Of the house nancy pelosi opens that debate calling for both sides to put aside their part of the ship and to vote in the interest of the country it is tragic that the president s reckless actions make impeachment necessary he gave us no choice what we are discussing today is the established fact that the president violated the constitution is a matter of fact that the president is an ongoing threat to our National Security and the integrity of our elections the basis of our democracy hundreds of historians legal scholars and former prosecutors regardless of party had stated that the president committed impeachable offenses while trumps republican allies say the democrats have been trying to impeach the president since he was elected. We on the republican side have no problem taking our case to the majority and to the people of this country because they elected donald trump and it is a matter for the voters not this house not in this way not in the way this is being done it is trampled everything this house believes in i said it yesterday and i believe it to be this true today i will fight this on process which has been deplorable to use the word of the majority it has been all for the calendar the clock make it impressive that we actually do it quickly we dont care about rules we dont care about minority hearing days we dont care about giving the opportunity for witnesses to be called because the chairman gets to determine what is relevant well in my interest White House Correspondent candy how could that fence thats. Hes on capitol hill for us where that all important vote will happen heidi weve been hearing so many impassioned statements from both sides a historic day talk us through what weve been hearing and seeing over the last few hours. Thats right well we have been neck deep in these partisan arguments about these articles of impeachment of course this is the final chance for these house members to get these statements in the record for history to remember everyone is expecting that by the end of the day that there will be this historic vote to impeach President Trump which would make him only the 3rd u. S. President to be impeached the articles he is facing now is abuse of power and obstruction of congress both stemming from accusations that he used the power of his presidency to try to get you crane to announce investigations into trumps to mystic political rivals House Speaker nancy pelosi this morning opened up the debate calling that an abuse of power by on part of the president and that he is an ongoing National Security threat of course were hearing a very different interpretation from Republicans Doug collins who is leading the Republican Debate on these articles he says that democrats have been searching for a way to remove trump from office since the 1st day he took the oath of office he says this impeachment proceeding is a sham but really all we public then scan do and they have been trying to is delay what many see as the inevitable which is that by the end of tonight in about 4 hours time give or take there should be this vote that is scheduled and democrats certainly have the numbers to pass it to impeach trump the question that remains is exactly how Many Democrats may defect from their party caucus in voting against the impeachment theres very few who have expressed that they may do so we know one gentleman who is a congressman from new jersey says he will vote against the coachman whos a democrat who is actually considering changing to become a republican because of this vote but other democrats who represent these conservative just tricks where voters like trump. They have said that theyve come off the fence on this impeachment that they will vote this evening to impeach the president explaining to their constituents that theyre doing this out of a solem responsibility to the constitution to oversee the president what they see as his wrongdoing and they do so knowing that that they may cost them their seats in congress with their conservative constituents caster there live for us on capitol hill its a long day for heidi thank you heidi also on capitol hill republican senator Lindsey Graham said just a short time ago that he would want to see a quick impeachment trial in the Senate Without any new witnesses presented i think this exercise in the house is beginning to weaponize impeachment the Intel Committee could did the fact finding elements of it which is unusual the process they use i think is dangerous to the presidency is an institution when it gets here my goal is to have a short trial is possible or does it translate to when 51 people are ready to vote this one will vote the most likely outcome is to use the trial record. What they used in the house to impeach President Trump will be the trial record for the senate well lets go now to our White House Correspondent candy health that candy lets unpack what Lindsey Graham had to say that hes saying as short a trial as possible what would that look like. Yeah a short trial because essentially what the president this white house know in their working coordination is that if it isnt prolonged they can quickly vindicate the president something hes looking for because that bodies dominated by republicans and move on to the business of the American People but really what we know is going to be campaigning for Donald Trumps reelection whats really important to note and there is if you listen to the longer sound bite from Lindsey Graham because he does tend to go on for a while what he had to say there was really valuable in terms of impeachment and the