Verdict with Ted Cruz - Trump on Trial (Again)

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.480 The first day of former President Trump's impeachment trial has just come to a close.

00:00:09.540 And we are joined here by one of the jurors to help us break it all down.

00:00:13.740 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:21.340 I think I've heard it before.

00:00:23.680 I think I've said it before, maybe almost exactly a year ago on the very first episode of this show.

00:00:29.000 Is that not word for word, verbatim, exactly how Verdict began?

00:00:34.300 It is because, you know, Senator, it would seem that we are just stuck, suspended in midair in this country.

00:00:40.920 Nothing is changing.

00:00:42.380 I have to tell you, when we started this show, it was because the first...

00:00:47.240 I'm going to start singing, I got you, babe.

00:00:51.220 It's just going to keep on and on.

00:00:53.360 When we first started this, I had no idea really what was at play in that first impeachment trial.

00:00:58.780 And that, to me, seems clear-cut compared to this second sort of impeachment trial.

00:01:04.400 I guess the biggest question on people's minds is, is this even an impeachment trial?

00:01:09.960 Because obviously Trump is not the president anymore.

00:01:12.440 You were there all day.

00:01:13.700 We are doing exactly what we did a year ago.

00:01:16.160 We're here in the middle of the night.

00:01:18.120 You've just left the Capitol.

00:01:19.700 Now, I will say it is much more humane.

00:01:22.060 So when we started this last year, I think it was 2.37 in the morning when we started this.

00:01:27.760 It's now, what is it, 10, 12 p.m.

00:01:31.340 Much more recently.

00:01:32.220 You know, that's positively civilized.

00:01:34.340 Does that tell you something about the seriousness of this impeachment trial?

00:01:38.020 Yes.

00:01:38.520 Look, to be honest, both sides are dialing it in.

00:01:41.640 Okay.

00:01:41.880 The end result of this is preordained, that this trial, as Shakespeare put it, is full

00:01:53.140 of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

00:01:56.080 Senator, you know, I'm not the most literary guy in the world.

00:01:59.960 I thought that was William Faulkner who said that.

00:02:02.020 I was reading a tweet from Andrea Mitchell on NBC.

00:02:05.880 She seemed to want to make fun of you and attribute that quote to Faulkner.

00:02:10.940 It really was a pretty stunning exchange.

00:02:13.980 So this happened a little over an hour ago.

00:02:17.340 Yeah.

00:02:17.700 And I guess Andrea Mitchell decided that she was going to upbraid me and demonstrate her 1.00

00:02:23.280 intellectual superiority and better learnedness.

00:02:27.520 Um, and, you know, apparently, uh, she, she does not, ironically, I didn't know this.

00:02:36.140 She has a degree in English literature, American literature.

00:02:39.500 Well, that would explain it.

00:02:40.960 And so, and so Faulkner, she knows, but, but, but apparently Macbeth, she does not.

00:02:46.980 No, she does not.

00:02:48.060 I think actually there is something in this exchange that tells us a lot about the whole impeachment

00:02:52.760 trial, which was this, this combination, not just of ignorance, but also arrogance to correct

00:02:58.520 someone who's using the correct quote. 1.00

00:03:00.320 Well, life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. 1.00

00:03:07.160 Wow. 1.00

00:03:07.560 And one would think not only ABC, Jennifer Rubin at Washington Post chimed in agreeing with

00:03:13.200 Andrea Mitchell.

00:03:13.720 It really is kind of amazing that between NBC and the Washington Post, nobody has actually

00:03:18.780 read Macbeth.

00:03:19.640 I tell you, Senator, if you spend as much time in the media and around journalists as

00:03:24.280 I do, not surprising at all.

00:03:25.780 Absolutely not surprising.

00:03:27.260 Well, and, and, you know, I, I will say I, nothing is better than when Ernest Hemingway

00:03:31.440 wrote, is this a dagger I see before me, the handle towards my hand, come let me clutch

00:03:35.460 thee, I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

00:03:37.460 I thought that was JK Rowling.

00:03:38.860 I don't know.

00:03:40.140 I said, we could go through the whole literary canon.

00:03:42.660 You know, this does though, this issue of ignorance and arrogance, it does bring me back

00:03:48.100 to the question of the trial, because I'll, I'll confess to ignorance here.

00:03:51.920 I don't get it.

00:03:53.320 I don't know.

00:03:53.900 Is, is this thing constitutional?

00:03:55.900 Is it unconstitutional?

00:03:57.360 Does the Senate have the right to hold the trial?

00:03:59.260 Can there be an impeachment trial of an ex-president?

00:04:02.240 What, you were there all day.

00:04:03.340 What's going on?

00:04:04.020 So those are really important questions.

00:04:06.420 And we actually addressed those questions yesterday.

00:04:08.160 So, so the trial itself started today.

00:04:10.360 Yesterday we had essentially a pre-trial motion.

00:04:13.100 And, and an argument about whether the Senate even has jurisdiction to consider this matter.

00:04:18.980 And, and what's at heart in the argument is, is that Donald J. Trump is no longer the

00:04:23.880 president.

00:04:24.420 Right.

00:04:24.900 And so the argument that the Trump legal campaign made is that the Senate doesn't have the jurisdiction

00:04:31.580 to try a former office holder.

00:04:34.600 Right.

00:04:35.120 That jurisdiction only extends to current office holders.

00:04:38.780 And once he left the White House, the Senate could no longer have an impeachment trial.

00:04:42.640 So this has been my understanding of it, but I, you know, I didn't go to law school and

00:04:46.680 I'm no constitutional expert.

00:04:48.620 Well, and you know, it's interesting.

00:04:49.920 The constitutional question is actually very close.

00:04:52.600 It is a difficult question.

00:04:55.180 It's not a question I had examined until, until we were faced with it.

00:04:59.280 And, and, and I got to say, as I looked at it, I actually think the better argument

00:05:05.440 on the substance and on the merits is that the Senate does have the jurisdiction.

00:05:12.760 To try a former office holder.

00:05:15.180 Okay.

00:05:15.640 That being said, I don't believe the jurisdiction is mandatory.

00:05:20.280 I don't think we have to take it.

00:05:21.680 And so I don't think we should take it.

00:05:23.400 And let me walk through that because those are some complicated legal concepts.

00:05:25.820 Yeah.

00:05:26.000 Well, and, and I want to point out, generally speaking, you've heard people, it's, it's,

00:05:30.840 it's binary.

