Defeat him at the ballot coupling an obvious clue to unseat a sitting president of the United States that shows how phony this process is. Also coming up next month twitter will ban all political advertising to stop the spread of misinformation but facebook c. E. O. Says its the responsibility of the voters not social media to check the facts and to filter out the law do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of Fact Checking on political advertisements well congresswoman i think the lying is bad and i think if you were to run an ad that a lie that would be bad thats different from it being in our position the right thing to do to prevent your constituents or people in an election from seeing that you at last. To our viewers on p. B. S. In the United States and all around the world. Welcome we begin the day in which the impeachment inquiry against us President Trump became formal and very political not that that was ever in doubt the u. S. House of representatives today passed a resolution formalizing the impeachment process that means public hearings will soon take place for the nation and the world to watch impeachment is a political process but the constitution instructs the u. S. Congress to treat it like a legal case the senate conducts an impeachment trial and also acts as judge and jury and thats difficult at best and it is important to note that no president has ever been impeached convicted and removed from office today the world saw all the partisan politics of impeachment not a single republican voted for the resolution in the house some g. O. P. Lawmakers accusing democrats of trying to undo the election of 2016 but the democrats they maintain that this is not about politics but rather about a president abusing his power speaker of the house nancy pelosi saying that starting impeachment hearings is no longer a choice its a constitutional obligation i dont know why the republicans are afraid of that should every member shit put allowing the American People to hear the fact for them south if that is really what this vote if the ban madam speaker when you look through this resolution you see how one sided house soviet style this is running this is the United States of america dont run a sham process a tainted process like this resolution ensures this impeachment is not only an attempt to undo the last election is it intent to influence the next one as well madam speaker history is testing us and i wary based on what we have heard from the other side today that some may be failing that test. There are no kings or queens in america their resolution is adopt it without objection the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. Oh im joined tonight by a man who helped build the kings for impeachment against a different us president almost 50 years ago Nick Ackerman was one of the Watergate Special prosecutors in the case against us president Richard Nixon mr ackerman is in new york for tonights and he joins me from there was talk of him welcome to the program. When you look at what has been report under reported from the depositions that have been offered so far what do you think is the case for impeachment now clear cut yeah i think its pretty clear cut the Congress Makes it pretty clear the president i mean the constitution makes it clear that president can be impeached and then removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors and bribery and we can see a clear case of bribery i would Donald Trump Holding back the funds that were procreated by congress for the defense of Ukraine Holding back a visit to the white house in return and both is this is for an investigation into the bidens on mr trumps chief political rival in the upcoming election so it seems to me this is a pretty clear case as it is now and the congress over the last 3 or 4 weeks has developed a pretty strong factual basis to move forward on. The year you say that its clear cut but not a single republican voted to make the impeachment process formal today what does that tell you about the likelihood of impeachment leading to a conviction. Well i dont know if that tells us much at this point i mean the republicans have not in any way attacked the actual underlying allegations and sounds thats the most remarkable part about this but as you said in the opening here this is not just a Legal Process but its also a political process and the only way that youre going to get a conviction and i believe that the house members know this is that there has to be a public vines which is why theyre going to the next stage to try and educate the public and bring out the evidence and that theyve gathered over the last few weeks do you think its going to be similar to what we saw with the watergate hearings and i remember what i heard about those from my parents that everyone watched and everyone was glued to the screen and it became very obvious through those hearings that president nixon was indeed guilty of what he was being accused of do you think that that is going to happen with these public hearings that are about to start. Oh i think theres a good shot that there will people really havent focused on it yet weve been getting sort of 2nd hand accounts of whats been going on in these Committee Hearings so i think its important that people hear all the evidence i mean dont forget with watergate and it wasnt a sure thing that nixon would be removed from office and in fact he resigned instead of the. Knowing that the votes were against him and had happened only 7 days prior to you know his resignation i mean up to that point it was just like you know the republicans were sticking like glue and then what happened was the smoking gun tape was released in which nixon was overheard on asking his aides to have the cia instruct the f. B. I. To stop the investigation into the watergate burglary on the basis of National Security so its a bit early to predict whats going to happen but i think the evidence