News and opinion website. As always, we will take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter as well. Washington is next. Ist good morning, it monday, september 23, 2019. Scrutiny over President Trumps reactions to ukraine have led for renewed calls for impeachment. Also acknowledged yesterday that joe biden came up in that july call. This morning on the washington journal, we are getting your reaction to this story as phone lines are split as usual by political party. Is thets, 2027488000 number. Republicans, 2027488001. Independents, 2027488002. You can also text us and if you do, please include your name and where you are from. That number, 2027488003. You can also catch up with us on social media. On twitter it is cspanwj. On facebook it is facebook. Com cspan. A very good monday morning, you can start calling in now. It was the washington journal over the weekend that led the that julyorting about phone call with President Trump. The wall street journal wrote the president repeatedly pressured while hunter biden was also working there. In the wake of that reporting, here is congressman adam schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee on cnn yesterday. [video clip] i have been reluctant to go down the path of impeachment for the reason i think the founders contemplated a country that has elections every four years, that this would be an extraordinary remedy, extremity remedy of last resort. At the same time he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader into doing something illicit that is providing dirt on his opponent during a president ial campaign, that may be the only remedy that is coequal to the people that conduct represents. We are going to hear from the director of National Intelligence on thursday. He is the first director ever to withhold a whistleblower complaint and we will make sure we get that complaint. We will make sure we find out weather the president is engaged in this improper conduct. It may be that we have to move forward with that extraordinary remedy if, indeed, the president is, at the same time withholding vital military assistance, he is trying to leverage that to obtain permissible help in his campaign. Host adam schiff yesterday on cnn. Adam schiff a close ally of speaker nancy pelosi, one of her top investigators in the house. Alexandria ocasiocortez willing to go even farther over the weekend, this was her late on saturday night twitter saying the bigger National Scandal is not the president s lawbreaking behavior, it is the democratic partys refusal to impeach him for it. It is one thing for a sitting president to break the law, it is another to let him. The gop silence and refusal to act should not be a surprise. Ours is. Alexandria ocasiocortez over the weekend. This was President Trump yesterday morning as he was leaving the white house headed to texas on questions about his phone call with ukraine. [video clip] conversation. Eat the conversation i had was largely congratulatory. Largely corrupt largely the fact we dont want our people like Vice President biden and his son contributing to corruption already in ukraine and ukraine has a lot of problems. The new president is saying he is going to be able to rid the country of corruption and i said that would be a great thing. We had a great conversation. We had a conversation on many things. I believe ukraine put out a statement saying we covered many different topics. It was a warm and friendly conversation. Ive act ukraine from the beginning. Host that was President Trump yesterday. Those comments are the subject of many of the headlines about this story, including this one from the Washington Times. Trump confirms he spoke of biden in that u. K. Call in july. We are getting your thoughts. We want to know what you are thinking this morning, especially these new calls for impeachment proceedings to begin. 2027488000 is the number. Republicans, 2027488001. Independents, 2027488002. Mary up first out of detroit, a democrat. Good morning. Caller good morning. Host go ahead, mary. Caller good morning. Yes . Host what are your thoughts on this story . Caller i think the president should be impeached. He has lied to the american people. He has lied to us consistently admitted now, he has ukrainealk to the president about joe biden. This is a Smear Campaign and i think he should be impeached for it. Think before taking that step, the whistleblower complaint itself should be seen by congress . There is currently that effort to get congressional access to that complaint. We are expecting to perhaps hear more about that. Mary. K we lost same question to you, vivian, also a democrat. What do you think . Caller thank you for taking my call. He should be impeached. What is it going to take for the media to stop . Every time this mans mouth is open, he lies. Clinton lost his law license for lying. His administration lies, the nepotism, and they still where is all the money . All the jobs, all the programs government all the he has decreased down to about one third, where is the money from that . It seems he cannot do nothing wrong. He makes nixon look like a little girl. His cult, they dont see his call, they dont see nothing wrong with that . Host is it important to see the complaint first before proceeding to impeachment proceedings . Caller you know that is not going to happen. If it does, it is going to be doctored. You know he is not going to let that come out, just like barr covers up everything this man does, like the redaction on the Mueller Report. Everybody knows what he had done. Let it come out, but please dont let it be redacted. Are is one reason they occult. Probably when he left, he told the whistleblower to tell because they knew what he was doing. Of usahe Editorial Board today calling on congress to get to the bottom of trumps pressure on