided until the very end of the current term of court which is june of this year. But then even if the house wins and gets an order saying well, there is no such thing as absolute privilege, then were back with having a witness come to potentially to testify but that witness would certainly raise other privileges but probably also not sustainable but would raise them, for example executive privilege or attorneyclient privilege and youd have to litigate that through the courts which would take another two years. So when people argue the House Democrats were too hasty or they were unfair by deciding not to force these cases into the courts, thats a little disingenuous because frankly for the house to have done that with respect to any and certainly all of these witnesses would have pushed this matter back well past the lection, well into 2021, and they recognize that this was just not a practical approach. Host hope is watching in kentucky. Democratic caller, youre up next for the professor. Caller yes, if someone fails to comply with a subpoena, why have the closest bail bondsman take him into custody and take him to a hotel or motel nearby until he comply . Guest this is a question somebody raised a little earlier, as what is the remedy if someone refuses to comply with a congressional subpoena, and to summarize what i said before, basically congress has three possible remedies, one, refer the case for criminal contempt prosecution by the department of justice but this Justice Department doesnt seem disposed to do that for congress and in fact theyve overtly refused. You can sue somebody for civil contempt in the courts but that takes weeks, months, maybe longer and possibly you get the house or senate at arms arrest the person and stick him in the basement. The latter is possible but i you can see why members of either party would be reluctant to do that because youre talking about a potentially prettyingly pretty ugly standoff where youll have a official of the house of representatives go over to, for example, the white house and try to arrest Nick Mulvaney and frog march him off the white house grounds. You know, its unclear how that sort of confrontation would work out and could get very ugly indeed and certainly there were people in the house of representatives that thought Something Like that should be done in the course of the impeachment investigation and in the end decided against that direct confrontation and you can see why. Host were waiting for the speaker of the house to announce the house managers in the Senate Impeachment trial. Shes expected to do so around 10 00 a. M. Eastern time so a little less than five minutes. Ell get coverage of that over on cspan 3, on our website cspan. Org or download and listen to the free cspan radio app. Here on cspan the house is about to gavel in here in a few minutes so well try to get in bob who is in cooksville, tennessee, republican caller. Hi, bob. Caller good morning. Thanks for taking my call. Host good morning. Caller mr. Bowman, id like to make a statement and then like to ask you a question. You stated a few minutes ago the democrats had a fair hearing in the congress. Why was it the republican congressman got all over television stating he would instruct witnesses not to answer their questions. Hes Still Holding on to the inspector generals deposition pertaining to the whistle blower, and the question i want to ask you, when this falls flat on its face, you think the Democrat Party will try again to impeach the president or do u think the president is reelected . Thanks for taking my question. Host professor . Guest well, i can address the second part of the question. Host if you could do so, we have a couple minutes. Guest i suppose the question is could the democrats, in this case or frankly any party with the house of representatives itself impeach a president again having impeached him once and having him i guess presumably acquitted in the senate, the answer in theory is sure, you can impeach a president every day of the week and twice on sunday. Theres nothing that prevents you from doing that in the constitution. Is that at all politically likely . I think no. I think certainly in this term of mr. Trump, the democrats have elected to try to impeach him or have impeached him in the house on the two articles that we have. I think we can be pretty assured thats all thats going to happen in this area in 2020. Host frank bowman, again, the author of the book high crimes and misdemeanors, the history of impeachment for the age of trump. Hes also a law professor at the university of Missouri School of law. You can find out more if you go to law. Missouri. Edu. Professor, real quickly because the house is going to come in, what are you watching for next . Guest im very interested to see the content of whatever resolution speaker mcconnell introduces and will tell us a lot about what is going to happen next. Then i think the really important question will be the vote on whether or not witnesses or evidence can be subpoenaed but were not going to get the resolution of that question for some days or maybe weeks. Host well see if speaker of the house answers any questions about the house managers and what happens next when he again holds that News Conference in a couple minutes. Our coverage of that over on cspan 3 this morning as well as our website cspan. Oregon and follow along if you download that free cspan radio app here on cspan, the house is about to gavel in here. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] and theyll begin their way with legislative business and then the debate on the house managers is expected to begin around 12 30 p. M. Eastern time. And then a vote sometime between 12 30 and 1 30 p. M. P. M. N time. Eastern time. Of course all of that happening here. Our coverage gavel to gavel here on cspan. Professor bowman, we want to thank you for your time this morning as well. Thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] guest its been a pleasure. Host read his book, and gaveltogavel coverage of the house floor begins now