is going to be pretty powerful here what happens if and when the house passes articles of impeachment and then the senate tries the president and quits the president what then. Out when he continues on as president i mean that has happened on you know 2 other times in the course of our history it happened with Andrew Johnson it happened with bill clinton so yeah i mean i think its out happens we will continue on donald trump will remain president just what his position will be and how strong he will be at that point i have the going into a another election a president ial election next year and its hard to believe that even if he is not convicted by the senate that ultimately that the voters want will not in the end will pass on what he did into the u. S. President tweeted recently a threat of civil war like conditions in the u. S. If he is impeached and removed from office did you ever think anything like that could happen or a threat like that would come from the white house when you were working on the impeachment pietschmann case against president nixon. Now never im fact i never thought any of this would ever happen again but this president has been off unhinged has basically done everything your counter to our enormous with respect to our president acts i has undermined almost every policy that weve had with respect to our allies in europe and other parts of the world and what hes done with ukraine is absolutely outrageous that hes essentially trying to undermine an ally worked in in europe granted that stands against our russian and it to me the whole thing is being done were glad im here putin hes the one thats gaining from all this earlier this month u. N. 16 other Watergate Special prosecutors you wrote in signed an open letter calling for impeachment and the final paragraph of that letter it cult our attention and i want to read this to our viewers you write in 1904 it was a group of republican senators who put National Interest over Party Loyalty and informed nixon that his conduct was indefensible and would compel conviction by the senate and removal from office we hope the Current Senate would similarly put on or and integrity of the partisanship and personal political interest on mr ackerman integrity over partisanship we didnt see much of that today in the house did we. No we didnt but we didnt see much of that until almost the end of you know until the point that nixon was forced to resign i mean i think whats going to happen here and it could very well happen the same thing that happened in watergate is that as the evidence comes out and people realize that there is no factual defense to what he did in fact the republicans dont even raise one at this point all of their defense has been a bar procedure and that there hasnt been a fair opportunity for the president to meet these allegations all of which happens in the Senate Anyway if thats not supposed to happen in the house. That somehow youre going to have to get 20 republicans that are going to have to justify what trump did and i think that as the house keeps developing these facts in teams boxing in they were trying would trump did its going to be very difficult for senators to say that this conduct was ok i think you make a good point there there is though a big difference between now and watergate and that has to do with the media you know Richard Nixon he didnt have twitter he didnt have social media to reach the all americans with messages that may or may not have been true but President Trump does are you concerned that that will that will change the ability of the evidence to influence the senators thats thats clearly one difference but one other big differences are that Richard Nixon had a much more loyal political following he had been involved in american politics going back to 1952 prior to his resignation or forced resignation in 1994 there arent too many people that are going to you know take a bullet for donald trump i mean you can see by virtue of the various white house people that have been testifying in the last couple weeks. And these are people all around him people in the white house that have come forward and thats a big difference here i think a lot of us senators are going to be struck by that at the end and the public is going to be struck by the powerful testimony that we will probably hear over the next few weeks your faith in the power of evidence that is certainly inspiring mr ackerman we we appreciate you sharing it with us tonight nick akerman former Watergate Special prosecutor joining us tonight from new york thank you very much for your time and your insights. Thank you for having me. For the Reelection Campaign of the trump has reportedly already spent tens of thousands of dollars to place political ads on facebook but twitter will not be getting any of that kind of money anymore twitter has announced that it will ban all political advertising starting at the end of november now explaining the decision twitter c. E. O. Jack dorsey said that political ads force targeted political messages on to people and because of social medias vast reach political ads can then be used to spread lies and misinformation twitter saying it will not be part of a situation in which politicians have the right to lie to the public simply because they pay for the advertising. Im joined now by a man who is not shy about sharing his opinions about the news media and social media jeff jarvis is a journalism professor and author of several books including what would google do he joins me tonight from new york good to see you again you posted earlier today your thoughts about twitter banning political ads and you wrote that youre not going to please anyone with what you think why is that. Well you just the popular opinion these days which we see on twitter itself that people should these services should ban political ads because there are some bad apples out there i think thats a mistake i think the intent that