Given my experience working for mr. Trump i fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power. Good morning and welcome to a. M. Joy. When trumps former lawyer and fixer gave dramatic daylong testimony before congress in february thats just one of the alarming lines that stood out. Cohen who heads to prison tomorrow also said that trump whom he served loyally for ten years was becoming an auto democra autocrat. Now the speaker of house has announced the same concern. Speaker nancy pelosi gave an interview to the New York Times saying she doesnt trust the president of the United States to step down if he loses reelection next year. Facing immense pressure to begin impeachment proceedings Speaker Pelosi told the New York Times that she does not believe the president can be removed through impeachment. The only way to do it, she said, is to defeat him in 2020 by a margin so big he cannot challenge the legitimacy of a democratic victory. She discussed her concern that trump would not give up power voluntarily if he lost reelection by a slim margin next year. If that seems hyperbolic consider what another politician said about what the results of the 2016 election would be accepted by both candidates. Do you make the same commitment that you will absolutely sir that you will absolutely accept the result of this election . I will look at it at the time. Im not looking at anything now. I will look at it at the time. Are you saying youre not prepared now to what im saying is i will tell you at the time. I will keep you in suspense. That was what trump said during the final president ial debate of 2016. Meanwhile, the new nbc wall street journal poll out today shows that while only 37 of americans believe trump has been honest and truthful about the mueller investigation, americans are split on impeaching him. Nearly half dont Want Congress to begin the process, 32 want lawmakers to continue investigating to see if theres enough evidence to hold impeachment hearings in the future and 17 say theres enough evidence to begin impeachment hearings now. Joining me now med win charles, ej dion columnist for the Washington Post, Elizabeth Holzman former congresswoman and author of the case for impeaching trump and cynthia altsny. I will start with the table with you, midwin. There is a disconnect in my mind. See if you can help me make this work. Nancy pelosi agreeing with what Michael Cohen said, that donald trump may not leave office if he loses reelection, that he may refuse to leave the presidency, and at the same time saying, well, we cant impeach him, we just have to beat him in the next election and we have to do infrastructure deals with him and we have to pass bills. These two things seem completely disconnected in my mind, can you explain it. Its a conundrum. Its astonishing that the speaker of the house would say that about the president of the United States. We need to step back and also recognize that you played that clip during the debates, in other words, trump has shown us all along who he was during the campaign. Yeah. And when people show you who they are, you ought to believe them the first time. Yes. He made it very clear that he had these sort of autocratic tendencies from day one. People now want to sort of act as though they are in shock. Yes. And in awe. In a democracy one of the sort of telltale signs of a democracy is the peaceful transition of power. You saw barack obama and Michelle Obama during the inauguration sit there right next to the same person who sort of disrespected them for years by questioning the place of birth, but they did that because they recognized that we live in a democracy. So the transition of power is incredibly important. So for nancy pelosi to recognize and identify that in this president he has these autocratic tendencies, but then on the other side to say that impeachment isnt proper is just mind blowing. It doesnt make any sense. Yeah. And i think what she is doing is sort of chipping away at what can happen between now and 2020. The way we are going with the constant disrespect of the constitution, we saw the flagrant disregard from william barr when he was questioned. The way we are going, who knows what kind of democracy will be by november 2020. Thats the concern. She seems to be missing that. And elizabeth, i want to go to you on that. Let me play you what donald trump said. Hes consistent. Theres one thing about him, hes consistent. Here is what he said in march of 2018 praising another autocrat. Take a listen. He is great. He is a great gentlemen. He is now president elefor life. Look, he was able to do that. I think its great. Maybe we will have to give that a shot some day. And elizabeth, it was funny when bill maher said two years ago President Trump is never going to leave office once he gets in, people laughed it off, then donald trump said he may not respect the results of the 2016 election, people kind of laughed it off. Now the speaker of the house of representatives is saying she is not sure that he will leave office even if he loses and that unless its a huge margin and, by the way, he lost by a huge margin last night, all right, so im not sure what she means by that, he lost by over 3 million votes, he may not leave office. Add to that that experts like walter dell linger who is a former Deputy Attorney general has said he may need to stay in office to avoid being indicted. The only way he can avoid indictment is to remain president so that that directive at the doj remains applicable to him. We are in a constitutional crisis. Can you explain this conundrum of the speaker of the house saying that and then saying, but, you know, we