thank you so much for spending part of your tuesday with. we re grateful. the beat with ari melber, i want to hear what you have to say about the novel legal arguments we heard today. i appreciate that. we rely as well. we watch you, novel, extreme, dangerous, you re ono something. we re going to get to it. thank you, appcie it. welcome to the beat, i am ari melber, today marked the most controversial court hearing in the coup of donald trump. we can see the motorcade driving up to the washington courthouse today. some important things happened. trump pulled up so that he, the defendant, could attend this crucial appeals hearinwhh determines if this march coup trial will happen or not. trump and psktfuelga context laid out. i want to start withhe key developments that we learned from this hearing. one, trump is likely to lose. the judges were very skeptical, across the hearing of these extreme claims. most accounts of the hearing reported on that and how all three jud
proceedings is helpful to donald trump. i think that if the d.c. circuit makes a kind of sensible ruling, it could be pretty narrow, right, it could leave a lot of leeway for presidents in the course of the conduct of duty to have immunity, then the supreme court may decide not to touch it. now, that would allow the case to go forward more quickly. it might also create some ambiguity going forward for future cases, right. i mean, if the supreme court had very clearly weighed in on the case of former president nixon, the law would look slightly different now. in perpetuity, it can be useful for the supreme court to make itself clear on these basic matters but for the sake of this case, for the justice department, it would be better if the court just allowed a d.c. circuit ruling to stand, as long as it s in the justice department s favor, of course. right. and then you look at what they re choosing from and the more that it s one sided, the more the trump folks have carved
prosecution is a senate impeachment trial that convicts a president. that is a situation that has never occurred in american history. no president has ever been convicted in the senate after impeachment because the bar is so high. not johnson who came the closest, not nixon who resigned before it, and not the last two impeached presidents you see on the screen. as the trump lawyer tries to duck, and says for the record, clearly your answer is no, the lawyer knew that saying no would be bad and lead to a lot of the reaction that already is happening, maybe helped hurt the case. maybe end the case from the lawyer representing trump. he has to do everything he can not to say what his real answer is. his real answer legally is no. that s what the judge is bearing down on. he keeps arguing any prosecution, for this navy seal assassination, would require something that has never happened before.
serious, a very difficult puzzle to solve. you talked about the visit of nixon. one of the biggest achievements for that visit was the signing of a communique in which they talk about taiwan. the us acknowledge there is only one china who defines who owns china and there was ambiguity. that has not resolved. you can argue the wise approach is to kick the can down the road again. is it going to happen? i do not have an answer and i do not think anyone has the answer. in a time of great power competition, if the proposal comes from washington, i am sure beijing would reject it because beijing wouldn t like the external force to interfere. that is the principal. taiwan, even if there were some politicians who are sympathetic to the idea longer term, they would be looking at what is happening in hong kong right now and saying, what value is there in international guarantee? the hong kong situation is quite different. it is a part of china.
in europe had had its day. vincent, in terms of what ned was talking about, it is an interesting weekend to be talking about this because it is 50 years since nixon went to china to divide china and russia and stick two fingers up at moscow and say, we are buddies with china! it is putin now in beijing, not nixon. is china in a position to insulate russia if there is military conflict and will sanctions be imposed? on the surface, both countries are getting closer and closer. neither the opening ceremony of the winter olympics two weeks ago, president putin and president xi sat down together.