To participate and actually defend itself a on the substanc . Or was does it do . Is it all bombast all the time until we get to potentially an Impeachment Vote. I want to delve deeper into that point and also tell our viewers here, as were at the top of the 11 00 hour on the east coast In Washington, youre watching msnbcs special live uninterrupted coverage of what all agree is a historic day on capitol hill. C this is the preparation for a house vote on resolution 660, providing for the rules for the potential impeachmentth of the current president donald trump. What you see on your veen is a countdown that will result in proceeding to thatsu vote. So the current count you see on your screen has not yet arrived under the house procedure on the phone. What i can tell you, in a matter of moments when you sigh this count run down,u within the ne nine minutes, we expect the house to, proceed then to the
actual vote on the Impeachment Resolution and trules. We also are told in a departure
the president completely backtracked one using his hote for theng g7. i want to bring in more reporting, viewers will note we veno been on triple zeros foa few minutes. most of the votes are in. garrett, i want you to walk us through what you re hearing and i ll bringar in heidi as well o of i washington. to both of you, really teeing up the question, what will happen next when you look at the people who may leave their party on this great. reporter: it looks liketh they re calling this first vote here so we may stop when they start the second. this is the vote we ve been watching for all day. this will not be an exact party line vote. we know of two democrats who our team expects to cross over and vote with republicans against resolution. they have very different profiles here. jeff van drew, a freshman member from new jersey, just elected as part of the blue wave, just told one ofav our colleagues in the basement he i m going to jump in to
we re going to leave the escalating numbers on the screen as berereport this out in realtime. rarely is the floor of the house this exciting. that climbing yea number, 183, joined by one independent is this united states house on the road to passing rules to provide for the potential impeachment of the sitting president. what is the magic number they need toe hit? 218 if everyone is present. i didn tne see the totals on th last vote. i believe that will be the number today. democrats have the number to clear it here. t they can afford to lose a half dozen or more wouldn t be politically problematic. if you lose more than that, you re having a you saw the two nays pop up very quickly. if there are other wavering members on the hefloor, i suspe they re being spoken to in hush
meeting with a number of these moderate republicans that they are deeply troubled by the president s behavior. but theypr view this vote todays largely a procedural vote, and that many of their objections, just like their leadership has been voicing, have been along the process lines. to garrett s point, many republicans felt like if they were going to dissent, this is not the vote they are going to dissent on.to we need to keep that in mind as we look at the vote totals. this is not comparable to previous initial votes on impeachment in that sense. i also want to correct for the record, ari, since this is a moment for history, and fact check some things that leader mccarthy said about this being un-democratic, because this vote hasn t taken place until 37 days into the process. do you know why that is? number one, this vote is not required under the constitution. there s nothing in the
attention. there s going to be an attempt toe paint this as a strictly partisan politics, essentially. there is a tendency, understandably, amongen people just sort of, oh, they re all politicians, they re all out for themselves. because it s breaking news, i have to correct myself, my apologies, i m told the chief deputy whip of the democratic caucus has found an nbc camera coming out of this vote. congressman from michigan, dan kildee, thanks for joining me. thank you very much. does today s vote mean you re going to impeach donald trump? it s a step that sets the framework for us to make that decision. a number of us have seen enough evidence to come to that conclusion. but i think the process has to play itself out. but this will give us an orderly process that republicans asked for, and of course now they object to it. but this is the way our democratic system works. we layys down the rules that wee going to follow. we re going to follow those rules and we ll come to a j