that the president or anyone in his senior staff had kind of colluded with the russians, so here we are. i mean, i think that until we get to the bottom, both of the investigation into russian spying, and the origins of that investigation, this issue is going to remain partisan and we ve got to have a report that satisfies everybody in terms of facts, jon. i m not sure we re going to get there but i think that s what bill barr is trying to do. jon: very quickly one republican has jumped on on board the impeachment train and chad pergram describes as a contrarian republican says that contrary to barr s portray all mueller s report reveals president trump engaged in specific actions in the pattern of behavior that meet the threshold of impeachment so he becomes the first republican voice crying impeachment. interesting times in washington. yes, he does.
and until that happens, the country s at risk. people are going to be suffering and we ll not be doing the right thing. so i think it s the crisis and, therefore, we should deal with it directly. all right. so when you say it s the crisis, look, you re being very clear where you stand. so you re holding this event in the district of congressman jerry nadler. now, jerry nadler is very important, right? he s the chairman of the committee that would initiate the impeachment proceedings and he s been extremely careful, as you are probably painfully aware, to not jump on the impeachment train. here s his reason. you don t necessarily launch an impeachment against the president because he committed an impeachable offense. there are several things you have to look at. one, whether an impeachable offense is committed, how many, et cetera. secondly, how important were they? do they rise to the gravity where you should undertake an impeachment? he s saying to be impeachable, you need to ha
on that train need to be careful on that. joni, do you think you re being too quick to jump on the impeachment train as kinzinger says? it doesn t mean to has to be a criminal act. there is remarkable consensus among constitutional scholars, and goes back to the convention in 1789 and followed forward through time. an impeachable offense is one in which the president betrays the public trust and undermines his office. it s a broad deliberately broad term of legal art that s adopted from british common law and brought over to the american context. and so the question here isn t, actually, whether or not the president has violated criminal statutes. it s whether his conduct meets that very high bar. and i think the fact we re sitting here tonight discussing it on the air is ample indication that the debate ought to be moved off of the streets, out of the cable news panels and into congress where it properly belongs. michael, do you think it s
i don t think that we have to do oversight or push policy points. i think you do both. mm-hmm. i, for one, don t think that we should get on an impeachment train. i know that s what people talk about. you need to do your oversight, wait on mueller. you need to do those things that are necessary to provide and do your duties. but i think that democrats have to have big and bold ideas. i mean college affordability, criminal justice reform. i m saying all of this knowing that it may gun control. will die in the senate. pre-existing conditions. common sense gun reform, which people are asking for. a health care fix, which our voters are asking for. those issues are pretty devi divisive. the folks that help provide these big victories to the democratic party are not going to be happy seeing infrastructure got done. they ll be like, oh, great, we got a new road belt. they want to make sure their pre-existing conditions are covered. they re going to want the
i think they ought to be wary of creating opportunities for the president to accuse them of overreach or accuse them of just being frivolous with their power. and beyond that, on the legislating, they have to figure out, okay, so what do you do about trump and trade? trade has typically been a democratic priority. people in the rust belt like sherrod brown talking about how they can make that argument to their voters. what if democrats and donald trump are on the same page? how do you navigate that situation in the house of representatives, especially when you re going toward 2020, and you want to win the rust belt back from i don t think it s an or proposition, though. i don t think that we have to do oversight or push policy points. i think you do both. mm-hmm. i, for one, don t think that we should get on an impeachment train. i know that s what people talk about. you need to do your oversight, you need to wait on mueller. you need to do those things that are necessary to pr