00:05:31.680 They'll say either the Senate has no jurisdiction here.

00:05:34.040 This is a force of a trial or the Senate not only has jurisdiction, but we have to do it.

00:05:38.720 That's our constitutional responsibility to throw Trump in the gulag.

00:05:41.720 And, and you, as far as I can tell, this is a unique legal takeoff.

00:05:45.780 Yeah, it may well be.

00:05:47.980 Although actually Mike Lee, my colleague, he and I are very close to agreement on this.

00:05:53.020 We've talked about this a lot.

00:05:54.060 Mike is a serious legal scholar, clerk for Justice Sam Alito on the Supreme Court.

00:05:59.060 Mike and I have spent many, many hours talking about this issue and his view and mine are

00:06:02.700 very, very close on this.

00:06:04.380 Let me start on just the threshold question.

00:06:06.640 Do you have jurisdiction?

00:06:08.440 So if you look at the constitutional text, you can take arguments from the text on, on,

00:06:15.760 on both sides.

00:06:16.640 So the constitution says the house shall have the sole power of impeachment and the Senate

00:06:22.860 shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.

00:06:26.800 Interestingly, those are the only two places in the constitution you find the word sole power.

00:06:31.160 And so it's just impeachments.

00:06:34.680 House is entirely in charge of impeachments.

00:06:37.080 The Senate is entirely in charge of trying impeachment.

00:06:39.440 Nobody else has power.

00:06:40.920 Right.

00:06:41.140 And actually, even on this point, I think it's worth clearing up because, because we use these

00:06:44.660 terms in a loose way, Trump has already been impeached.

00:06:48.400 Correct.

00:06:48.860 Twice.

00:06:49.440 Correct.

00:06:49.840 Because the house voted, they impeached him.

00:06:51.460 He was in office both times.

00:06:53.240 Then there's the trial.

00:06:54.380 He's been acquitted once during the first episodes of verdict.

00:06:57.360 And now the question is, will he be acquitted or convicted?

00:07:00.360 And this is one of the things most misunderstood just in sort of general parlance.

00:07:05.020 But to be impeached, think of it like in the criminal context to be indicted.

00:07:09.520 Like if the grand jury indicts you, it means they bring charges against you.

00:07:13.000 If you're indicted for running over somebody's dog, it doesn't mean you're convicted.

00:07:18.220 It means you're charged with it.

00:07:19.440 And then when you have a trial, if you're convicted is when you're found guilty.

00:07:22.420 Right.

00:07:22.860 So the house impeaches, which is to bring the charges, and the Senate conducts the trial.

00:07:28.240 Now, there are a couple of textual arguments that were raised as to why former office holders

00:07:34.840 do not fall into the impeachment power.

00:07:37.520 One is that another portion of the Constitution refers to the president rather than a president.

00:07:44.520 Right.

00:07:45.240 And Donald J. Trump right now is not the president.

00:07:49.480 There is only one the president at any moment in history today.

00:07:52.620 Joseph Biden is the president.

00:07:55.420 Trump is a former president.

00:07:56.740 That's a textual argument that is used to say, well, he's not the president, so he's not

00:08:02.120 subject to impeachment.

00:08:03.360 What that provision actually says, though, is when the president is impeached, the chief

00:08:08.840 justice shall preside.

00:08:10.560 Because Trump isn't the president, the chief justice is not presiding.

00:08:14.180 Right.

00:08:14.740 There is another provision that says that when the president is impeached and convicted,

00:08:23.100 he shall be removed.

00:08:24.720 And it uses the word shall.

00:08:25.920 Yeah.

00:08:26.080 So the argument is made, well, shall.

00:08:28.940 But he can't be.

00:08:29.700 If he can't be removed, that means you can't remove an ex-officeholder.

00:08:33.920 Look, that's a real argument.

00:08:34.860 That's a substantive argument.

00:08:37.080 On the flip side, as we said, he's not the president.

00:08:42.400 He is a former president.

00:08:44.720 If you look at the history, as you examine it, at the time the Constitution was written,

00:08:49.860 it turns out the question of what's called late impeachment was actually a topic of discussion.

00:08:55.080 Can former officeholders be impeached?

00:08:57.640 If you look to British common law and the framers were very familiar with British common

00:09:02.900 law.

00:09:03.180 And often when you're interpreting U.S. constitutional provisions, you look to where did it come from

00:09:08.260 under British law?

00:09:10.220 Because many of the concepts the framers took from British law.

00:09:13.360 And there were two very notable British impeachments.

00:09:17.800 One was in 1725, and that was Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, who was impeached for public corruption.

00:09:25.640 It's a very well-known impeachment.

00:09:27.760 Oh, yeah.

00:09:28.020 I knew all about it.

00:09:28.860 I was, you know, I talked about this all the time.

00:09:30.920 You know, is there a day you don't talk about the Macclesfield impeachment?

00:09:34.000 Well, Macclesfield was impeached after he left office.

00:09:37.280 A second impeachment was the impeachment of Warren Hastings.

00:09:41.180 Now, Warren Hastings was the governor general of India.

00:09:44.280 Interestingly enough, his impeachment began in 1787, so literally while the framers were

00:09:49.660 in Constitution Hall in Philadelphia.

00:09:52.000 And in the debates of the Constitution, they discuss the impeachment of Warren Hastings.

00:09:57.720 Now, Hastings, likewise, was no longer the governor general, and yet nonetheless he was impeached.

00:10:04.280 And by the way, do you know who led the charge to impeach Hastings?

00:10:06.720 Who?

00:10:07.700 Someone you're a big fan of.

00:10:09.200 Would this be?

00:10:10.300 Edmund Burke.

00:10:10.880 Edmund Burke.

00:10:11.660 A great, considered the founder of modern conservative philosophy.

00:10:15.900 Very, it's actually a very important context for how these framers are thinking about things.

00:10:19.980 So they're literally talking about, at the Constitutional Convention, the impeachment of

00:10:24.900 an out-of-office officeholder.

00:10:26.580 And by the way, right after the founding, 1806, in Great Britain, Lord Melville was impeached as

00:10:33.540 well.

00:10:33.720 So very shortly thereafter.

00:10:35.500 So you've got a fair amount of history with British common law, and then you look at U.S.

00:10:41.320 history.

00:10:42.700 The first impeachment we have was of Senator Blunt of Tennessee.

00:10:49.740 And he was impeached.

00:10:51.960 He was actually impeached because he tried to essentially sell Florida and Louisiana away

00:10:58.960 from the U.S.

