extended risk impeachment. you can tell that the president is obsessed with it, and understandbly so to be fair. and infuriated by it. he called it ridiculous. he called it flimsy. he called it ugly. the flipside of that, of course, is he is sort of very upset that this will bring an asterisk, at the very least, to his presidency. but it s something he can t stop talking about, in part because he thinks there is somepa political advantage. you also saw him last night mention the silver lining, the idea that that s the only reason the usmca trade deal got passed and also saying that this is impeachmentin light. it s not even real impeachment. and frankly trying to fire up his base by saying this is democrats basically trying to subvert your will. they couldn t win in 2016, they can t win in 2020 and this is how they are trying to do it. jonathan lemire, it does put the president on four to five sides of every two-sided
impeachment out and say a president can do whatever he wants. the president said article ii says, i can do whatever i want. it doesn t say that at all. it says we have a system of checks and balances, a system of co-equal branches of government. gary wills just did an article that said article i is preeminent. article ii is the presidency. well, if you think i can impeach him but he can t impeach me, then i have some advantage over him. we started this conversation, and you mentioned at 9:00 a.m., the chairman announced articles of impeachment. 10:00 a.m., you held a press conference on the usmca trade deal. heads are spinning in washington. there are several critics on the left who are hating you right now for impeaching the president but at the same time giving him a deal on usmca and that you should have waited until the election, because why give him a
brindisi meets with mike pence. representative axne urges action on usmca, representative torres small, house should vote on trade deal. horn, oklahoma republicans urge agreement on nafta replacement. i think at this point impeachment will be a very stark thing to have done, right? this is something big that s probably going to be enough to keep many of them in line just because the cost of breaking from the democrats so completely would be a potential win for the republican supertrump that it would make them look potentially like the flip-floppers and any number of things. but it s a very delicate needle to thread to say a complicated trade bill offsets an emotional impeachment, and to make that argument in political speeches and sound bites to people that feel one way or another about the president, it s a difficult
russians will interfere in 2020. will russia stay out of the 2020 election, sir? he denied moscow meddled in 2016, which is false. we have highlighted that all speculation about our interference in domestic processes in the u.s. are baseless. there are no facts that would support that. reporter: pompeo warned him not to try it. should russia or any foreign actor takes steps to undermine our processes, we will take action in response. reporter: now that the impeach. process is likely to move to the senate, lawmakers have a log jam in the making. senate republicans expect to conduct a trial of the president after the new year, before moving to passing the usmca trade deal which means one of the president s top domestic priorities will have to wait weeks as the administration hangs in the balance and getting back to the president meeting
the argument why don t you just wait amounts to this. why don t you just let him cheat in one more election? why not let him cheat just one more time? why not let him have foreign help just one more time? that is what that argument amounts to. reporter: the white house strategy had been to paint democrats as do nothing lawmakers. that s much tougher now that nancy pelosi is giving the green light to the administration s new usmca trade deal. there s no question this trade agreement is much better than nafta. it s better than that was initially proposed by the administration. reporter: just as how democrats were accusing the president of pressuring ukraine to dig up dirt on joe biden, the ghost of 2016 arrived at the white house in the foreign russian foreign minister who didn t answer when asked if the