behind the scenes to hold off a trump meeting or dahl with ukraine president out of concern that trump would use the conversation to press kiev for damaging information on trump s potential rival in the 2020 race, former vice president joe biden, and biden s son, hunter. here for our leadoff discussion on a tuesday night, robert costa, national political reporter for the washington post and moderator of washington week on pbs. peter baker, co-author of the book impeachment in american history. alexi mccayman and jeremy bash, a former chief counsel to the house intelligence committee. thank you to all of you for being with us. peter, you wrote the book on impeachment, so we ll start with you. obviously there s been discussion for months now about the possibility democrats would go in this direction. there had been calls for many democrats. the house speaker had been notably absent from those calls. put in context what has played out inon the last 24 to 36 hour
ends up backlashing on the party that does it, and it could help the president. alexi, how confident do you perceive democrats to be, democratic leaders? you saw obviously pelosi make that move today, but we ve also seen a number of democrats in the last two days from marginal districts, swing districts, we ve seen a number of them come out in favor of an impeachment inquiry. is there a confidence among democrats that numbers like we just showed are going to change? i think what we ve seen between the member who came out today, which i think you mentioned it more than 30 between yesterday and today, and the seven house democrats that wrote the op-ed in the post that came out last night, all those folks are from marginal districts, the ones who wrote that article last night and even a lot of the texas house democrats that came out today. they re from very marginal, sort of vulnerable districts. they know what s at risk, but a lot of them have this national security, foreign policy b
said, this has reached the threshold for impeachment. we need you to make a statement. we need house democrats to make a formal statement. so politically she was showing solidarity with them while letting the committees in the coming days and weeks still work out the exact process. well, in terms of that process, then, alexi, and in terms of democrats commitment to not just opening an inquiry, but have some kind of a vote on impeachment if it were to come to that, how much now in terms of their political thinking on this, their strategic thinking on this how much is going to depend on what happens when that transcript is released tomorrow, apparently what happens when the whistle-blower s complaint is heard, maybe the whistle-blower him or herself is heard from. how much of that is going to dictate whether this is something that leads to democrats having a vote here? i think those are the most important things that will dictate whether that happens. the transcript is helpful, bu
well, for sure. and using that kind of language is going to not only ruffle feathers, it s going to offend, for sure. according to a source familiar with that meeting, he wasn t trying to use a slur. he was trying to talk about using unskilled versus skilled laborerers and saying, why would woe take unskilled workers from this country when we could take skilled workers from another country. but that context aside, it s going to ochffend. so he said, norway is where we need to go for refugees. your thoughts, alexi? he con translate creastant c versus them narrative. we heard this on the campaign. when he said african-american citizens in the united states, where what do you have to lose? painted them as being so down and out. and that is setting a dangerous and abnormal precedent for years to come for what it means to be modern day presidential, as he sort of blames this behavior on time and again. and a republican close to republican leaders in the white house told axios that the o
against nfl players resonated. i think it s grosser. let s talk about the president and his failure to speak with honesty. and he i m not saying we can argue ten versus eight and he might be off by a number. he has had a pattern since he took office, and even before, of saying things that are just wrong. alexi, first of all, he went after the washington post has put it together. the president has now made more than 2,000 false statements since becoming president. the washington post says he s averaging 5.6 false statements a day. trump seems to have a reckless disregard for the truth, of course, and a particular penchant for bald-faced lies. here are some of them. the fact is, he doesn t have a birth certificate. his grandma in kenya said, oh, no, he was born in kenya and i was there and i wnitnessed the birth. our current president came out of nowhere, came out of nowhere. in fact, i ll go a step further. the people who went to school with him, they never saw him. they d