00:10:59.900 And he was impeached.

00:11:02.000 He was thrown out of the Senate. 0.98

00:11:03.260 The guy was crooked.

00:11:04.300 This is like when someone says, you know, if you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn

00:11:07.260 to sell you.

00:11:07.900 He tried to sell.

00:11:08.800 He tried to sell a bridge in Florida.

00:11:11.560 So there was a big debate during the Blunt impeachment.

00:11:17.560 So Blunt was impeached.

00:11:18.700 The House brought charges.

00:11:21.240 The Senate expelled him because he was a senator.

00:11:24.340 Yeah.

00:11:24.760 And then there was a big debate on jurisdiction.

00:11:26.780 There were two arguments on jurisdiction.

00:11:28.660 One, that the Senate couldn't impeach him because he was a senator and that impeachment didn't apply

00:11:34.120 to members of Congress.

00:11:34.960 It only applied to members of the executive branch or the judicial branch.

00:11:38.280 And then secondly, an argument that was given was he couldn't be impeached because he was

00:11:42.540 no longer in office or he couldn't be tried.

00:11:44.480 Rather, the Senate ended up voting by a vote of 14 to 11 that the Senate did not have jurisdiction

00:11:53.140 over Blunt.

00:11:54.020 OK, that has both arguments were presented.

00:11:57.760 So it's not necessarily conclusive.

00:12:00.020 Yeah.

00:12:00.800 But the predominant arguments that were raised was that he was a senator.

00:12:04.620 And so it was a comment about what kind of job he had rather than being a former office

00:12:10.040 holder.

00:12:10.620 OK.

00:12:11.320 One other major precedent.

00:12:13.540 1876, Secretary of War William Belknap.

00:12:16.800 Now, Belknap resigned, was crooked, was caught in corruption, was impeached.

00:12:22.660 And the Senate actually had two weeks of debate over whether a former office holder could be

00:12:27.840 impeached because Belknap argued, I'm out of office.

00:12:30.820 You can't impeach me.

00:12:31.500 Right.

00:12:32.320 And the Senate ended up voting 37 to 29 in favor of jurisdiction, in favor of saying

00:12:40.360 we can try a former office holder.

00:12:43.720 So as I look at this, the textual language of the Constitution, there's some ambiguity.

00:12:51.420 But the grant of power to the Senate is really broad.

00:12:55.620 The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.

00:13:00.420 That's a very broad power.

00:13:03.200 Given the history of British common law and American history, I think the better constitutional

00:13:07.600 argument is, yes, you can try a former office holder.

00:13:11.200 And let me give an example.

00:13:13.340 Imagine we discovered, we found evidence that a former president had sold American nuclear

00:13:20.160 secrets to the Chinese government, that they were guilty of treason and bribery, both.

00:13:28.200 And the evidence was conclusive.

00:13:30.340 And by the way, treason and bribery are both mentioned explicitly in the Constitution as

00:13:34.400 grounds for impeachment.

00:13:35.940 I think in those circumstances, the House would conclude overwhelmingly it had jurisdiction

00:13:40.220 to impeach them.

00:13:41.260 The Senate would conclude overwhelmingly it had jurisdiction to try them, even though they

00:13:45.520 were a former office holder.

00:13:46.520 Right.

00:13:47.740 So I concluded, I wrote an op-ed last night laying out these arguments as to why I think

00:13:52.480 the right constitutional argument, and it's close, but I think the right argument is, yes,

00:13:57.160 we have jurisdiction over a former office holder.

00:13:59.980 I think you've actually managed to change my mind on this in this discussion, because

00:14:04.800 I was leaning very much text of the Constitution, certainly made it seem to me as though Senate

00:14:09.480 doesn't have jurisdiction.

00:14:10.360 But when you factor in British common law, when you factor in these other debates that

00:14:15.480 were happening at the time, that is a compelling argument.

00:14:18.720 And yet.

00:14:19.820 And yet.

00:14:20.440 So yesterday, I voted against jurisdiction.

00:14:23.220 Yes.

00:14:24.040 And the reason for that is, generally speaking, there are two kinds of jurisdiction.

00:14:30.080 Mandatory jurisdiction and discretionary jurisdiction.

00:14:32.940 Okay.

00:14:33.920 Mandatory jurisdiction means you must take the case.

00:14:37.120 If you have the authority to take it, you must take the case, and you have no choice.

00:14:40.820 Yeah.

00:14:42.300 Discretionary jurisdiction is you have the authority to take the case, but you can choose

00:14:46.820 whether or not to hear it.

00:14:48.180 And the easiest example is the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:14:52.340 The vast majority of the U.S. Supreme Court's docket is discretionary jurisdiction.

00:14:57.760 We heard a lot about this during the election, right?

00:14:59.740 There were these cases.

00:15:00.880 That the court didn't take.

00:15:01.700 The court didn't take.

00:15:02.400 You were actually slated to argue one of them.

00:15:04.500 The court said, no, thank you.

00:15:05.320 We don't want to hear it.

00:15:05.940 In any given year, the Supreme Court will get about 8,000 what are called petitions for

00:15:11.040 certiorari, which are requests for the court to exercise its discretionary jurisdiction

00:15:15.840 to hear a case.

00:15:16.640 Yeah.

00:15:17.360 Out of those 8,000, the court hears about 1%.

00:15:20.080 It hears about 80 out of those 8,000.

00:15:22.060 So 7,900, it says go jump in a lake.

00:15:25.640 Right.

00:15:26.700 As I look at the Constitution, there's nothing in the Constitution that says we have mandatory

00:15:30.840 jurisdiction.

00:15:31.580 The Senate has to take a case.

00:15:33.120 Right.

00:15:33.220 It says the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.

00:15:38.960 It's up to the Senate.

00:15:39.800 The Senate makes those determinations.

00:15:42.060 And so what I argued to my colleagues, and actually at lunch today, I made this argument

00:15:45.840 to all of my colleagues that for what it's worth, here's my thinking, that in this case,

00:15:50.820 we should not exercise jurisdiction.

00:15:53.560 We shouldn't take up the case.

00:15:55.120 And the reasons we shouldn't take it up are, number one, the House had zero due process.

00:16:00.920 Yeah.

00:16:01.380 Yeah.

00:16:01.560 They considered it for seven days.

00:16:03.120 They heard no witnesses.

00:16:04.160 They held no hearings.

00:16:05.860 They examined no evidence.