impeachment process you heard him talking there about weapon i say impeachment the concern that this has become so partisan that many in the United States do not take it credibly the reason hes saying that is because the last time we saw impeachment involving president clinton it was at the end of a very long process by an independent counsel by the name of Kenneth Starr this time we did have an investigation of the president with a special counsel but that concluded and now in a totally separate topic not about russia and whether there was russian collusion but now the president whether he abuse just powers of office is whats being investigated and this is what has made it very hard for ordinary americans many who support the president to trust this process speaking to what lizzie said right there they believe that its been weaponized and that a clear cut case has not been made as we saw in the case with president clinton in fact thats why we see President Trump tweeting a quote from Kenneth Starr that independent counsel during the last time there was a discussion of impeachment in the United States the president retreating this quote the evidence has to be overwhelming and its not even close the argument republicans are making the argument you heard there from Lindsey Graham is that this is a case built on hearsay opinion and not on concrete evidence democrats would say they tried to get it and the white house obstructed the bottom line here is that there is this compound. Elling case republicans believe and thats why they believe they can convince voters to give donald trump a 2nd term when ultimately the other unique factor in all of this is that impeachment for bill clinton happened in the 2nd term this is happening for donald trump in the 1st term the voters will have a say on whether or not they believe congress acted appropriately when they vote in November Kimberly weve also been hearing from Kellyanne Conway just now the special advisor to the president speaking from the Briefing Room in the white house behind you she attacked nancy pelosi even she also defended the president no surprise as that took us through what else she had to say. Yeah that is the real essence of Kellyanne Conway is message when i did have the opportunity to listen briefly before coming up to the cameras is that the republicans in this white house who have been working in coordination believe that the case against the president is collapsing now let me rephrase that very carefully its collapsing among a very narrow number of voters in the United States and that is the independents in a very divided america there arent many of them but they do exist particularly in some of the key battleground states like wisconsin michigan in fact michigan is where this u. S. President will be traveling later in the day hes going to hold a make America Great again rally in battle creek michigan how fitting on a day that he is battling with the opposition democrats and already the Vice President is there and he is making the case that despite the arguments that have made made against this president they would say from day one from the day of his inauguration mike pence the Vice President says he admires Donald Trumps determination and resilience to go forward take a listen. Whats happening on capitol hill today is a disgrace you know the truth is theyre trying to impeach this president because they know they cant defeat this president. Theyre trying to run down this president because they know they cant run against our record they cant run against our results theyre pushing this partisan impeachment because they know they cant stop you from giving President Donald Trump 4 more years in the white house. And this was the fear of democrats and the real gamble when they decided to move ahead whether or not to go ahead with impeaching the president if this would actually help build support for donald trump the campaign seems to think so in the last couple of hours it sent out an email as saying that theyve really seized on what they see is impeachment fatigue among the American Voters as so much so that not only has support for the president they claim gone up very marginally but in terms of not wanting to appease him but when it comes to actual support backing of the president s policies the Campaign Says its gone up by 6 percent thats significant because certainly this was the fear of democrats that the president would look like a victim and that would garner even more support whether or not that last election day is certainly a big question but for right now this is potentially not what the democrats wanted to see candy how could there for us at the White House Well be chatting to a again later on thank you kimberly well lets bring you up to date is where about 3 hours now into the debate its up to 3 more to go before that all important vote lets remind you of the process so once the challenges are actually approved by the house the president is then and peached bought it doesnt mean hes automatically forced from office the next step is a trial thats held in the senate and that could be as soon as january and its overseen by the chief justice of the Supreme Court there the senators will act as jurists while members of the house of representatives of the prosecution is at least 2 or 67 senators need to vote guilty on at least one of impeachment in order to have donald trump removed from office and if this happens the Vice President then becomes president well lets bring in clyde wilcox who is a professor of government at Georgetown University here in doha thank you for