Today. Good morning, welcome to morning joe. It is monday, january 20th, Martin Luther king day. This morning, our guests jonathan lemire, and a former director of Strategic Communications for Hillary Clintons president ial campaign, Adrienne Elrod, shes an msnbc contributor. Host of Msnbcs Politicsnation and president of the National Action network reverend al sharpton, nbc news Heidi Przybyla is with us and nbc news and msnbc law analyst and editorinchief of law fair Ben Minh Wittes joins us, coauthor of a new book unmaking the presidency, Donald Trumps war on the worlds most powerful office. That in a moment. Three years ago today donald trump was sworn into office. Tomorrow the senate will consider removing him. With the impeachment trial looming the white house is now laying out the president s defense amid yet more revelations about the ukraine saga. The democrats, meanwhile, are just days away from the first votes of their primary fight. This as the New York Times endorses not o
Presentation from the house managers. Democrats making that case and focusing on abuse of power. The first article of impeachment that they passed over in the House Chamber last month. Now what i will tell you from the presentation yesterday is that this is about making the case to moderate senators who they need to cross the aisle, vote with democrats to get people like john bolton, the president s National Former adviser and Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, to come and testify on capitol hill. Now we wont see that test until next week because we have more presentation today from house managers. Again tomorrow we expect. Then the white house will have to make their defense. That will likely start on saturday. They then have monday and tuesday to do that. And then, of course, well get into a question of witnesses until early or mid next week. So weve seen a lot of senators out of their seats during these proceedings. We thought that the rules were they had to stay in their sea
Nothing in this resolution requires documents to be produced. Those are the two things that democrats have been demanding for weeks. But Mitch Mcconnell has signalled for time that he would not allow that to happen x clearly in this resolution, that will set the parameters for this trial. Nothing is specified in terms of requirements for witnesses to come forward as the democrats have been demanding. Now, what it does lay out is a quick time frame for opening arguments. What it says here is that there will be 24 hours of arguments that each side will present, first the house impeachment managers, 24 hours of arguments for their side, and then the president s defense team will make 24 hours to make their case. Now, its important to note this is over two session days, so essentially this could be split up into about 12 hours a day, and thats shorter than the clinton time frame because the clinton time frame had 24 hours, split up into four days apiece, and here 12 hours apiece for each s
This is cnn tonight. Im don lemon. It is the eve of a historic day on capitol hill and for the United States, as a matter of fact. The impeachment trial of President Trump getting under way in earnest in the senate. And we begin with breaking news. The release of Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnells resolution for how he wants the trial to proceed including giving each side 24 hours over just two days to present their opening arguments. President trumps defense team filing a lengthy rebuttal to the charges calling the attempt to remove him from office a charade and a rigged process. Also arguing the president was well within his rights to attempt to get a foreign leader to investigate trumps political rivals. Tonight we have a trump fact check. Cnn has tallied 65 ways the president has been dishonest about ukraine and impeachment. And also ahead this hour, remembering dr. Martin luther king jr. And reflecting on the powerful words he used to fight Racial Injustice in the United Stat