Ever seen and one that once again will work with the president to get things done for you and your family, then join with us in rejecting this baseless impeachment. Thats whats wonderful about this system of ours. We are a government of, by and for the people. Always remember we work for you not the other way around. Now, i will say this stronger and with more conviction than i have ever said it before. In this time of great trial and tribulation may god bless america. I yield back. Gentleman from california is recognized. House will be in order. Gentleman from california. Madam speaker, i recognize myself for the remanlder inder time. Gentleman is recognized. Madam speaker, my colleagues, after 8 hours let us return to where we began with the articles themselves. Article i charges the president of the United States with abusing the power of his office by coercing an ally into cheating in a u. S. Election on his behalf. It charges the president of the United States it charges the the house will be in order. The gentleman has a right to be
heard. It charges the president the gentleman shall suspend. Gentleman may resume. It charges the president of the United States with abusing his power by withholding official acts, by withholding a white house meeting that the president of ukraine desperately sought to establish the support of his most important benefactor, the United States. By Withholding Hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid to a nation at war in order to get that nation to intervene in our election by smearing his opponent. That is the gravamen of the charge in article i. And what is the defense from my colleagues . And ive listened carefully to my colleagues for the last 8 hours, and i have to say its been hard for me to follow. But it amounts, i think, when you cut through it all, when you cut through all the Sound And Fury signifying nothing, what it really amounts to is this, why should we care . Why should we care about what the president did to ukraine . Well, first of all, we should care about our allies. You should care about ukraine. We should care about a country struggling to be free in a democracy. We used to care about democracy. We used to care about our allies. We used to stand up to putin and russia. We used to. I know the party of Ronald Reagan used to. Of course its more than about ukraine. Its about us, our National Security. Their fight is our fight. Their defense is our defense. When russia remakes the map of
europe for the First Time Since world war ii by dent of Military Force and ukraine fights back, it is our fight, too. And when the president sacrifices our interests, our National Security for his election, he is sacrificing our country for his personal gain. That is the gravamen of article i. Article ii article ii charges the president of the United States with obstructing the congress, with denying the congress any witness, any document, by telling all of his Administration People you will not appear, you will ignore a coequal branch of government. And what is the defense to this from my colleagues again . It is why should we care . He is the president of our party, why should we care if he ignores this congress . Well, i remind my friends that he will not be the last president. There will be another president , and you may be one day although you do not act like it, you may one day be in the majority. And you will want to hold a president accountable. And what will you say when that president says you are a paper tiger, you have no oversight, i can ignore your subpoenas . What will you say . What will you argue . Well, no, no, that was different . Then then we were in the minority, then it was a republican president. Will that be your argument . Is that how little faith you have in our democracy, in our constitution . Is that how poorly you defend and uphold that constitution . But finally let me ask you this question that overrides it all. Why should we care about any of this . And i shall bring you to one conversation that came to light because its not the most important conversation, but in many ways it is the most revealing. It took place on september 14th
in ukraine when ambassador volker sat down with Andrey Yermak the top advisor to zelensky and he supported the rule of law. He said you, president , you should not investigate the last president , poroshenko for political reasons and you know what yermak said . You like you want us to do with the bidens and the clintons . And in that abrupt brutal retort we see why we should care because what he was saying is you, america, have forgotten what it means to uphold the rule of law. You have frauorgotten what it ms to say no one is above the law. We are a struggling democracy, but even we know better than that. What is at risk here what is at risk here is the very yooiidf america. That idea holds that we are a nation of laws, not of men. We are a nation that believes in a rule of law. When we say we uphold the constitution we are not talking about a piece of parchment. We are talking about a beautiful architecture in which ambition is set against ambition and in which no branch of government can dominate another. That is what it means to uphold the constitution. If you ignore it, if you say the president may refuse to comply, may refuse lawful process, may coerce an ally, may cheat in an election because hes the president of our party, you do not uphold our constitution. You do not uphold your oath of
