these crazy lunatics, the keys to this impeachment train, and they wrecked it. it s as clear as you can see. there s one more statistic i d like to share with you and your audience. go back to august 1st. the media did a really good thing this summer, they were keeping tabs on how many democrats had committed to an impeachment inquiry, that they would vote for that. by august 1st one-half of all the democrats had committed, six week before the so-called whistleblower complaint, the so-called it s, and so nobody even knew about that. and they had already committed to impeachment. so let s stop pretending this has to do with the ukrainian call. september 22nd was the first time any democrat publicly stated that the reason he or she would vote for the president s impeachment was because of the call with the president of ukraine. september 22nd, long past august 1st when 50% of the democrats
stay right there. don t go anywhere. coming up, as the house gets ready for its vote this week, new numbers show more americans may be getting onboard the impeachment train. we ll dig into that next. but first, my colleague richard lui with today s other top stories. richard? hey, rev. some of the stories we re watching this hour, the trump administration intends to announce the drawdown of about 4,000 troops from afghanistan as early as next week. president trump has pushed for the withdrawal for some time, including his thanksgiving trip to afghanistan. secretary of defense mark esper says the reduction will happen even if the taliban does not negotiate an agreement. a north carolina community is in shock after this surveillance video of a sheriff s deputy slamming a boy to the ground made public. the vance county officer is seen walking down a hallway with the student. then he suddenly picks him up, throws him to the ground two times. the child is said to be in good health. th
the president s lawyer who refuse to do shut up and go away, instead bouncing all over television and ukraine, doing the very thing that got the president in trouble in the first place. and rules that republicans themselves designed in 2016 that ended up hamstringing them in the hearings. they mere witnesses. attacking the pros itself, check. obstructing the investigation by withholding relevant testimony and documents, check. ridiculous stunts like storming a meeting they were actually invited to. check. try as they might republicans could not derail the democrats impeachment train. the how judiciary committees has voted arms of impeachment against the president.
criticism months ago when she wasn t onboard the impeachment train. people didn t understand why. and there was clearly a method to that madness. i mean, they talk about playing, like fifth dimensional chess at this point in time. that is where she s going. but it was a remarkable sign of humanity the way that she responded to james rosen and it s funny. before we started i was joking. you know shesh, she doesn t all sugar cereal at her table. i feel like we have the cookies today, naughty or nice and she is saying naughty. donald trump, naughty. all kidding aside, the reality is when you have that level of decorum and formality, when you have that level of decency and integrity missing from this administration, that s exactly the tone you need going into a senate impeachment trial. that is that from the top down concept. when you go in and you have rules and when you have that decorum that we were just talking about and procedure, you re going to have a guaranteed, i think, outcome of
impeachment. it s important because it s a question of, why are we here? the impeachment train is up and running and we re into this question of what can they prove, what can t they prove and that becomes the subject of a trial assuming impeachment articles are passed. how did we get here? there are the constitutional questions. i m a little torn about this because while that is worthwhile, i am wondering why it s important that we hear from constitutional professors about what their opinion is about these facts? because ultimately, this is a political exercise and the question becomes, if it s pretty clear what the president did, what do you do about it? what is the right response to an action that no one defends? jeffrey toobin, you re our historian here. didn t the nixon impeachment process and bill clinton impeachment process begin with constitutional scholars testifying, giving the