but progressives making clear they want to have more conversations. what they had wanted all along was clarity from manchin and cinema, two mod rts in the senate, who they believed had not been forthcoming about what they wanted. this week brought them manchin saying out loud $1.5 trillion was his number and didn t say it once, said it repeatedly. i think that was a big moment for progressives, feeling like this negotiation is going to take off. but there s a lot of work still to do. and in her dear colleagues letter, the speaker got into how much more work there is. she said more time is needed to complete the task. our priority is to create jobs on the health care, family and climate agenda. that s a shared value. our chairs are still working for clarity and consensus. clearly the bipartisan infrastructure bill will pass once we have agreement on the reconciliation bill. once again, anderson, moderates saying the deal was to bring a
pelosi that she s not bringing the bill to the floor means this bigger $3.5 trillion or smaller package, however large it turns out to be, social safety net bill is so tied inextricably 2450 bipartisan infrastructure bill and they re concerned because the argument behind the scenes that leadership has been making according to aids i ve been talking to is that bipartisan infrastructure bill is a gateway drug to the bigger socialist package. that s what republicans are calling it. so, if you vote for the bipartisan bill, you re helping bringing the bigger bill along. now that pelosi is saying these two bills are so linked, that really gives republicans, who were thinking about helping pass that bipartisan bill, some pause. joining us one of the recipients of speaker pelosi s dear letter.
everything that s happening here in this monumental level is how do you think speaker pelosi is handling leading your party and dealing with president trump in this impeachment today? absolutely phenomenally. i think she has been so skillful over the last few weeks and months. she is at the absolute top of her game. i think her skillfulness level is that of lyndon johnson or franklin roosevelt in their prime. to be able to navigate impeachment as she did, a lot of people were trying to push her into it. she literally waited until the exact right moment when certain things came out about trump and president trump and everything else and as some of our military members of congress who have military experience and cia experience and all of that started moving. she picked the exact right time to do that. and then in the last week to
mitch mcconnell provides a guarantee of a fair trial. our founders, when they wrote the constitution, they suspected that there could be a rogue president. i don t think they suspected that we could have a rogue president and a rogue leader in the senate at the same time. a rogue senate leader. pelosi arguing there there s a kind of collusion to prevent the fair trial, and she ll hold back the articles. i ll tell you something. substantively, this may not work all that well because the fact is mitch mcconnell might be more comfortable with a delay than the democrats who do have campaigns starting in february for to 2020. but that doesn t mean speaker pelosi isn t thinking on multiple levels. perhaps she understands substance is only one part of things these days in donald trump s washington because there are signs this pr president she s outmaneuvered on other moves may be moved by the optics. donald trump wants the trial right away. he is anxious to be publicly
president s favorite media. you are not asleep. this is not a dream. this is really happening. this is your life. this is our country and our time. it is wednesday the 18th of december in the year 2019 and president donald trump is impeached. third time in american history. a very big deal for this country. he deserved it because no president has ever done what he did. after this sham impeachment, you see him in a very spot than he was when they started this whole thing. pivotal moment in our nation s history and it played out overnight on capitol hill. pivotal. impeachment is pivotal partly because this is a power that can t be waved away, can t be denied, can t be fake news ified. democrats trying a new attack for wielding this historically rare power. pelosi arguing the democrats might withhold the impeachment articles from the senate until