ukraine saying it is important for the system of checks and balances in this country. One more lead editorial to show you from the Editorial Board of the wall street journal. Here is how they think this will likely play out. Here is where they end that editorial. All of this will play out in trump era fashion with adam schiff making claims that turn out to be exaggerated. Media resistance hyping impeachment and mr. Trump fighting back. Call the whole thing a hoax without evidence of worse behavior. Nothing else is likely to come of it. Americans will have to add all of this in their judgment about weather mr. Trump or his fanatical opponent are the biggest risk to american wellbeing. Editorial board of the wall street journal. Aligns as usual, democrats, republicans, and independents. We will look for your twitter messages as well and twitter posts. Jerry is an independent. Good morning. Think this is mostly just about nothing. And his son, you know, if it is any kind of thing, it is illegal. Ukraine sure on that prosecutor investigating his sun. I dont think donald trump has done anything on that line. Host why is that, jerry . The only thing he was undoubtedly biden from theinvestigation doj. For trump, james comey, some of them end up going to prison after this thing is over. Host that is jerry in mississippi this morning. Plenty of discussion about this on the sunday shows. The caller talking about an investigation. It was Lindsey Graham on fox sunday morning futures who department ofew justice investigation into what the bidens were doing in ukraine. Here is Lindsey Graham. [video clip] i want the department of justice to appoint somebody to look at the role ukraine played. There are a lot of allegations out there how ukraine fed information to democrats a bunch against Trump Campaign managers and others. I think it is fair somebody look bidens. Onnection of the the biden connection to the ukraine through his son. You cannot have it one way, you cannot look at one family and not the other. I dont trust the media to do this. I am hoping someone will appoint an investigator to look at all things are ukraine like we looked at all things. Host senator Lindsey Graham yesterday and here is more senators with their reaction to this story, including ed markey out of massachusetts writing on twitter yesterday, donald trump welcomed Russian Election interference and now it appears he begged ukraine to do the same. We need to bring the president to justice or he will continue to abuse his power. Donald trump needs to be impeached immediately. This tweet from mitt romney. If the president asked or persuaded the ukraine government to investigate his rival, it would be troubling for the fax to come out. Another republican on the sunday shows was pat toomey out of pennsylvania, went on to discuss guncontrol legislation, but also asked about this evolving ukraine story, this was his reaction to questions about that story. [video clip] i dont know the context, i dont know what was said. It is not appropriate for any candidate for federal office certainly including a sitting president to ask for assistance from a foreign country, that is not appropriate, but i dont know that is what happened. Do you think congress should get its hands on this whistleblower complaint . As you know, this is a recent example of cases that have gone back from the beginning of the republic of the tension between the executive over private conversations versus congresss obligations and responsible it is for oversight. I think what happened here is what happens typically in these es, you get some kind of doesnt need to be protected for National Security purposes, it satisfies members of the Intelligence Committees and allows us to determine weather this is something that really requires further investigation or not. At this point, we dont know anything, we are getting a bunch of leaked rumors and that is all we have. Host getting your phone calls this morning on the washington journal, getting your reaction to this story, also looking for tweets and texts as well. Democrats, if they dont impeach trump are complicit with his corruption. Illegal and unconstitutional behavior and history will be unkind. One more text message as well from california. So many past investigations and no one has found anything that will impeach the president yet. If they spend half their time and resources on helping the homeless crisis or all the repairs needed to the roads or clean water in flint, wouldnt that be nice . Getting your phone calls, your text, your tweets, facebook posts as well. Mitchell, thanks for waiting in new jersey, a democrat. Go ahead. Caller good morning. It is pretty obvious what is going on over here. The president dispatched his personal attorney who coordinated with the state department to try to dig up dirt on joe biden. They had this plan all along. Did anythingiden improper, it is a matter that should be left to the intelligence apparatus, the Justice Department and through proper investigative channels. They should not be for the president to prosecute himself. The fact that they have admitted not so far and they are allowing the missile blower complaint to be aired in the shows you exactly what is going on. They are involved with trying to blackmail another country and the president is directly getting involved, but trying to smear his political opponent. Like i said, it is not that there should not be any kind of investigation or look into weather there had been improprieties with Vice President biden. That is not really the issue. The issue is it is totally improper for the president to proceed in this manner. Host we will be hearing more this week over that dispute about the whistleblower complaint. Joseph maguire expected to be on capitol hill on thursday. It was the disagreement between the acting director of National Intelligence andy Inspector General for the dni over this whistleblower complaint that sparked this story last week and it was the Inspector General who appeared behind closed doors with the house Intelligence Committee late last week and here we are this week expecting to hear more about trying to get access to that whistleblower complaint. Out of alabama, good morning. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. First of all, i would like to say it is easy to point fingers. When you point a finger at somebody, you have four pointing back at you. It is easy to call someone a liar. It is good to stand in judgment of somebody. I think people are spewing out too much hate and that is what it is on both sides, too much hate. Why dont we get back to the way we used to be . Why dont we keep our mouth shut until the truth surfaces . I have not seen any proof. America. Ncern is our it is getting so messed up because they can take one word and use it to be little somebody belittle somebody. I want donald trump to continue what he is doing, to help us their seat. Stay on i can tell you stories that would curl your hair about people born and raised here going through worse ordeals than these other people. Elderly that are in bad situations. Tot you say we should wait see proof. What proof would you need to see to move forward with that with this idea of impeachment proceedings . Is there truth that would convince you . Caller show me on paper, not what somebody else says. Thes very evident that majority most of the democrats want donald trump out of office because he is trying to help us. It is different when the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak. When the tables are turned on a democrat, it is terrible, but look. What have the news media and the democrats done to donald trump . Now that it is happening to somebody else, that is terrible. I dont get it. I just dont get it. Host mickey in milwaukee, wisconsin. A democrat, good morning. Caller good morning and thank you for taking my call. I have a few comments. One is i believe this alleged phone call between President Trump and the president of ukraine took place july 25. Dan coats either resigned or was fired, there is always ambiguity about that with the Trump Administration officials. Trump says i fired them, they say we resigned. Dan coats resigned on august 19. What happened in between these 25 days that dan coats was still director of National Intelligence . When did this whistleblower come forward . If the director of National Intelligence has the right to withhold whistleblowers complaint when the Inspector General has investigated it, then the way the raw law is written is wrong as well. It doesnt matter if the Inspector General finds this a matter of National Security i am not going to allow it to go out. Where is dan coats on all of this . Thee is the senator who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee of the senate in all of this and with impeachment, we will need two thirds of the senate to impeach the president. Where do we have 19 republican senators . The lady before from alabama said we need proof. The white house, department of justice, and dni are not releasing the transcripts of the phone call. The European Union commission he washis guy is corrupt aiding ukraine for his own personal bank account. It doesnt matter what biden did. Did isr biden irrelevant. Host a second ago you said you were going over the numbers you would need for impeachment in the senate, even if the house proceeds with impeachment. Do you think it is worth going through that exercise if you dont think the numbers are there . Caller absolutely not, it is a waste of time and it will only embolden trump supporters. No proof, on what basis do democrats want to move forward with impeachment . How are we going to get 19 republican senators to vote for has come out with this whole thing owned by the Murdoch Family who owns trump news, trump supporters. We dont have the proof. Down grading america. Host a lot of focus on weather or not to move forward here is a story about that pressure right now in the Democratic Caucus in the house. Focusing again on the tweets we showed you from alexandria ocasiocortez and comments by others trying to get democrats to move ahead with impeachment proceedings. At that story noting a rare sunday afternoon Dear Colleague letter Nancy Pelosis sent to ocrats and republicans turn over that whistleblower complaint. Here is what nancy pelosi wrote in the letter. If the administration persists blocking this whistleblower disclosing congress, a serious breach of constitutional duties, they will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new investigation. One text from one of our viewers republicans will reveal her own corruption, that is alicia out of oregon. Before we leave that last call from milwaukee, wisconsin, bus is ine the cspan milwaukee, is constant as part of our battleground states tour and in the second half of our program, we will be focusing on the state of wisconsin, that key battleground state. We will have viewers on the easternus starting 8 30. Getting your calls in this first segment on the impeachment proceedings. In washington, utah, democrat. Good morning. Caller good morning. You know when trump ran for president i said, i would vote for him because if he is using his own money to help the country, i thought he would be a good guy. Everything that comes out of his mouth is sideways. Liar. A crook, he is a why doesnt he just bow out and not do another four years . We wont survive it. He has done a lot of good things, yes. The things that come out of his mouth. No, he did not say that. He has good points and bad points. Politicians, it is the gift of gab and nobody is perfect. Nowadays you cannot get away with anything because