00:16:07.320 This was a political impeachment.

00:16:09.200 It seems as though they're sort of changing their arguments.

00:16:11.620 Maybe we'll get into that a little bit on just what happened today.

00:16:14.000 But yeah, it just, it seems, it seemed like a shallow process in the House.

00:16:18.960 And I don't think the Senate is obliged.

00:16:21.180 Look, this precedent, you know, this has also been called a snap impeachment, where they just

00:16:25.320 vote out an impeachment because we hate the guy.

00:16:27.720 Yeah.

00:16:28.020 I don't think the Senate has any obligation if the House engages in a sham proceeding

00:16:33.640 to conduct a full trial.

00:16:35.800 I think we are perfectly justified in saying we are declining to exercise jurisdiction over

00:16:40.240 this because it doesn't meet the threshold of a credible, real, serious impeachment.

00:16:46.340 Right.

00:16:47.100 Secondly, on the merits, I think there is no serious argument that this meets the legal threshold

00:16:55.660 for impeachment.

00:16:58.040 There's only one count that the House alleges, which is incitement to insurrection, incitement

00:17:04.120 to, to, to riot and violence.

00:17:06.640 Now there clearly was riot.

00:17:09.400 There was a terrorist attack on the Capitol.

00:17:11.080 It was horrific.

00:17:11.840 And, you know, today, so we went through eight hours of, of the House managers' arguments and

00:17:18.240 they did an effective job.

00:17:19.260 Let me start by saying that they, look, Democrats have a lot of trial lawyers and they had some

00:17:27.760 trial lawyers today that were good storytellers who were emotional.

00:17:31.820 I mean, they, they got up, they walked through, they were well organized and it was, we watched

00:17:39.340 a lot of videos today.

00:17:40.760 They seem to rely a lot on these very charged videos that drive, evoke a lot of emotions.

00:17:47.340 And it was powerful.

00:17:48.560 It was horrifying.

00:17:49.500 I mean, there were a lot of moments in the Senate where you could hear a pin drop because

00:17:52.660 you're watching this and it's horrific.

00:17:55.080 It's horrific seeing violent criminals and terrorists assaulting, beating police officers,

00:18:02.800 loudly proclaiming their desire to carry out murder and, and succeeding in murdering one

00:18:10.440 police officer and injuring over a hundred.

00:18:12.560 I mean, it was all of us.

00:18:15.600 And I think all of the country who watched today was horrified at what happened.

00:18:20.300 And, and that, that this was a grotesque terrorist attack carried out by violent criminals who

00:18:26.880 should be fully prosecuted and spend a long, long time in jail, I think is unequivocal.

00:18:31.760 Sure.

00:18:32.000 But, but the emotional effect of the videos and even the stories that these impeachment

00:18:36.820 managers were saying, it's not the same thing as an argument that the president committed

00:18:41.940 an impeachable offense.

00:18:42.740 Well, and 90 plus percent of the time of the house managers today was on how horrific the

00:18:49.460 attack was.

00:18:50.180 Yeah.

00:18:50.720 And if we were impeaching, you know, the guy with a Viking horns that were beating people 0.99

00:18:56.080 up, sign me up.

00:18:57.420 Where do, where do I vote?

00:18:58.300 Right.

00:18:59.020 But at the end of the day, incitement, the standard for incitement is, is it has to be a

00:19:04.360 very direct call for violence.

00:19:07.160 Yeah.

00:19:07.300 And if you look at what the president said, uh, the president and, and listen, the president's

00:19:12.540 rhetoric at times, I think is overheated.

00:19:14.400 I wish some of the things he says, some of the things he tweeted, I wish he didn't say

00:19:18.360 in tweet.

00:19:19.440 But if you look at what he actually said at the speech on January 6th, the Democrats are

00:19:25.400 making a big deal of, well, he kept saying fight, you need to fight like hell.

00:19:29.720 Yeah.

00:19:30.620 Let me tell you, if we take every person who has ever said, you got to fight, you got to

00:19:35.240 fight like hell, you got to win, we got to take our country back.

00:19:38.860 You would literally be prosecuting every single political candidate in America for incitement.

00:19:45.800 Ever.

00:19:45.940 Like I guarantee you of, of all the, all 50 democratic senators, every single one.

00:19:50.920 And if you've ever given a stump speech, if you ran for seventh grade class president,

00:19:55.080 I'm willing, I'm willing to bet, Michael, you stood up and said, we got to fight.

00:19:58.100 Yes, I did. 0.99

00:19:58.920 And I won my race, darn it. 0.99

00:20:00.120 I, there you, there you go. 0.99

00:20:01.320 Because it, it's effective political rhetoric and everybody does.

00:20:03.880 It, it, it is ubiquitous.

00:20:07.720 It, it, it, it is commonplace language to say fight.

00:20:12.400 And in this case, president Trump said peacefully, explicitly said peacefully.

00:20:17.120 It was not a call to violence.

00:20:19.240 And where the house manager's argument falls apart is, is whatever standard, they haven't

00:20:25.400 really articulated a standard for incitement.

00:20:27.320 Maybe they'll do that tomorrow, but they haven't even tried to say, this is how you distinguish

00:20:32.220 ordinary political speech or even hot rhetoric.

00:20:36.040 I mean, uh, from truly criminal incitement, any standard they would articulate right after

00:20:46.900 this trial, we better start moving forward against Nancy Pelosi.

00:20:50.000 Yeah.

00:20:50.820 And Maxine Waters and Chuck Schumer.

00:20:54.680 Hillary Clinton for that matter.

00:20:55.660 Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris.

00:20:57.240 Cory Booker.

00:20:57.860 Look, you look at, uh, Nancy Pelosi called police officers Nazis.

00:21:02.240 Yeah.

00:21:02.980 There's some rich irony now.

00:21:04.700 All these Democrats are defending police officers given a year of vilifying cops and saying abolish 0.99

00:21:10.100 the police and, uh, ACAB, their, their motto, all cops are bastards is what that stands 0.99

00:21:16.000 for. 0.99

00:21:16.340 And these are now the defenders of law enforcement.

00:21:19.200 I mean, it, you know, if God were, were, were still in the business of throwing lightning

00:21:25.940 bolts, some Democrats might've been struck down today. 0.81

00:21:28.940 You look at, um, Chuck Schumer who went to the steps of the Supreme court, called out two

00:21:37.860 Supreme court justices by name and says, you have unleashed the whirlwind and you will

00:21:43.320 pay the price.