jack dorsey has is very good i think hes very thoughtful about this is trying to figure it out but i think that in a way its an abrogation of responsibility similar to facebooks on the other end where theyre going to keep little ads and not take any of them down kind of for no reason both Technology Companies are trying to make no judgments here these companies are rather allergic to making judgments they see themselves as platforms but the problem is that by taking down political ads including both candidate ads and issue based ads it i think limits the the ability in the future for a candidate who comes out of nowhere to start a campaign i fear that this is going to favor the incumbents over the insurgents because the incumbents have the money and the recognition and the power i also think its possible for new movements to use the targeting that internet purchases provide to spend very little money for very efficient advertising to find the people who are with them and theyve lost that now so i would want them. To get the point about the money here jeff twitter says that we dont want to be where you have to pay to play and spread lies and the c. E. O. Of twitter he posted this were working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading information but if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad well they can say whatever they want to mean doesnt he have a point there facebook doesnt really care about free speech it sounds like facebook only cares that you pay for the space in which that free speech takes place. I dont know thats fair because i think that the political advertising that if you look at you can look at facebook has a database of political ads now because they require this and the amount spent on each ad is fairly small the amount that donald trump spends in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a week or a month is minor compared to what they spend on television so i dont think this is about money if and when the i suggested today was fine donate the money to a campaign against Voter Suppression its not about the money it is about the speech now in terms of this idea of pain well yes both twitter has an algorithm that promotes certain things facebook has the same thing and so pain is a way to get around that algorithm and be able to reach people directly i think that thats something that should be in their power again especially if its inexpensive no a lot of people are going against targeting and same targeting is bad and evil because it was used badly targeting is also good it goes to people who are going to care about Climate Change are going to care about internet privacy and other things and you can go directly to them and organize this piece of speeches just about speeches about assembly as well you told me several years ago jeff that facebook and other social media platforms need to realize that they are not just platforms they also are gate keepers and thus they they need editors working for them facebook now has you know a whole staff of editors theyve got content mediators but theyre not using them for political ads and doesnt doesnt that bother you. Well no i dont think anyone would have editors over political ads but dont forget that the analogy here in the United States is that a network cannot refuse and cannot take down a political ad when theyre when theyre regulated by the federal Communications Commission so theres no precedent for that no i think what i said that they needed editors i think its not so much to edit content though theyre going to be doing that and getting content i think they need to bring in that sense of public responsibility that we journalists believe we have you assume here too that the public is informed well enough to decipher the messages and to determine which ones are real and which ones can manipulate them what about the situation though where the public cannot do that what happens when people are easily manipulated as it appears the case is in many places including in the United States what do you do that. Well upon me my lights go out and i think im dead. As i am. The problem here is that i think that what you just said presumes that people dont have their own agency and their own intelligence if we dont fundamentally believe in the intelligence and goodwill of our fellow men and women and citizens then we dont believe in democracy or free markets or education or journalism i reject all of that at the end of the day i think weve got to accept the idea that we helped me in journalism to win the platforms to serve the public conversation that conversation is a catalyst it is meant to be its been controlled for a century by big old media but now the internet comes along and takes away that control and i celebrate that for now we can hear voices that were always there but couldnt be heard before thats what led me to thats what led to living while black and black lives matter in the United States so no i dont what it keepers over that i want the conversation were just getting used to the could happen again do you think that this what were talking about here is maybe a very american problem where the news is not treated like a public good but rather as a as a commodity and facebook treats political ads the same way you know it doesnt care what kind of impact it has on democracy i mean do you think thats something that you see exacerbated in the u. S. No i think we do see journalism as a public good of sorts we dont necessarily see it as a tax supported good and indeed with the government we have the United States right now i want government as far away from journalism and media as possible and so im delighted that we have no government supported media because god knows what donald trump would do so no i dont think its just purely an american thing yes we have for profit media here and its has supported journalism and weve got to figure that out in new ways and i think eventually we will these