diplomat, he s a different politician, he shouldn t have done it, but this doesn t rise to the level of impeachment. you don t remove a president for this. in its own way goes to van s point they ve lost their honor and integrity. what we re talking about here is using military aid that this ally desperately needed against the russians and holding it up to get political dirt, you know, and affect the election here in this country. but these things get normalized and as time goes on, it s less shocking, it shouldn t be, but it is, and i think republicans will retreat but again not to the so what, but i think they ll make some very stern speeches on the floor about why this was wrong, but whys the president shouldn t be removed. someone who has been there for a while, rob portman the constitution only gives you the death penalty. like it s not like infraction, misdemeanor, felony and then impeachment and removal.
show the public that this is not just trying to remove a president because they don t like him. they have to show the public that this is a fair process. and that s why the public hearings are important. i think to a degree they ve put themselves behind the curve on this. and republicans have taken advantage of it and now the question is with the public hearings, does the public listen to this and say, yeah, this is really a problem when a guy like vindman testifies or a guy like bolton, we don t know what he s going to say, does that move the public? because it if moves the public, it moves the politicians. but also when it comes to this defense that you re hearing from some of your former colleagues and also we re hearing from reporting that they get to a place of, what they re hearing just hasn t doesn t rise to the level there was a quid pro quo but doesn t rise to level of impeachment, that s exactly what mick mulvaney said in that press conference when we went before report
interpreted it one way or another. whether you want to say that is quid pro quo or it is during negotiations to find information on a political opponent. however you characterize it, there are clearly some people testifying on capitol hill who didn t think it was perfect. i think there are republican senators who are now to the place where they are saying, okay, it wasn t perfect, but it wasn t illegal. we don t think it s impeachable. and they are having that multiple-choice option of how to stand with the president but say of the call up wasn t everything. harris: it s interesting, on friday we had u.s. former assistant attorney andy mccarthy on with us on outnumbered, and he made this point on the couch. watch. the president is freezing his defense in place by saying again and again that this was perfect. his best defense here is that this doesn t rise to the level of impeachment. to make that case you need to
process. might not necessarily deserve that. howard: the washington post has a report growing number of republicans are ready to acknowledge that, yes, donald trump used military aid as leverage to get an investigation going of the bidens in the ukraine, but it s not an impeachable offense, it doesn t rise to that level. nothing happened in the end. if they do acknowledge that and the stories reporting this are not fake. well, they have senators have been telling me now for weeks that they don t like what the president did on the call, but that doesn t rise to an impeachable offense. that s not changed howard: on the record? oh, yeah. no, no, they ve been telling us that in the hallways. i think the story is really about the words quid pro quo, because they want to be able to check the president who has gone out and said there s no quid pro quo but now, oh, wow, we ve got the republican senate. they ve always said we don t really support what he did on the phone. we don t thi
on the trail? just because the house members, for example, they have a direct impact on what is actually going to happen here because they get to vote on whatever articles of impeachment get drafted. so i do think that to your point that it s not something that s come up. that is a little bit surprising actually. given the fact that the resistance was so energized since the first day of his presidency, the day after his swearing in. how did democrats on the trail, should they be talking about this? how do they wade in effectively on the question of impeachment? i think they need to focus not on the technicality of how many votes, whether or not which articles or anything like that. they need to stay in the lane of this is really about corruption and criminality. so to the notion that republicans are looking at their personal/political fortunes and saying this doesn t rise to the level where i should care or condemn it in any way, that s not patriotic. we just went through two yea