00:21:44.000 He threatened them directly.

00:21:45.160 Now look that if what Trump said is incitement, what Schumer said is incitement.

00:21:51.540 Well, Maxine Waters said, when you see Republicans in public go up, get in their face, start a

00:21:58.000 confrontation.

00:21:58.520 She explicitly urged violence.

00:22:01.540 And I'll tell you, Kamala Harris, um, who, who the media is right now in the midst of 0.90

00:22:08.300 beatifying, um, Kamala Harris, when we had violent riots and we had for a year riots across this

00:22:16.920 country, cities being burned, mostly peaceful, police cars, CNN apologizing for him like crazy

00:22:22.220 police cars being firebombed, police officers being murdered.

00:22:26.380 And these Democrats who are now high and mighty were apologizing for celebrating, encouraging Kamala

00:22:34.260 Harris raised bail money to bail out, not the peaceful protesters, the violent criminals.

00:22:41.920 So it was literally after they had committed acts of violence, she was raising money to

00:22:46.260 bail them out.

00:22:47.080 Yeah.

00:22:47.260 Now the truthful matter, the truthful assessment of it is none of this is incitement.

00:22:53.800 Right.

00:22:54.120 But there is no coherent standard that says what Trump said is incitement and what Kamala

00:23:00.940 and Schumer said is not, you can't have, you can't have the only people guilty are the

00:23:07.040 ones politically I dislike.

00:23:08.540 And that's really what the Democrats are.

00:23:10.100 This is the issue.

00:23:10.900 Cause I don't think any Republicans out there are really saying we need to kick Cory Booker

00:23:15.720 out of the Senate because you know, he said something one time, but they're actually believe 0.93

00:23:19.280 in free speech, even dumb speech. You have a right, right to it. 0.94

00:23:24.880 But if we're going to take this unprecedented action, impeach a former president, now a private

00:23:30.600 citizen in Florida for this language where he said, maybe it was overblown at times, but he did

00:23:35.960 say at the moment, be peaceful, don't be violent. If we're going to do that, why on earth are we

00:23:39.420 letting Nancy Pelosi off the hook, Hillary Clinton, Maxine Wars, all these people? 0.85

00:23:42.800 Because this is not a legal argument. It's not a constitutional argument and it's not a principled

00:23:47.320 argument. There's a reason why 90% of what they did today was emotional. It was just designed

00:23:54.000 to have you go, Oh my God, this was horrible. And it was horrible. It was a terrorist attack.

00:23:59.680 Now there is a difference, which is that you and I, and most people on the right, unequivocally

00:24:05.780 condemn this virus.

00:24:07.280 It's bad.

00:24:08.160 And let me be clear, whoever is responsible for killing officer Sicknick, assuming it was

00:24:16.680 deliberate, I think those facts are still being investigated, but assuming it was deliberate, 0.83

00:24:20.980 I'd execute for murdering a police officer. As far as I'm concerned, if that's deliberate 0.70

00:24:26.400 and not, maybe the facts come out that they were somehow accidental, in which case it wouldn't

00:24:30.180 fall under capital punishment. You'd instead prosecute them and put them away for a long

00:24:33.940 time. But you and I are perfectly happy to unequivocally condemn the violence. The difference

00:24:40.080 with the Democrats is most of the Democrats still haven't condemned the violence and rioting

00:24:45.900 of BLM, of Antifa. When they agree politically with someone, violence somehow doesn't count.

00:24:51.220 Right. So the Democrats seem to not have any coherence standard here. And the Republicans

00:24:56.540 seem not particularly interested in this. I know there were a handful of Republicans who

00:25:00.760 seem gung-ho on the impeachment trial, but most seem really uninterested. I think there was a report

00:25:07.780 that some Republican senators were like reading books today, gazing off in the distance.

00:25:13.180 Yeah. Look, to be honest, that's a little bit of gotcha journalism.

00:25:16.620 It was. Okay. So when you were in the room, you saw...

00:25:18.540 Yeah. So I was in the room. We were all sitting at our desks. Most senators were at their desks the

00:25:24.600 entire time. People would occasionally get up and go to the restroom. Look, the median age in the

00:25:29.960 Senate is about 97. So people have to go to the restroom. You know, you would also have, 1.00

00:25:36.760 so periodically you would get up and go in the cloakroom. It's something we talked about in the

00:25:40.620 last impeachment trial. Yeah. There were multiple times during the trial when I went back in the

00:25:44.860 cloakroom. I went back to talk with Lindsey Graham, went back to talk with Rand Paul. I went back to

00:25:49.820 talk with John Kennedy. I don't want to ask for tales out of school here, but I do. Can you give

00:25:54.840 us anything of what was going on? You know, I don't necessarily want to get into it because a lot of

00:25:58.820 what I was talking with them about was strategy for the next couple of days about where the arguments are

00:26:03.820 going. What are the responses? Although, look, a lot of what we're talking about is some of what

00:26:08.000 we're saying here, which is the double standard. Yeah. That by any measure, you know, Lindsey was 0.99

00:26:16.620 pointing out that I guess one of the people who was bailed out from this fund that Kamala raised

00:26:21.300 money for went out and committed violence in yet another riot and injured somebody else. So,

00:26:27.920 I mean, it was not just once but twice. Yeah. And so, we were talking about we're going to have

00:26:36.100 probably on Saturday four hours of questioning. Remember the first impeachment trial, we had

00:26:40.240 senator questions. Yeah. And so, a lot of what I was talking with Lindsey and John and Rand about is

00:26:45.380 what sort of questions to ask. Yeah. But there's a fair amount of that strategizing that goes on

00:26:52.960 just off of the floor in the cloakroom. Now, I know some reports are, I mean, you have to take

00:27:01.020 it with a grain of salt because it's the left-wing media, but that the House impeachment managers,

00:27:04.600 they're doing a great job. As you say, it was emotionally persuasive, if not logically all that

00:27:09.820 persuasive. So, how long is this going to go? Is there any chance that the Democrats succeed or is

00:27:17.960 this full of sin and fury signifying nothing? So, stop quoting Faulkner. So, I don't think it

00:27:24.320 will go much longer. I think we are likely to be done Saturday night. Yeah. So, what's currently

00:27:30.440 scheduled, the House managers have two days, 16 hours to present their case. So, we're one day into it.

00:27:36.340 Yeah. They have tomorrow. We'll go, I guess, as we'll wrap up eight or nine o'clock tomorrow night.

