leader trent lott emerging from a meeting negotiating rules for the impeachment. looks like they re getting along. the deal they worked on would later pass in the senate by a unanimous vote. fast forward 20 years. here we are with the articles of impeachment that are being held in the house while democrats wait to see how senate republicans intend to run the trial. house speaker nancy pelosi saying today, quote, the house cannot choose our impeachment managers until we know what sort of trial the senate will conduct. the impeachment managers act as prosecutors during the trial that takes place in the senate. in the senate democratic leader chuck schumer is pushing for witnesses, specifically schumer wants to hear from four administration officials who were blocked by the white house from testifying in the house. the list includes the acting white house chief of staff, mick mulvaney, and the former national security adviser john bolton. majority leader mitch mcconnell sounded reluctant
and kim s christmas gift. has north korea orders rocket engine tests and meets with top generals a source said the north koreans are about to unwrap a hard line approach to the u.s. i m brianna keeler, wolf blitzer is off today. you re in the situation room. we re following the political jockeying over president trump s upcoming impeachment trial. chuck schumer issuing a new demand for documents after the release of what schumer called explosive emails raising questions about the timing of president trump s freeze of aid to ukraine and his demand for political dirt on joe biden. also today republican leader mitch mcconnell said negotiations about the impeachment trial are at an impasse right now. but he won t rule out the possibility of calling witnesses. congressman dan kildee of michigan, a member of the house democratic leadership is standing by to take our questions and our constituents
you are talking about folks who are very savvy and good at what they do. jackie, with mitch mcconnell saying, look, he s not necessarily ruling out calling witnesses, what he s saying is he just wants a written questioning period first and then to decide. do you think that mitch mcconnell would ever actually agree to having live witnesses? well, it remains to be seen just how far the senate majority leader could push the envelope here. clearly chuck schumer has calculated the best path forward is to apply as much public pressure as possible on mitch mcconnell. and i don t know if this is necessarily just about leveraging the desired parameters of the trial. i think schumer calculated this is politically beneficial to democrats. mitch mcconnell is looking out for his senate majority at the end of the day. there is trepidation amongst the vulnerable senators right now who don t want to be put on the record voting against having witnesses or having documents. that would be something tha
president? it will be very difficult for them to survive a reelection. 20 years ago we had a similar dynamic in terms of calling witnesses or not calling witnesses to the senate impeachment trial of bill clinton. a couple things happened. the senate voted behind closed doors on whether to call witnesses. they argued over what format it should be. what we had was videotaped testimony taken behind closed doors of monica lewinsky, of clinton s friend jordan and blumenthal, the white house aide. back then the problem for the white house was a number of moderate democrats who were publicly very critical of the president s behavior, joe lieberm lieberman, for example. i don t know how this plays out with doug jones, but it s a similar dynamic to 20 years ago. and they will criticize the president even if they don t say it s impeachable, and now you re seeing republicans even failing to criticize the conduct.
all of the rules have been thrown in a ditch to get trump from the, way they impeached him to now, denying his day in court. here is how it will end. she will eventually send articles because public opinion will crush the democrats. minority leader chuck schumer conspiring with the speaker of the house basically to insist upon calling witnesses. the president is invoking executive privilege around mulvaney and john bolton and others. they impeached this president because he chose to go to court. second article of impeachment is obstruction of congress. the president has claimed executive privilege. instead of allowing the president to exercise his legal rights, they impeached him because he wanted to go to court. can you imagine with would have happened if we had done this to a democrat? that we impeach a democrat because they wanted to go to court? maria: yeah. it is pretty extraordinary.