will just have a normal election and thinking its going to be a normal election. Well, nothing about donald trump is normal. Hes the most abnormal and the most dangerous thing thats ever happened to this country because you see the shades of fascism, you see the disrespect for norms, for constitutional systems, for our system, for the vote. I mean, remember, when he took office he was blaming barack obama for illegally wiretapping him. So he is capable of saying anything, making up total untruths, poisoning peoples minds about our democratic system. I mean, imagine for him to denigrate it, to me its a violation of his oath to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, to denigrate the russian interference with our election. Listen, the only thing that differentiates us from most of the countries in the world is that we have free elections. How can we tolerate having a Foreign Government affect our elections . I mean, now more information is coming out that apparently it leads one county in florida the machines themselves something may have happened to the machines, they may have been hacked. We dont know everything that the russians did. We know they interfered. The president hasnt lifted a finger to do something about it or criticize it. But i was laughing because what Walter Dellinger said is absolutely true. The president has several incentives to stay in office, not only that he loves the power and the parades and loves all of the trappings of it, but he can face indictment, prosecution, maybe even jail once he leaves office for various activities that hes under investigation for right now, for example, in new york state and elsewhere. The real danger and i dont think we can put it aside, we do have a danger because of his disrespect. I go back to watergate. While the saturday night massacre was going on, i still remember that nixon called for a National Emergency and the troops were put into readiness state and people got really nervous. Yeah. And we also know that the that the defense secretary, schlesinger, gave out an order to the military not to obey a command from the president of the United States unless he approved it first. That could happen again, the problem is we have an acting, right now, in the pentagon, do we have people who are prepared to stand up for our democracy and this government. And that i dont know the answer to. Well, how can one know the answer to it, cynthia . You also have an attorney general currently who was essentially said that his well, he has essentially indicated that his only job is to protect the president at all costs, he has essentially said that he cant say whether if Foreign Governments decided to interfere in the 2020 election whether there would be anything wrong with that. We face the scenario where there is a real possibility that the president of the United States wants to have foreign interference again so he can stay office, so that he will not be indicted. That he doesnt have any intention of committing to a peaceful transition of power and hes got monarchists in his power who will willing to give up their own authority as congress, they are willing to give up all their authority in order to be obedient to him. The Justice Department obedient to him. Hes stacking the courts with people who we dont know how obedient they are going to be. How can we have any confidence that just an election is going to cure these constitutional or that the election will even be fair, by the way . We obviously have a major concern because the phillip mena makes clear that the russians interfer interfered, the president knew about t welcomed it, lied about it and tried to cover it up. We also know the answer to why nancy pelosi has this opinion about impeachment and that is because she knows it will not happen in the senate. So she has to make a political calculation knowing it will fail in the senate. I mean, you have to give her that. Shes making a political calculation. Didnt the republicans know that about bill clinton . No impeachment has ever worked. No, they didnt know that. Only with nixon he resigned because he had some modicum of sense of decency or respect for the institution or self respect that he resigned. The idea it wont succeed, it is the biggest sanction that you can confer on a president full stop. Theres nothing more that they can do. I know that, but we do have to win the election. Nancy pelosi has to make the political calculation and im old enough to remember the clinton impeachment, i went through it, and it was up in the air. It was up in the air. It is not up in the air today. That is a political reality and nancy pelosi has to deal with politics. I mean, i can tell you legally i can analyze for you legally what has happened. She has to make a political calculation and to be fair shes making a rational one. Let me get e. J. s perspective on that. Of course, nancy pelosi as the leader of her party has to hold the house, god forbid democrats lose the house and give it back to republicans. We wont have a congress, theyre just going to complete be obedient. She needs to win elections, but is she making a rational decision if she says hes so dangerous that he may not leave office . I think that line is the line of the day. Look, i think we should go back and look at when Elizabeth Holtzman did all that good work on the Judiciary Committee where nixon was impeached. Here is the difference, you had a Democratic Congress right out of the box in 1972, they began investigations right away. The republicans have put the country in a box because for the first two years of the Trump Presidency there were no real investigations, they blocked real investigations, except for mueller who was on his own. Now congress has to start everything and the election is upon us. So the calculation on impeachment is far more complicated now than it was for Richard Nixon. Secondly, i think pelosi is right on a couple of counts. One, you cannot have a close election the next time. Trump lost some popular vote by 2. 