00:27:42.260 Yep. And then, Trump's lawyers have 16 hours over two days to present their case.

00:27:48.640 I think it's quite likely Trump's lawyers will not take the whole 16 hours. I think

00:27:53.840 virtually every senator thinks they should not take the whole 16 hours.

00:27:58.980 When that is completed, there will be a vote on whether we should call additional witnesses.

00:28:06.080 Now, right now, my understanding is the Democratic senators don't want additional witnesses. So,

00:28:10.660 everyone expects that vote to be no. Remember, we had a big fight in the last one about calling

00:28:14.620 witnesses. Right. Right. But is the idea here, what's the point? What would be the point of

00:28:20.040 additional witnesses? I think so. And I think also, I think a lot of the Democratic senators wish

00:28:26.160 they weren't there. That this impeachment, look, if you're a Democrat, your guy just won the White

00:28:33.800 House. You got a new administration. You're getting new Democratic cabinet members. You've got a

00:28:38.800 Democratic majority in the House, and you just got a Democratic majority in the Senate. So,

00:28:42.840 there are a bunch of Democratic senators who suddenly are committee chairmen. They have gavels.

00:28:47.800 They want to get onto the business of destroying the country. And by the way, that is what they're

00:28:52.440 going to be doing. Right. Right.

00:28:53.800 They are eager to pass their radical agenda. Yeah. And this is just sort of an impediment. This is a

00:29:02.840 waste of time for that. I think they're frustrated. It was really the House Democrats that drove this.

00:29:08.080 They're so, the House Democrats are just consumed with hatred for Trump. Yeah. And so, I think the

00:29:17.860 Senate Democrats felt like they didn't have much of a choice. They had to go through with it. I don't

00:29:23.540 get the sense Biden's very happy about this. I mean, you know, look, if you were, you know, we were in

00:29:27.760 week three of the Knowles presidency, I don't know that you would be all that interested in impeaching

00:29:33.700 former President Ben Shapiro. You'd be like, well, you know, in that specific case, maybe. But of course,

00:29:39.700 if you get in there, you say, especially if someone like Joe Biden has been running for president

00:29:43.260 since 1988, right, it's been a long time, this guy knows what he wants to do. He wants to wield the

00:29:48.540 power. And he's got to hold up to keep talking about the guy that he just booted out of the

00:29:53.940 White House. By the way, you know, Biden was accused of plagiarism, too, just like Andrea Mitchell

00:29:57.380 accused me. So, I don't know, maybe that augurs well for future political endeavors. But, look,

00:30:05.220 Biden wants to get on with it. I think there are a lot. So, my sense of the Democrats, they don't want

00:30:09.360 to see witnesses. We don't want to see witnesses. I think we'll vote on that. I think witnesses will

00:30:13.040 not be called. And then we'll have four hours of questioning. And the way the questioning works

00:30:18.900 is it alternates Democrat-Republican, Democrat-Republican. Under the agreement, if we

00:30:25.280 ceded back our time, you just have four hours of Democratic questioning. So, I don't think we'll do

00:30:29.420 that. I think if we could actually give back our time, we might. But given that we'd just be giving

00:30:35.660 it to the Democrats, I think we're unlikely to do that. And then my guess is at the end of that,

00:30:40.360 which will be probably Sunday evening or Saturday evening, I think we'll vote. And to cut to the

00:30:49.000 ending, Donald Trump will be acquitted. You're confident? There's no, I mean-

00:30:53.640 A hundred percent.

00:30:54.340 Okay.

00:30:55.320 It is, to convict, Trump takes 67 votes. There's not going to be 67 votes. There's going to be

00:31:04.600 55 votes to convict him. And I'd say plus or minus two.

00:31:09.320 Okay.

00:31:10.040 So, it could be as high as 57, as low as 53. It ain't getting close to 67.

00:31:15.860 Yeah.

00:31:16.280 And we actually saw a proxy of that. We've had two votes now on the jurisdictional question.

00:31:22.720 The first vote, there were 55 votes on jurisdiction. Actually, the second vote,

00:31:28.280 there were 56. And I think those are proxies for where the final vote is going to be.

00:31:33.960 Well, presumably, if you're one of the 45 senators who said the Senate doesn't have jurisdiction here,

00:31:39.740 can't imagine you're going to vote to convict, right? You're saying the whole trial's a farce.

00:31:43.920 One would certainly think so.

00:31:45.380 Yeah.

00:31:45.540 Um, but, but who knows? I mean, that's why I say plus minus two. I mean, you could have

00:31:50.060 one or two who changed their mind. Uh, you know, you look at the first vote we had was a procedural

00:31:58.180 vote on the jurisdictional question right at the outset that there were 45, the vote yesterday,

00:32:03.020 they were 44. So Bill Cassidy, Republican from Louisiana who sits next to me on the floor.

00:32:08.120 Yeah. Um, he changed his vote. And the reason he changed his vote, he thought the Trump lawyers

00:32:13.960 did terribly. And you know, Bill's kind of an interesting guy. Bill's a doctor. He's listening

00:32:19.360 to the two sides. And he just said, well, gosh, you know, the democratic lawyers did a much better

00:32:23.340 job than, than the Republican lawyers. And, and he said, so I'm going to vote for them.

00:32:27.280 This is something that surprised me the first time we did this, you know, a year ago, which is that it

00:32:32.560 does matter what arguments people are making in the room. You know, these are, these are real people

00:32:37.980 in the room. They're responding in real time. Maybe in this case, it's not going to be enough to

00:32:41.580 change the outcome, but it does, it does matter. It does matter. And it matters probably more for

00:32:48.300 those without legal training and a deep constitutional background. Bill's a very talented doctor. If we

00:32:54.500 were having a couple of people arguing about the right medical procedure to do, I wouldn't know

00:32:59.000 anything. I guess I'd have to depend on whoever presented the best argument. If I were asked to

00:33:03.760 judge how to treat some disease or injury, I'd have to listen to the, like the sides and go,

00:33:10.160 I don't know what that guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about. Um, particularly with

00:33:15.200 those look for, for, for people who have a lot of experience in these issues, frankly, the arguments

00:33:22.420 of the lawyers, you listen to them, but, but I'm spending time studying the text of the constitution,

00:33:29.520 the history, I'm assessing the arguments on my own. Um, and so this is not a debate tournament.

