Trump on Trial (Again)
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Summary
Ted Cruz is joined by a juror in President Trump's impeachment trial to discuss the first day of testimony, and to debate the question of whether or not this is even an impeachment trial at all. Plus, a special guest joins the show to give us the latest on the latest in the case.
Transcript
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The first day of former President Trump's impeachment trial has just come to a close.
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And we are joined here by one of the jurors to help us break it all down.
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I think I've said it before, maybe almost exactly a year ago on the very first episode of this show.
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Is that not word for word, verbatim, exactly how Verdict began?
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It is because, you know, Senator, it would seem that we are just stuck, suspended in midair in this country.
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I have to tell you, when we started this show, it was because the first...
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When we first started this, I had no idea really what was at play in that first impeachment trial.
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And that, to me, seems clear-cut compared to this second sort of impeachment trial.
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I guess the biggest question on people's minds is, is this even an impeachment trial?
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Because obviously Trump is not the president anymore.
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So when we started this last year, I think it was 2.37 in the morning when we started this.
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Does that tell you something about the seriousness of this impeachment trial?
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Look, to be honest, both sides are dialing it in.
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The end result of this is preordained, that this trial, as Shakespeare put it, is full
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Senator, you know, I'm not the most literary guy in the world.
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I thought that was William Faulkner who said that.
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I was reading a tweet from Andrea Mitchell on NBC.
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She seemed to want to make fun of you and attribute that quote to Faulkner.
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And I guess Andrea Mitchell decided that she was going to upbraid me and demonstrate her
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intellectual superiority and better learnedness.
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Um, and, you know, apparently, uh, she, she does not, ironically, I didn't know this.
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She has a degree in English literature, American literature.
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And so, and so Faulkner, she knows, but, but, but apparently Macbeth, she does not.
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I think actually there is something in this exchange that tells us a lot about the whole impeachment
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trial, which was this, this combination, not just of ignorance, but also arrogance to correct
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Well, life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
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And one would think not only ABC, Jennifer Rubin at Washington Post chimed in agreeing with
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It really is kind of amazing that between NBC and the Washington Post, nobody has actually
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I tell you, Senator, if you spend as much time in the media and around journalists as
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Well, and, and, you know, I, I will say I, nothing is better than when Ernest Hemingway
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wrote, is this a dagger I see before me, the handle towards my hand, come let me clutch
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thee, I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
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I said, we could go through the whole literary canon.
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You know, this does though, this issue of ignorance and arrogance, it does bring me back
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to the question of the trial, because I'll, I'll confess to ignorance here.
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Does the Senate have the right to hold the trial?
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Can there be an impeachment trial of an ex-president?
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And we actually addressed those questions yesterday.
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Yesterday we had essentially a pre-trial motion.
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And, and an argument about whether the Senate even has jurisdiction to consider this matter.
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And, and what's at heart in the argument is, is that Donald J. Trump is no longer the
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And so the argument that the Trump legal campaign made is that the Senate doesn't have the jurisdiction
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That jurisdiction only extends to current office holders.
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And once he left the White House, the Senate could no longer have an impeachment trial.
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So this has been my understanding of it, but I, you know, I didn't go to law school and
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The constitutional question is actually very close.
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It's not a question I had examined until, until we were faced with it.
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And, and, and I got to say, as I looked at it, I actually think the better argument
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on the substance and on the merits is that the Senate does have the jurisdiction.
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That being said, I don't believe the jurisdiction is mandatory.
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And let me walk through that because those are some complicated legal concepts.
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Well, and, and I want to point out, generally speaking, you've heard people, it's, it's,
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They'll say either the Senate has no jurisdiction here.
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This is a force of a trial or the Senate not only has jurisdiction, but we have to do it.
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That's our constitutional responsibility to throw Trump in the gulag.
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And, and you, as far as I can tell, this is a unique legal takeoff.
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Although actually Mike Lee, my colleague, he and I are very close to agreement on this.
