January 4, 2018 • 51 mins
Impeachment is does not necessarily mean a president is removed from office. But it could. It's a fascinating procedure that has been crafted and shaped over the years because of a lack of detail in its initial definition. Listen in today to learn all about the weird and wacky process of impeachment.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and
this is business Baby Stuff you Should Know on Impeachment. Yeah, guilty. Uh,
(00:30):
how how are you doing? First? Let's get the pleasant
treats out of the way. I'm doing well. And I
want to give a shout out at the head here
because just yesterday, in real time, I went over to
my in law's house for my grandmother in law's seven birthday.
Happy Birthday, Mary, Happy Birthday Mary. The lead general the
(00:52):
Stuff you Should Army, I don't know you're not on Facebook.
So every year I put a happy Birthday on the
Stuff you Should Know page and have every and chime
in from where they are because she literally sits there
and reads through like six comments from all over the
world and it is like one of the best things
that's real. It's really neat. So anyway, we're over there
(01:13):
in my my father in law, Steve, who is the
best dude, comes up to me and says, uh, how
about a show on impeachment? Yeah? And he you know,
he didn't recommend he knows better. He doesn't recommend shows topics,
(01:34):
and he went about one on impeachment. Went wow, Steve,
that's a great idea and said it is. Why haven't
we done that yet? Because it's uh relevant, as we
will see at the end of our show today, we'll
talk about kind of what's going on in today's terms.
And it's just a really weird, vaguely written, as it
(01:54):
turns out, strange act American st um. I'm'm not exactly
sure how they do it in other countries, but the
way we do it is weird. I think it's just
about as weird in other countries because it was adopted
either from the British or from the Americans, and we
adopted it from the British. Yeah, it seems to have
(02:16):
like been understood in Great Britain, but the framers of
the Constitution didn't bother to ask what anybody meant. They
just kind of borrowed it. So anyway, big shout out
to Steve. Alright, Steve, good idea for this idea. It's
the summer of Steve. It's winter, although he's from Ohio,
(02:37):
but now he's in Georgia, so it is like for
him for I'm sure. Alright, So Chuck, let's get down
to this. Let's get down to impeachment. Are we going
on the way back machine? Run off the bad here?
Do you want to go back to eight eight? You
want to start there? Well, you know I do. Okay,
let's get in the way back machine then, because you
know I loved me the Spring of eighteen sixty eight.
(02:58):
It was a good one. That's funny you say that.
There's this really great short story from the fifties or sixties.
I think it's it's like a horror short story called
the Vintage Season. It's about like these future travelers who,
like in in the future, you can travel through time
and find like the perfect spring or the perfect whatever.
It's it's pretty good. Check it out. Okay, all right,
(03:19):
well now let's get in the way back machine. Alright, okay,
so remember we're invisible. We can do anything. I know.
I just I just booped Edmond Ross on the nose. Yeah,
I just took off my shoes and everyone's like, what's
(03:40):
that on my nose? And what's that in my nose? Right,
So there's this dude, that dude you just popped on
the nose Edmund Ross he's a senator actually, uh, and
he's kind of new his what is this? This is
May of eight, just the previous July. He was appointed
to his seat, um as the senator or the junior
(04:00):
Senator of Kansas. He had like some experience in newspapers
and that was his his jam, no real political experience.
And now all of the entire Senate is wondering, what
is this guy going to do? Um. There, we're right
in the middle of an impeachment trial, the actually the
impeachment hearing of President Andrew Johnson, who is the successor
(04:25):
of Abraham Lincoln. Right, that's right. And so by December,
after the assassination of Lincoln in April of sixty five, UM,
his own party was turning against him and saying, hey,
we want to get this guy out of here. So
(04:45):
let's we we haven't tried this impeachment thing on a
president yet, and we're kind of eager to. Yeah. And
you can make the case that he was kind of
set up the his own party to turning on totally
set up. But the but the Republicans hated him out
of the gate. The Republicans were the ones who were
pushing reconstruction and really wanted the South to pay for
(05:06):
succeeding and for the Civil War. UM and Johnson was
from Tennessee and wasn't having that. He vetoed a bill
that would have given like basic basic civil rights to
black Americans. He was against the Fourteenth Amendment. He decided
it should be up to the states to figure out
how they wanted to handle the post slavery laws, regardless
(05:28):
of what that what effect that had on on the
former slaves. So it wasn't very well liked by the
abolitionist Republicans, and they wanted to get rid of them.
And the way that they did was to set up
this new law which was patently unconstitutional, and it was
called the what was it called the you can't fire
(05:49):
that dude law? Why didn't Yeah, that's that's basically the
gist of it. Um. The Tenure Act, I believe, is
the Tenure of Office Act. So you know, when when
president comes in and they appoint like cabinet members or
you know, a Supreme Court judge or something. They can
pick the person, but the Senate has to either confirm
them or say no, not this one. Right, So the
(06:13):
Senate has confirmation powers and the President's ability to hire.