00:33:36.080 You're, you're not filling out a ballot for who, who gave the best speech. You're trying to reach

00:33:40.560 the right conclusion. Right. And so I felt very comfortable with the conclusion, how I voted

00:33:45.720 yesterday, which is no jurisdiction. Although, as I said, not that we don't have the authority,

00:33:51.600 but that we shouldn't exercise jurisdiction. Right. And, and I'm very comfortable that,

00:33:56.300 that on Saturday or whenever we vote, that I'll vote not guilty. And, and I think there will be,

00:34:00.180 the president will be acquitted. I think, uh, one, uh, we're as always over time, but one

00:34:06.660 important mailbag question. But before we do that, I do have to tell you kind of a funny thing that

00:34:10.600 happened at the end. Okay. So we, we are almost completely done. And in fact, Jamie Raskin, the,

00:34:17.160 the lead Democrat house impeachment manager stands up and says, okay, we're done for the day. We can wrap

00:34:22.260 up. And everyone's relieved because they finished a little bit early tonight. They went, uh, they didn't go

00:34:28.160 quite as long as they had told us they would. And as we're getting ready to leave, Mike Lee stands up

00:34:34.100 and, and he raises an objection. So in the course of the democratic house manager's presentation,

00:34:40.420 they talked about on January 6th, right? As the Capitol riot was beginning that president Trump

00:34:49.560 called Mike Lee's cell phone. And he was looking for Tommy Tuberville, the new Senator from Alabama.

00:34:55.760 And apparently the white house had the wrong number. So, so like Trump calls and says, Tommy,

00:35:01.220 and, and as they relayed, Mike said, no, no, it's not Tommy. It's Mike Lee, but here, let me give you

00:35:05.760 Tommy. And so brought the phone over and put Tuberville on the phone with Trump. And so they

00:35:09.520 relay that those events, but, but the democratic house manager also describes some things that he says,

00:35:16.540 Mike Lee said. And I guess this came from some newspaper article about what Mike said contemporaneously

00:35:22.020 at the time. So Mike got up and raised an objection and said, I asked for this to be stricken from the

00:35:27.260 record because I didn't say that it's a lie. It's false. There's no evidence of it. And I asked that

00:35:34.120 it be stricken from the record. Now, this is where, so everyone's kind of confused and not sure. And this

00:35:40.500 is where some of the dynamics you got to understand. Normally the presiding officer would be the chief

00:35:45.640 justice who is prepared to make rulings and has legal training because the chief justice is not

00:35:52.300 there because Donald Trump is not the president today. The presiding officer is Pat Leahy. Now,

00:35:59.640 Pat Leahy is the president pro tem. He's the most senior, most Senator in the majority. Now, by the way,

00:36:06.880 he is also a partisan Democrat who's already said that, that Trump should be convicted. So pause for a

00:36:12.440 moment to think about what kind of fair and impartial judge is that who's a juror in the case and has

00:36:18.520 already stated before it starts that he wants the defendant convicted. Makes the whole thing seem even

00:36:23.460 more ridiculous actually than already does. It is a big top circus. So Leahy is kind of confused and 0.98

00:36:33.100 he's not sure what to do. So the Senate parliamentarian sits right in front of Leahy and look,

00:36:38.340 Pat's not a spring chicken. The president pro tem never is. By definition, they are the most senior

00:36:47.300 Senator in the majority. And so they're typically in their high 80s. Senate parliamentarian, and we've

00:36:53.900 talked about her quite a bit on verdict as well. She hands Leahy a piece of paper that she's written

00:37:02.280 that says, under the agreement for the trial, the House managers are not required to limit their arguments

00:37:09.920 to the record. So the, the, I rule your objection out of order. Now, Mike is like, what are you talking

00:37:18.400 about? I'm not saying that it's not in the record. I'm saying it's false. I'm saying they said something

00:37:21.880 about me that's a total lie and there's no evidence of. And Leahy is just kind of confused.

00:37:27.520 Dazed. And so he reads the same ruling again, which is just the pre-typed piece of paper the

00:37:33.820 parliamentarians handed him. At that point, Mike stands up and says, I appeal the ruling of the

00:37:39.760 chair, which is at any point a Senator can appeal the ruling of the chair and it goes to a vote to

00:37:45.200 the body. And, and Leahy's kind of moving forward. The parliamentarians are like, all right, fine.

00:37:52.120 Ask for the yeas and nays, which is you have to have sufficient senators raise their hand and second it.

00:37:57.100 Yeah. And if there's enough seconds, then you have a roll call vote and everyone votes.

00:38:03.740 And so we all second it and they start the roll call vote. Now Chuck Schumer is looking at this

00:38:10.160 going, wait, oh crap, this is a problem. And it's a problem on a couple of fronts. Number one, 0.98

00:38:16.980 just on the merits, it's a little bit ridiculous that you've got a Senator who you're saying a House

00:38:21.120 member came and said something totally false about me and it should be out of the record.

00:38:25.140 That's pretty messed up. Right. By the way, Joe Manchin, a Democrat stands up and says, well,

00:38:29.580 what was false about it? And so it's chaos on the floor. But Manchin's concerned, like, you know,

00:38:34.760 look, no Senator wants House members to come into proceeding and just say stuff about libel on

00:38:38.880 the record. Right. So on the substance, Schumer recognizes it's a problem. Not only that, if we have

00:38:46.240 a vote, Leahy's going to have to vote. Yeah. How's Pat going to vote on whether to overrule his own

00:38:53.920 ruling? And it really does underscore how asinine it is to have a partisan Democrat presiding over 0.96

00:39:01.100 this impeachment procedure. As the judge. Right. Not only that, if it ends up being a party line vote, 0.97

00:39:07.260 that all the D's vote one way and all the R's vote the other way, that's a 50-50 vote. So maybe they have

00:39:12.780 to call Kamala Harris to get the vice president to break the tie. So it was chaos. And they're

00:39:20.860 just going ahead with the vote. And Schumer, to his credit, and you won't hear me often praise

00:39:25.620 Schumer, but I will say Schumer stepped in. The way a majority leader, like if they don't like

00:39:28.960 what's going on, they stand up and say, I suggest the absence of a quorum, which is sort of magic words

00:39:34.600 that pause everything. It's just like hitting pause. Right. Okay. And the clerk starts calling the roll

00:39:40.380 just to see if there's a quorum. Now, by the way, everyone's in the room. Like everyone knows,

00:39:45.260 yes, there's a quorum. No one disappeared in the main thing. There are a hundred senators in the

00:39:48.260 room. But when you suggest the absence of a quorum, it like freezes everything. Yeah.