9 million and he still won the electoral college. I agree with her that he will try to play games if the election is close. Third, she does have to keep her house a majority. When you have polls showing that basically 60 of americans think trump did something wrong or think he lies, but only 17 are for impeachment now, if i remember those numbers right, then youve got a real selling job to do before you move to impeachment. So i think what pelosi has been saying is, look, we are going to keep pressing, were going to keep trying to hold him accountable, were going to try to reveal as much as we can about what trump did to try to move that 17 number up to try to move the number up that says, my god, trump really is lying here. Yeah. And then we will have a different kind of politics both on the election and on impeachment. Can everybody stay . Can you guys just hang on for a little bit, i want to hold you guys over the break if i could. On the other side of the break i want to continue this conversation, we will bring in Jill Winebanks and just keep this going so stay with us. D ju this going so stay with us when i book at hilton. Com i get to select my room from the floor plan. Free wifi. And the price match guarantee. So with hilton there is no catch. Yeah the only catch is im never leaving. No im serious, i live here now. Book at hilton. Com and get the hilton price match guarantee. 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Thats why we built the nations largest gigspeed network along with complete reliability. Then went beyond. Beyond clumsy dialsins and pins. To onetouch conference calls. Beyond traditional tv. To tv on any device. Beyond lowres surveillance video. To Crystal Clear hd video monitoring from anywhere. Gigfueled apps that exceed expectations. Comcast business. Beyond fast. My panel is back with me and joining the conversation is Jill Winebanks, a former assistant watergate suppression prosecutor. Jill, earlier elizabeth was talking about nixon and the fears that he would not leave office under the pressure of watergate. Let me read from a political magazine article, this is from september of 2018 and theyre talking about trumps final day and whether or not he would actually leave his office. This says according to reporters nixon intimates began to believe he was count plating a coup detat to maintain power. An unnamed member of the joint chiefs of staff told her i wish in one meeting nixon called himself the last hope and claimed that the eastern elite was out to get him. Said the officer his words brought me straight up from my chair. I thought the president was trying to sound us out to see if we would support him in some extra constitutional action. He was trying to find out whether in a crunch there was support to keep him in power. Its not completely unprecedented that the president contemplate the idea of staying in office unconstitutionally. How much of a threat do you think there is of that now with this president . I think its a much bigger threat now for several reasons. One is the media has multiplied in a way that didnt exist during watergate and watergate we had basically three networks and they all had the same facts. Now you have this awful thing where we have a bubble of people who believe facts that are totally made up and then you have people who actually are paying attention to reading documents and paying attention to what is actually true. So thats one big difference. I think the other big difference is that ultimately Richard Nixon did believe in the rule of law and when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that he did not have executive privilege and that he had to turn over the tapes, he did so. In this administration where were worried about an attorney general who is enabling him and saying, well, if he thinks hes innocent, then he cant be investigated. That is a danger to democracy and, you know, its one of those things where we could say it cant happen here. I think a lot of people in past history have said the same thing and it did happen. We have to be vigilant now and we have to really get out the vote to make sure that we change administrations so that the rule of law returns because i do think this is a significant threat and that the stonewalling that is being threatened is really the end of the power of congress to have any say and any oversight of the executive branch. They are being eviscerated and they need to do something to show that they are a coequal branch of government. On that note, you have lets go back to elizabeth for just one second. You have all these deadlines that are coming up tomorrow. You have bill barr supposedly william barr to comply with a lawful subpoena to turn over the full phillip mena. That sure sounds like nixon return of the nixon era. Steve mnuchin his deadline whether to release Donald Trumps tax returns which has been legally requested and Michael Cohen of course reporting to prison. Elizabeth, it looks like only one of those three things are going to happen, Michael Cohen is about going to report to prison. What can congress do . At this point i just mean the house because the senate is not going to do anything. What can the house do to enforce its subpoenas and make this administration comply with the law . Well, you know, in the e