The Constitution even says it in there. The Constitution doesn't
say anything about firing those appointees. And so it had
long been that the president could fire whoever of their
appointees he wanted to write. So what the what the
radical Republicans did was pass a bill that said, you,
(06:36):
if you hire somebody, if you appoint somebody, we get
to confirm them. If you try to remove somebody, we
you we have to approve that as well. And again
it was just it just flew in the face of
the Constitution as we know it. And um, the right away,
Andrew Johnson fired his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, and um,
(06:57):
he was impeached right out, right out of the gate.
That reminds me. That reminds me of when earlier this
year when Jared Kushner was taking his first big tour
of the White House after the election. Remember when he
like met all the Obama employees and was like, oh, so, like,
how many of these people are gonna be staying on?
(07:17):
And they're like, nobody, this wasn't a corporate takeover. You
realize it's not how government works. He's like, oh yeah, sure,
well yeah, no, I didn't hear about that. It was
pretty funny, like like he just bought a company. He's like,
how many people are gonna be staying around? Oh yeah?
(07:39):
So um so now so, now Andrew Johnson is impeached.
He's he's broken a law that Congress had just passed,
and they've they've impeached him. So what's going on. Well,
here's the deal. At the time, they and you know,
it's kind of like this now to a certain degree,
but everybody knew how everyone was going to vote ahead
(07:59):
of time, um, except for him. So basically Ross right, Yeah,
basically everybody knew the outcome what the outcome was going
to be, except for Ross, meaning that he was the
deciding vote. Like it was that slim of a margin,
and so that's why he was so nervous. He was
he was just sitting there, apparently, just shredding this paper
(08:20):
up as they were going around the room, and everyone's
saying guilty or not guilty, because you need two thirds
of the Senate vote or a supermajority to to enact
this impeachment. So he was just sitting there and no
one knew what was gonna happen. He stood up, he
said he thought later on that he were facing death
and he said not guilty, and everyone side and this
(08:45):
article points out they don't know if it was a
side of relief or upset, probably both, depending on which
side of the aisle you're on. Yeah, the the whole
things recounted really well in this book called Impeached by
the historian David oh Stewart, um, which I think where
this guy got this, but he, um, he does a
(09:05):
good job like getting to the heart of the matter,
which was this guy Emmon Ross was from that moment
on celebrated as this hero, this constitutional hero, like he
stood up and said, you know what, I'm not going
to let the Constitution be railroaded because you guys don't
like Andrew Johnson. And he's been kind of honored as
(09:26):
that since then. I've read it a couple of articles
that are like, mm, actually he was just looking out
for himself. Johnson was his benefactor and um, he had
basically appointed him, and uh, he had a lot of
favoritism with him, and this new guy who would have
come in, I think Benjamin Ward would not have carried
on the same thing. But regardless, if you are a constitutionalist,
(09:49):
this guy is your hero. Because he did save the
constitution with that one vote. So what that what what
took place was an impeachment proceeding, and that one was
awfully close. That was the first impeachment proceeding of the
US president, but that would not be the last. There's
been three more or two more presidents, three total, yes,
(10:11):
that have have faced down the impeachment gun. Uh. And
there have been varying results. But as yet there's never
been a president that was successfully convicted once they've been impeached,
because impeachment is not convictions. A couple of different things.
You want to take a break and then get into it, Yeah,
because Uh, I don't want to confuse people right off
(10:32):
the bat here any more than we need to. I
think it's a little late for that. So we'll go
gather our thoughts. Take a little podcaster potty break. Be
back right after this. If you want to know, luck
just to chuck all right. Should we talk about French
(11:09):
and Latin real quick? Yes, because the roots of words
are always fun to talk about. The French word impatia
means to prevent, related to the English word impede, and
both originally derived from the Latin tern impedical man, your
friends is just so romantic, and that means to fedter.
(11:31):
So basically what impeachment root wise means is to put
a stop to movement of something. In this case, the
uh not always a president, as we'll see. Um any
um is it any elected official, any federal civil civil
officers what they finally landed on. But yeah, like a
(11:53):
federal official, somebody who is appointed by the president, the president,
the vice president, um, judges typically, but not senators or
congress people. They can just be run out of town
on a on a bail of Hey, there's the yeah.
They basically yeah, man, w you see that bail of
(12:13):
hay coming and you know that it tolls for the
you know the tars right behind it. That's a bad
day for you. Um alright, So the origins of impeachment
though pre United States. UM, so we're talking British legal
history here. There's a dude named T. F. T. Plunkett Plucknet. Interesting,
(12:34):
m hmm Plucknett. Uh he's in his Storian I guess so, uh,
I could have sworn it was Plunkett. So T. F. T.