office. Well, i will tell you this. I will uphold mine. I will vote to impeach donald trump. I yield back. Our time for general debate has expired. Pursuant to house pursuant to House Resolution 767 the previous question is ordered on the resolution as amended. The question of adoption of the resolution as amenlded shaded s divided between the two articles. The question now occurs on article i. All in favor say aye. Opposed no. The ayes have it. Speaker madam speaker, i think the ayes and nays have a vote. The yays and nays are requested. As sufficient number having risen, the yays and nays are ordered. Members will record their votes by electronic device. This will be a 15minute vote. There you have it at 8 09 eastern time the History Making Vote on the impeachment of donald j. Trump is now under way in the House Of Representatives. Brian williams with you here in new york after more than eight hours of debate on the house floor, exceeding even more than the 6hour marathon we were
anticipating and planning for all day now the vote on the first article of impeachment over abuse of power, it will be followed by a vote on the second article, which remember is obstruction of congress. Both are expected to pass along party lines, which means we are now likely moments away from this president becoming only the third in our history to be impeached. Nicolle wallace has been here in this studio all day long for this debate. Did you count any minds changed . What did you learn from today . You know whats so interesting is the moment in time which both sides were playing for. Nancy pelosi set the tone this morning by placing this moment in a frame of history, by going back to what the framers intended. She is known publicly and privately to be very reluctant about taking this vote right now. But she framed this and the democrats all day long laid out
inconvenient truths, evidencebased arguments for impeaching donald trump, for doing what donald trump says he did which was to ask for investigations into burisma and a debunked Conspiracy Theory of 2016. The republicans on the other hand, they were playing for This Nano Second, for this political nano second. It is a known unknown What Happens Next election day. We didnt get 16 right. Its hard to predict what 2020 will bring. And the republicans spent the last, you know, ten hours or so playing it for This Nano Second in american politics. All of us would normally be tuning in to hear chris hayes as luck would have it is part of our family at this hour. I think what was most striking today is there were certain members of our caucuses
respectively you see a lot on tv. These are people either chairs or ranking members of committees or like to go on television, that are on our shows. You got to see everyone today which is remarkable for or better or worst. Well, what it showed me is there was not just this difference in approach, this is what our president did, this is our moment in history as opposed to this pugilistic populism that we saw from the Republican Party but drove home this is trumps party. Not just in affect but in style. In per cecept of persecution, a of the sort of tropes of trumpism has been fully and totally transmuted into the Republican Party. And you saw it today from back bentures you never hear from, people who most americans outside their districts probably
dont know and hear from. And you also saw it and this is so stark, and its stark every time we see this congress. And i was there in washington and sworn in. There are two coalitions in american life, theres two political coalitions and one coalition has 90 white men representing them on the floor of House Of Representatives, and the other coalition represents the entire diversity of the rest of the american electorate. And that feels like the core of the thing at some level. Even if you turn the sound off and you look at the television about what exactly has brought us to this moment and the fight thats happening between these two parties. Other members of our family here tonight eugene robinson, Claire Mccaskill and chris matthews. Because we are watching the vote, we are watching the red voting cards get held aloft, tell us first how voting differs in the senate and house. And secondly, why this looks like a highly social mosh pit in the front. Yeah, it is much different in
the house you could vote electronically. In the senate you have to catch the clerks eye and you have to see her or him and say aye or nay and you have to obviously be on the floor of the senate. So it is not a quick process in the senate if there is a roll call because people wander in and out to this and beam have to register individually what their vote is without benefit of electronic device. The thing i would take away from today is if you hadnt been following this closely, if you hadnt listened to the evidence that was presented at the hearings, if you didnt understand who the people were that were referred to from time to time, what you would come from this day is you would come with one overriding feeling and that is, you know, republicans and democrats see this much differently. And they say the same things over and oever again. I dont think this was effective in terms of communicating to the American People what the evidence was and what the defense was other than you dont like donald trump and this was preordained, and clearly theyve taken a poll and decided on the republican side its smarter to say over and over again the democrats hate the president and they just decided to do this when he got elected. Like an hour and three i wrote down is what the democrats are saying and hes admitted hes on no clothes and hes said not only am i not wearing clothes but i want to get ukraine to hurt biden. And the republicans are saying whose fault is it he has on no clothes, its the democrats fault. No one says, yes, he does. Not one republican said the facts were not as the democrats depicted them. Can we quit using this thing because its like its making a picture its very disturbing. Eugene and then chris matthews. Two sides. Chris is absolutely right you saw visually and you heard orally the difference in tone and in character and, you know, angry white guys basically on one side and a very different coalition and a different tone on the other side. And there was also a different intent. It seemed to me that the message that democrats were trying to get out there was they were attempting a unification. They were attempting to bring the rest of the country along. Republicans were trying to divide. Theyre trying to draw a very hard line saying those people over there, they hate us. They hate you. They think youre smelly. Theyre trying to take away your vote and unelect your president ,