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Mike is a serious legal scholar, clerk for Justice Sam Alito on the Supreme Court.
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Mike and I have spent many, many hours talking about this issue and his view and mine are
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So if you look at the constitutional text, you can take arguments from the text on, on,
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So the constitution says the house shall have the sole power of impeachment and the Senate
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shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.
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Interestingly, those are the only two places in the constitution you find the word sole power.
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The Senate is entirely in charge of trying impeachment.
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And actually, even on this point, I think it's worth clearing up because, because we use these
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terms in a loose way, Trump has already been impeached.
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He's been acquitted once during the first episodes of verdict.
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And now the question is, will he be acquitted or convicted?
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And this is one of the things most misunderstood just in sort of general parlance.
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But to be impeached, think of it like in the criminal context to be indicted.
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Like if the grand jury indicts you, it means they bring charges against you.
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If you're indicted for running over somebody's dog, it doesn't mean you're convicted.
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And then when you have a trial, if you're convicted is when you're found guilty.
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So the house impeaches, which is to bring the charges, and the Senate conducts the trial.
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Now, there are a couple of textual arguments that were raised as to why former office holders
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One is that another portion of the Constitution refers to the president rather than a president.
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And Donald J. Trump right now is not the president.
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There is only one the president at any moment in history today.
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That's a textual argument that is used to say, well, he's not the president, so he's not
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What that provision actually says, though, is when the president is impeached, the chief
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Because Trump isn't the president, the chief justice is not presiding.
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There is another provision that says that when the president is impeached and convicted,
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If he can't be removed, that means you can't remove an ex-officeholder.
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On the flip side, as we said, he's not the president.
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If you look at the history, as you examine it, at the time the Constitution was written,
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it turns out the question of what's called late impeachment was actually a topic of discussion.
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If you look to British common law and the framers were very familiar with British common
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And often when you're interpreting U.S. constitutional provisions, you look to where did it come from
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Because many of the concepts the framers took from British law.
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And there were two very notable British impeachments.
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One was in 1725, and that was Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, who was impeached for public corruption.
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I was, you know, I talked about this all the time.
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You know, is there a day you don't talk about the Macclesfield impeachment?
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Well, Macclesfield was impeached after he left office.
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A second impeachment was the impeachment of Warren Hastings.
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Now, Warren Hastings was the governor general of India.
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Interestingly enough, his impeachment began in 1787, so literally while the framers were
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And in the debates of the Constitution, they discuss the impeachment of Warren Hastings.
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Now, Hastings, likewise, was no longer the governor general, and yet nonetheless he was impeached.
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And by the way, do you know who led the charge to impeach Hastings?
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A great, considered the founder of modern conservative philosophy.
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Very, it's actually a very important context for how these framers are thinking about things.
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So they're literally talking about, at the Constitutional Convention, the impeachment of
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And by the way, right after the founding, 1806, in Great Britain, Lord Melville was impeached as
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So you've got a fair amount of history with British common law, and then you look at U.S.
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The first impeachment we have was of Senator Blunt of Tennessee.
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He was actually impeached because he tried to essentially sell Florida and Louisiana away
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This is like when someone says, you know, if you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn
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So there was a big debate during the Blunt impeachment.
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The Senate expelled him because he was a senator.
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And then there was a big debate on jurisdiction.
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One, that the Senate couldn't impeach him because he was a senator and that impeachment didn't apply
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It only applied to members of the executive branch or the judicial branch.
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And then secondly, an argument that was given was he couldn't be impeached because he was
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Rather, the Senate ended up voting by a vote of 14 to 11 that the Senate did not have jurisdiction
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But the predominant arguments that were raised was that he was a senator.
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And so it was a comment about what kind of job he had rather than being a former office
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Now, Belknap resigned, was crooked, was caught in corruption, was impeached.
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And the Senate actually had two weeks of debate over whether a former office holder could be
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impeached because Belknap argued, I'm out of office.
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And the Senate ended up voting 37 to 29 in favor of jurisdiction, in favor of saying
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So as I look at this, the textual language of the Constitution, there's some ambiguity.