00:39:53.320 And so Schumer goes over to the house managers. He's like, guys, this is stupid. Come on. Why are 1.00

00:39:57.840 you doing this? Like, I mean, he's talking to the, to the house Democrats and do you care about this?

00:40:02.280 And they're like, no, we don't care about it. So then he goes to talk to Mike and Mike's mad. I love

00:40:06.360 Mike, but he's emotional. He's like, they said something about me that's false. And I want it out.

00:40:10.380 I understand that. Yeah. And Schumer, to his credit, says, all right, I'll tell you what.

00:40:15.360 He tells the house managers, you withdraw it. And Mike, will you withdraw your objection? Mike

00:40:20.580 says, all right. And so they get up and they have Jamie Raskin, the lead house manager, say,

00:40:24.780 we withdraw it. And so Mike withdraws his objection. So that's how the night ended. And it's funny.

00:40:29.980 Mike was still pissed. I'm like, Mike, you won. Like they surrendered. They withdrew it and took it out.

00:40:35.800 And, and, and Franklin, I was telling one of the democratic senators after I said, look,

00:40:42.420 Schumer was really smart to do that. That was the right thing to do. He's a clever guy,

00:40:46.040 no question. Um, but so that's just a bit of, huh? It was the night, you know, people were kind of,

00:40:54.780 it woke everyone up and startled everyone. Cause it was a bit of drama and chaos that no one knew what

00:40:59.820 would happen. And then it got resolved. And it's a sort of, it's a minor issue. I mean, relatively

00:41:03.820 that some journalists lied and some house impeachment manager lied and Mike Lee was upset

00:41:08.400 about it, but it, it raises all of these major issues about the nature of this impeachment trial.

00:41:14.580 Well, and it, it does. And it also shows, you know, things seem so ordered and structured. It was

00:41:21.000 chaotic. Yeah. Like nobody knew there. So when Mike appealed the ruling of the chair and the clerk

00:41:29.100 starts calling, you know, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Barrasso starts calling the names, you know, Schumer gets

00:41:36.540 up and goes, what was the ruling of the chair? Like we didn't know what we were voting on. Like,

00:41:39.580 how do you vote yes or no? Usually things are more orderly, but it was truly chaotic where no one

00:41:46.420 even knew whether to vote yes or no. Cause we didn't know what the chair had ruled and what we were

00:41:51.820 like, what yes or no means. You know, it, I think it's a good symbol of the, of the entire

00:41:58.100 impeachment trial. Yeah. I also have to say this, this may be the first episode where you have

00:42:02.360 changed my opinion about something from the beginning to the end of it. Uh, so because

00:42:07.860 we've been dealing with these very intricate, sophisticated issues and arguments, I want to

00:42:12.820 end, even though we're way over time, I want to end on what I consider to be a much more important

00:42:16.620 question. You're spending what, eight hours at a clip or more in these, these kind of, uh,

00:42:21.460 long proceedings from Brian. How's the food in the Senate cafeteria?

00:42:26.600 Crappy. So it's actually normally quite good. Um, in normal times we have lunch together. The

00:42:34.900 Republican senators have lunch together Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and the food's quite decent.

00:42:39.800 Thursdays, a different Republican Senator hosts it. And so you bring in and often you'll fly in food

00:42:45.640 from your home state. So I've flown in barbecue and Mexican food and you, you host it and you normally

00:42:50.660 give a goodie bag of treats to your other senators and you'll give, you know, all sorts of stuff.

00:42:55.440 I've given people Shiner Bock. We give each other lots of liquor. It's interesting that, um, I've given

00:43:00.620 salsa and things from Buc-ee's and you kind of, from your state, you get up and bring them stuff.

00:43:08.160 Tuesday and Wednesday, the, the, the Senate food is usually quite good that we eat because of COVID.

00:43:14.500 Um, we're eating all pre-packaged stuff. And so like for lunch today I had, well, and I'm also trying

00:43:24.920 to do kind of keto. I'm trying to avoid carbs. We're all trying to do keto. You know, I, we hear

00:43:30.340 it's supposed to work and it's hard to do. And so I come in and the choices are really like, I got a

00:43:35.440 salad, which I hate salad. I feel like it's the food that your food eats. I know. I, I tell Heidi,

00:43:41.220 all the animals I eat are vegetarian. Um, and then they had like this sort of shrimp salad sandwich

00:43:49.280 that was like packaged. And to be honest, it was almost like what you'd see in like a grocery,

00:43:54.820 like a gas station. And since I'm doing keto, I just scraped this shrimp stuff off the, like didn't

00:44:02.360 eat the bread. So it was, I will be glad when COVID is over and, and meals can return to some

00:44:08.140 semblance of normal. Senator of all the stories that I expected to hear today about this awful,

00:44:14.000 just disgusting impeachment trial. I didn't realize the food would really, it would be as

00:44:19.280 grotesque. It would match in grotesque. So for dinner tonight, cause we did have a dinner break,

00:44:23.960 they had something where you could order some stuff. I actually had a guy on my staff

00:44:27.720 go down to union station and get a cheesesteak with no bread, just cheesesteak on a bed of lettuce.

00:44:35.280 And so just chopped up beef and cheese. And that, that was my dinner, which we went to union station

00:44:39.680 to get. That frankly sounds more exciting. It was good. Than the, than the entire, uh,

00:44:43.920 impeachment trial. Uh, you, you, you really have though. You've really, really explained it to me.

00:44:48.120 Makes me, uh, uh, makes me actually long for this impeachment trial to continue because I want it to

00:44:55.100 stave off whatever kind of crazy legislation the Democrats want to push on us. Well, it's coming and

00:45:00.480 there's going to be a lot to talk about, but, but we did get a chance to do quite a bit of law geek

00:45:04.020 stuff tonight. I know it's well, you always enjoy doing it because you know, all this stuff and I

00:45:09.500 always enjoy it because I don't know any of it. So it's a pretty, pretty helpful to me. Uh, but

00:45:13.940 there'll be, there'll be a whole lot more once this silly season is over. And, uh, that will have

00:45:19.220 probably far greater consequences for the country. We'll have to wait until then.

00:45:22.640 I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:45:34.560 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs Freedom and Security

00:45:39.800 Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations,

00:45:44.940 and candidates across the country. In 2022, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to

00:45:51.260 conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.

00:45:56.240 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - February 12, 2021

Trump on Trial (Again)

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