welcome back. these are live pictures from the floor of the house where debate has begun on an upcoming vote in the next few moments. in the next hour, on the rules of the impeachment inquiry. let s listen in. gentleman from massachusetts has yielded all time for debate. only the gentleman from massachusetts would have to yield for this request. thank you madam speaker. in that case, i want to begin by echoing my friend s words. it s a sad day for all of us. for me personally, i m sure for all of my colleagues on the rules committee and for the institution as a whole. the resolution sets forth a process for impeaching the president of the united states. it s not a fair process. it s not an open process. it s not a transparent process, but it s limited with a preordained outcome. impeachment of the president is one of the most consequential
testimony. michael, before we go, the essential question here is a political one. does the president s alleged behavior here rise to crimes and misdemeanors. many of the details of the behavior were not contested. the question was, did it rise to that level? you are getting to a point here with all these corroborating witnesses that you re in the same bind. from your view historically and again, this is a personal judgment, does it rise to that level? i think everything we re hearing so far suggests that as the speaker has said, this is deadly serious. i think there s a good case to be made, a credible case that what we re hearing now does rise to the level of impeachable offense on the order of the charges made against president nixon. for example, all the the president is ordering people not to show up, not to testify. defying subpoenas. that could be called obstruction. as we listen to mr. morrison today and others, we have to think about, why did the
saw a couple of my colleagues voting with us. this is not an impeachment vote. this is really procedural. it just takes us to the next phase of the investigation. and it will allow the president to have his white house counsel question the witnesses. i think that we need to find the truth. the american people need to see for themselves everything that house intelligence committee, the oversight committee, they have been listening from witnesses. so i think it s an important vote this morning, but a very difficult one for all of us. we didn t come here to impeach the president, jim. i didn t come here to do this and to focus on impeachment. we focused on reducing health care costs. i ve been working on gun violence issues, on the environment. i represent the florida keys. we re like 0.0 for the effects of climate change in the florida keys. but it s a difficult time but it s necessary to protect our democracy. you make a point there that leaves you vulnerable. leaves the party vulnera
if you think about president trump s career before he was president, a lot of the ways he defended himself in various legal disputes was to tie up opponents in courts with superior legal firepower. that has worked, and that did work for republicans during the mueller investigation to an extent. here, though, now that you ve had people like ambassador sondland and taylor and colonel vindman go out there and make a clean breast of what they know it s been harder for ambassador bolden to say they don t want to talk if they re emboldened but it makes their case tougher optically and you have a situation where the main facts of this case, unlike in the mueller situation are already out. so stalling it, if you are the republicans, just stalls sort of the inevitable. i do agree with abby that for democrats, they want to get thus done by the end of the year from a public relations point of view. and there are dangers as well for a president running for re-election to have impeachment
particular are focused on keeping republicans in line. urging them to stay united to not show any cracks in the wall of support that he s had for over two years from the republican party. so we will see how that goes. but that seems to be the priority in terms of keeping the narrative that this that republicans are not wavering on the president here. and they are going to continue to prosecute the due process case. the question will be, though, jim, does president trump want to continue to prosecute the due process case? he sounds like he really wants to get into some of the nitty-gritty details which a lot of republicans are not comfortable with. oftentimes the president contradicts the stated strategy with his own moves and comments. joe johns, abby phillip, thank you. you re still seeing live pictures. this is debate preceding the first housewide vote in the impeachment inquiry. this to determine the rules going forward including granting rights and privileges to