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But the grant of power to the Senate is really broad.
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The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.
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Given the history of British common law and American history, I think the better constitutional
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argument is, yes, you can try a former office holder.
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Imagine we discovered, we found evidence that a former president had sold American nuclear
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secrets to the Chinese government, that they were guilty of treason and bribery, both.
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And by the way, treason and bribery are both mentioned explicitly in the Constitution as
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I think in those circumstances, the House would conclude overwhelmingly it had jurisdiction
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The Senate would conclude overwhelmingly it had jurisdiction to try them, even though they
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So I concluded, I wrote an op-ed last night laying out these arguments as to why I think
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the right constitutional argument, and it's close, but I think the right argument is, yes,
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we have jurisdiction over a former office holder.
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I think you've actually managed to change my mind on this in this discussion, because
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I was leaning very much text of the Constitution, certainly made it seem to me as though Senate
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.
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And the reason for that is, generally speaking, there are two kinds of jurisdiction.
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Mandatory jurisdiction and discretionary jurisdiction.
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Mandatory jurisdiction means you must take the case.
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If you have the authority to take it, you must take the case, and you have no choice.
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Discretionary jurisdiction is you have the authority to take the case, but you can choose
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And the easiest example is the U.S. Supreme Court.
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The vast majority of the U.S. Supreme Court's docket is discretionary jurisdiction.
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We heard a lot about this during the election, right?
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In any given year, the Supreme Court will get about 8,000 what are called petitions for
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certiorari, which are requests for the court to exercise its discretionary jurisdiction
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As I look at the Constitution, there's nothing in the Constitution that says we have mandatory
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It says the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.
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And so what I argued to my colleagues, and actually at lunch today, I made this argument
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to all of my colleagues that for what it's worth, here's my thinking, that in this case,
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And the reasons we shouldn't take it up are, number one, the House had zero due process.
00:16:09.200
It seems as though they're sort of changing their arguments.
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Maybe we'll get into that a little bit on just what happened today.
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But yeah, it just, it seems, it seemed like a shallow process in the House.
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Look, this precedent, you know, this has also been called a snap impeachment, where they just
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vote out an impeachment because we hate the guy.
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I don't think the Senate has any obligation if the House engages in a sham proceeding
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I think we are perfectly justified in saying we are declining to exercise jurisdiction over
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this because it doesn't meet the threshold of a credible, real, serious impeachment.
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Secondly, on the merits, I think there is no serious argument that this meets the legal threshold
00:16:58.040
There's only one count that the House alleges, which is incitement to insurrection, incitement
00:17:11.840
And, you know, today, so we went through eight hours of, of the House managers' arguments and
00:17:19.260
Let me start by saying that they, look, Democrats have a lot of trial lawyers and they had some
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trial lawyers today that were good storytellers who were emotional.
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I mean, they, they got up, they walked through, they were well organized and it was, we watched
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They seem to rely a lot on these very charged videos that drive, evoke a lot of emotions.
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I mean, there were a lot of moments in the Senate where you could hear a pin drop because
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It's horrific seeing violent criminals and terrorists assaulting, beating police officers,
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loudly proclaiming their desire to carry out murder and, and succeeding in murdering one
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And I think all of the country who watched today was horrified at what happened.
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And, and that, that this was a grotesque terrorist attack carried out by violent criminals who
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should be fully prosecuted and spend a long, long time in jail, I think is unequivocal.
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But, but the emotional effect of the videos and even the stories that these impeachment
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managers were saying, it's not the same thing as an argument that the president committed
00:18:42.740
Well, and 90 plus percent of the time of the house managers today was on how horrific the
00:18:50.720
And if we were impeaching, you know, the guy with a Viking horns that were beating people
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But at the end of the day, incitement, the standard for incitement is, is it has to be a
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And if you look at what the president said, uh, the president and, and listen, the president's
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I wish some of the things he says, some of the things he tweeted, I wish he didn't say
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But if you look at what he actually said at the speech on January 6th, the Democrats are
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making a big deal of, well, he kept saying fight, you need to fight like hell.