your donald trump. So it was a very different tactic in all the rhetoric that we heard today. Just one bit of news. The two democrats we expected, peterson and van drew in fact have both voted no. Chris matthews, i know for a fact youve been listening for one thing today from the republican side and you never heard it. Ive been here since 9 00 this morning in that chair and ive been listening and ive been watching, and i heard something that wasnt said all day. And heres a president , a human being being accused of horrible things, of selling out his office, of trading his public trust for personal gain, a terrible assault on who he was. And yet all day long with all the republican speakers and they were able to say anything they wanted all day long, not one republican member of the house stood in that well and defended this president s character. Not one person said hes an honest man. Not one person said hes a good man. Not one person said he couldnt
have done Something Like this, and that is powerful stuff that a party felt they could play all the games today, they could talk about tactic and style and talk about everyone elses situation but they never defended the man, the person in the white house, his character. This is extraordinary. They dont have any different opinion of Donald Trumps character than any one of his critics and nobody defended him. Think of the change since the bush years. Well, i mean but the from george bush. I know its a bad image, but the point is the central accusation, the central reason for which democrats have built a case of abuse of power is not a dispute. So i agree the tone was galling, the makeup of each side should be a horrendous embarrassment for every republican elected or not, but what youre saying is right. No one had a debate today about whether donald trump did it, whether he would do it or whether hed do it again. If hes the kind of person would do this and no one defended on those grounds. And no republican said it wouldnt happen in 2020. And the common room in my dorm as this was happening 20 years ago around the same time, its really striking the dichbts in tone. There were two things that happened and one was contrition. President clinton apologized and people in his party said he shouldnt have done that. The Grass Roots Movement started the petition to censure the president and move on. Try to think of a moment in which grass roots supporters of this president recommended this president be censured . That the grass roots would say this was wrong what the president did. Its not just they boent defend his character, they actually wont call the thing he did by its name which is that it was wrong. And both of those are entirely missing from the 9 hours we had today. And if you go back to the
partisan rancor of that clinton impeachment, that was a striking difference is that people are not defending the behavior, and they were saying that something had to be noted about how wrong it was. That was entirely absent from the republican side today. But where i think the mindbending element of trumpism comes into play in the political dynamic because youre right if you turned on the tv one side was screaming and they were all white and the other was really faithful to the case they built, the evidencebased case. But i think if youre at home watching, it wasnt always clear that the crime isnt in dispute, Abuse Of Power Isnt Being debated. The republican argument was that they were going to impeach him anyway, this was an impeachment looking for a crime, but they didnt take the second step and say there wasnt one. They simply articulated a couple of democrats had been proimpeachment as the crime committed. They never said the crime didnt happen. Neal katyal has joined us
from los angeles, a veteran of the department of justice. Neal, what do you make of today with 3 minutes, 22 left in the vote . Well, i mean, i was struck by im thinking about this more historically, brian, as a Constitutional Law Professor and i was struck by something chris said, which was there was no defense of the president s character or really his conduct. They attack the process and things like that. But as we think about Moving Beyond The Nano Second of 2020 and ask what is Donald Trumps legacy going to be, i think even this party even with all the sophistry we heard today couldnt muster up a defense of the man. And i think that will condemn him in the eyes of history regardless of what happenps in the senate, it will be the first line everyone says about President Trump for the next hundred, 200 years, President Trump who was impeached and then
itll go on. And the story is yet to be written about what happens in the senate. But if theres a real trial, i think we could see some things change and the successive partisanship we saw today hopefully give way that looks at more evidence. Today ive lived in d. C. For two decades and i never saw as Must Sophistry as i saw today. Just an attack on the democrats and their motivations. And at least in the eyes of history thats not going to stand. And neal, as were talking were getting very close to the number needed to pass. A question that involves politics and procedure, how tough is it going to be for what passes for Middle Of The Road republican senators to say, no, we dont need to hear from john bolton, i think we just passed over the 214. All right, so it appears we
are at the number nee