staying with me in the studio clyde weve been talking a lot about Public Opinion here why have the democrats even as theyve laid out their case in the house and now were going to see this for years why have they not been able to shift pup. Opinion feather in his favor well because its a very complicated story right i mean the public is not watching all the testimony the evidence is pretty overwhelming right but Many Americans dont have any idea where ukraine is they have no idea about crimea or russian intentions there they have no idea about Foreign Military aid so its just too complicated for the average american weve seen Lindsey Graham now push for this speech trial in the senate and presumably thats also what the republican leader there Mitch Mcconnell wants and theyve made it clear that this is in their minds a partisan process hows that like use a play out with the of the senate do we see any shifts in bad allegiances its hard to know there are some republicans who are trying to bargain with mcconnell at this point but lets stop for a bit and think about what theyre saying right the republicans brought forward no fact witnesses in the house they have ample opportunity they have not right so here they have an opportunity in front of the whole country to bring in their witnesses and theyre saying that the secretary of state would be a democratic witness theyre saying that the president s former National Security adviser would be a democratic witness right they have been witnesses so of course they want new witnesses in trial they want to get it over with very quickly. Well were also heading into an election in head how is this likely to shift the political calculus for both sides i do you know the democrats swept a lot of swing districts in the house of representatives in any normal circumstance they would lose some of those seats this time around right so i think thats natural to happen i dont think necessarily we can tell anything about how this will play out in the election coming in november of next year however its worth thinking about the timing of this because the republicans are saying look theyre doing this right before the election well thats when the whistleblower came forward the democrats i think were reluctant to impeach this president they had ample grounds to do so when miller came in with 10 cases of felony obstruction of justice in the 2nd part of his report plenty of grounds for impeachment there they chose not to write but when the whistleblower came forward using a National Security related issue i think they basically had to act then i do like the suggestion some of your other guests have had which is not to take it to the senate and continue to investigate there are 3 other whistleblowers who have come forward who are being investigated at this moment theres a lot of people who should be compelled to testify who the courts have to rule on this and so i think that maybe instead of rushing to a sham trial its better to keep investigating so just to be clear after the vote today the house can vote to impeach but they dont necessarily then need to immediately go on to a senate trial where they dont have to carry it out ever right they could just impeach and leave it there so if they chose to continue investigating they could then bring it at a later stage yeah they even closer to the election well yes but that would not be the point the point would be to find out more of the facts right and to. The obstruction of congress is a very serious constitutional issue and congress has the right to do the impeachment hearings lots of people who should have been compelled to testify have not so the key the court needs to rule on. That like i said theres another whistle blower so get to the bottom of the story right over the last few hours clyde you and ive been talking a lot about impeachment this specific impeachment but let me ask you this before i let you go. How his impeachment changed as a concept of the course of time we this is potentially the 3rd u. S. President to be impeached and its it seems its become increasingly part of that process presumably thats not what the Founding Fathers envisioned so how has impeachment as a concept shifted in the american imagination well so the Founding Fathers didnt even think about Political Parties right Political Parties are not mentioned in the constitution there were none at the beginning there were some factions and so forth but i think if you compare say nixon who was not impeached but resigned before impeachment and clinton in both cases the party of the president did not say hes done nothing wrong they didnt deny basic facts right so in the case of dixon as i said earlier some of the republicans were leading the charge in saying i want to know what happened here and in the case bill clinton they said yeah he did this but lying about sex is not a high crime the misdemeanor in this case you see the Republican Party basically denying every fact that you know their own people have testified theres a quid pro quo right the man who gave a 1000000. 00 to donald trump testified that it was a quid pro quo everyone was in on it and what were seeing here is republicans just denying they said theres no evidence its all hearsay this was a guy who was involved right so whats really changed here this time and that makes me very pessimistic for american politics is youve got one party just says systematically denying facts that everyone knows are true. Well not pessimistic that would leave it there for now clyde wilcox a professor of government at Georgetown University here in do