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Let me tell you, if we take every person who has ever said, you got to fight, you got to
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fight like hell, you got to win, we got to take our country back.
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You would literally be prosecuting every single political candidate in America for incitement.
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Like I guarantee you of, of all the, all 50 democratic senators, every single one.
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And if you've ever given a stump speech, if you ran for seventh grade class president,
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I'm willing, I'm willing to bet, Michael, you stood up and said, we got to fight.
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Because it, it's effective political rhetoric and everybody does.
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It, it, it, it is commonplace language to say fight.
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And in this case, president Trump said peacefully, explicitly said peacefully.
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And where the house manager's argument falls apart is, is whatever standard, they haven't
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Maybe they'll do that tomorrow, but they haven't even tried to say, this is how you distinguish
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ordinary political speech or even hot rhetoric.
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I mean, uh, from truly criminal incitement, any standard they would articulate right after
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this trial, we better start moving forward against Nancy Pelosi.
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Look, you look at, uh, Nancy Pelosi called police officers Nazis.
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All these Democrats are defending police officers given a year of vilifying cops and saying abolish
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the police and, uh, ACAB, their, their motto, all cops are bastards is what that stands
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And these are now the defenders of law enforcement.
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I mean, it, you know, if God were, were, were still in the business of throwing lightning
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bolts, some Democrats might've been struck down today.
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You look at, um, Chuck Schumer who went to the steps of the Supreme court, called out two
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Supreme court justices by name and says, you have unleashed the whirlwind and you will
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Now look that if what Trump said is incitement, what Schumer said is incitement.
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Well, Maxine Waters said, when you see Republicans in public go up, get in their face, start a
00:22:01.540
And I'll tell you, Kamala Harris, um, who, who the media is right now in the midst of
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beatifying, um, Kamala Harris, when we had violent riots and we had for a year riots across this
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country, cities being burned, mostly peaceful, police cars, CNN apologizing for him like crazy
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police cars being firebombed, police officers being murdered.
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And these Democrats who are now high and mighty were apologizing for celebrating, encouraging Kamala
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Harris raised bail money to bail out, not the peaceful protesters, the violent criminals.
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So it was literally after they had committed acts of violence, she was raising money to
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Now the truthful matter, the truthful assessment of it is none of this is incitement.
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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
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Cause I don't think any Republicans out there are really saying we need to kick Cory Booker
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out of the Senate because you know, he said something one time, but they're actually believe
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in free speech, even dumb speech. You have a right, right to it.
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But if we're going to take this unprecedented action, impeach a former president, now a private
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citizen in Florida for this language where he said, maybe it was overblown at times, but he did
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say at the moment, be peaceful, don't be violent. If we're going to do that, why on earth are we
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letting Nancy Pelosi off the hook, Hillary Clinton, Maxine Wars, all these people?
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Because this is not a legal argument. It's not a constitutional argument and it's not a principled
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argument. There's a reason why 90% of what they did today was emotional. It was just designed
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to have you go, Oh my God, this was horrible. And it was horrible. It was a terrorist attack.
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Now there is a difference, which is that you and I, and most people on the right, unequivocally
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,
00:24:20.980
I'd execute for murdering a police officer. As far as I'm concerned, if that's deliberate
00:24:26.400
and not, maybe the facts come out that they were somehow accidental, in which case it wouldn't
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fall under capital punishment. You'd instead prosecute them and put them away for a long
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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
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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,
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
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,
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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.
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I think it's quite likely Trump's lawyers will not take the whole 16 hours. I think
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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
00:28:53.800
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-
00:30:55.320
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.
00:31:10.040
So, it could be as high as 57, as low as 53. It ain't getting close to 67.
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.
00:31:45.540
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
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,
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
00:39:01.100
this impeachment procedure. As the judge. Right. Not only that, if it ends up being a party line vote,
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
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.