Plucknett says that um fourteenth century Parliament was the first
time impeachment came about. And during that time there were
a couple of different cases over like an eleven year
(12:56):
period that had a pretty big shift from one to
the next that we kind of frame how impeachment works. Right.
So at the time, back then in the fourteenth century,
right the the king could appoint. They were all manner
of like positions that the king could appoint, and once
you were appointed by the king, that was it. You
only answered to the king. You could do anything you wanted,
(13:19):
and as long as you had the king's favor, there
was nothing anyone could do. So UM at one point,
and I'm not sure how they took it upon themselves,
but this article says that it grew out of a
trial of Roger Mortimer, who was convicted in um executed
for arranging the murder of King Edward the second, and
(13:40):
then a Chief Justice Willoughby, who was accused of corruption
and tried UM. These two guys were like high appointed
officials and they were removed from office, and the way
that they were removed was basically the parliament got involved.
So this idea of impeaching people grew out of the
(14:01):
notion that wait a minute, Parliament and specifically the House
of Commons, which is, if you take Parliament and Congress
in the United States, the House of Lords is like
the Senate, and the House of Commons is like the
House of Representatives, right. Um, the House of Commons were
the ones who would take it upon themselves to say
(14:21):
this person is bad and we're going to get rid
of them. We're going to act as their jury and
try them and remove them from their appointed position. And king,
there's nothing you can do about it, because we're the
ones who hold the purse strings, really, so you better
go along with this. And this idea of impeaching was huge.
It was revolutionary in Great Britain, and it was equally
(14:43):
revolutionary in in the founding of the United States too,
because if you'll remember, the United States was founded at
a time where Americans were very very wary of kings
pushing them around. And in the Constitution as this role,
this office of the Press that did see which is
a very strong executive ruler a king almost um. And
(15:05):
there's a legal scholar, Cass Sunstein, who wrote this great
article about all this about impeachment, and he says a
lot of historians agree that the Constitution probably wouldn't have
been ratified if these few words about impeachment hadn't been
added into the Constitution to give Americans the power to
remove a corrupt president from office. Yeah, I mean they
(15:29):
it was almost I mean, it ended up being very important,
but it was almost an afterthought and how they went
about it because up front they weren't saying, hey, we
need to really like make sure we include this impeachment
thing in here. They're worried about framing the US Constitution.
And then at the end Ben Franklin very famously said, hey,
you know, without impeachment, you know what, you know what,
(15:50):
the only other thing we can do is is, uh,
if we get a bad president is shoot him in
the head. And they went, oh, well that won't do
bully bully to that, So maybe we should we should
write something down. I know, we're all tired. We've been
working on this document for minutes. They had fatigue, and
(16:11):
they so they ended up saying over what hundred and
eighty words? I think it was actually less than I
don't know, really I came up with that. Yeah, alright,
well seven sentences. Now it's even less than that, really, Yeah,
good lord, I kind of four run on sentences two
of which included Colon's but that I mean, it's a sentence,
(16:33):
four sentences in a hundred and three words, says microsoft word.
Really Yeah, well they didn't have microsoft word back then,
so alright, So regardless of how long it was, it
was short, and it was here's the thing it was.
It was written in a very vague language, which ended
up being very troublesome because they weren't quite sure. I
(16:57):
think they didn't want to hem themselves in too much,
is my feeling on exactly what it would take to
to start this process. Like, uh so, initially they called it, uh,
it was it. George Mason called it um mal mal
administration in other words, just being a bad president. Yeah,
(17:20):
and they took that out. There was a couple of
reasons why they said, no, this is a little it's
a little vague. But later constitutional scholars have interpreted the
fact that it was suggested and removed that the framers
of the Constitution didn't consider not being a very good
president as a reason to be removed from office. James
Imagine at the very least, said, this is just really
(17:43):
unclear as to what this couldn't even mean. Sure, so
maladministration comes out they hit upon and I'm not sure
if they hit upon it right out of the gate
or if it came later, but they hit upon bribery
and treason, which there's no issues with that. Everyone knows
what bribery is, everyone knows what treason is. It's pretty clear.
But they they're still like her saying no, this isn't
(18:05):
it's still not quite there. James Mason spoke up again.
He said, you can really screw with the democracy of
America even without taking bribes, even without committing a statutory
treason his act. So maybe we need to add something.
So that's when he came up with mal administration and said, no, no,
it's stupid. But then they came up with something else. Yeah,
(18:26):
he finally said, because again they didn't want to be
hinderen too much, but they also didn't want to be
so specific with just bribery and treason that that was
the only thing that you could use uh impeachment for.
So he finally said, alright, good god, it's late. What
about high crimes and misdemeanors and everyone, yeah, that's great. Well,
(18:48):
no one even knows what it means. It will be perfect.
What's funny is no one. No one now knows what
it means, but apparently it was quite clear what it
meant at the time. Yeah, it's supposedly high crime. Is.
It doesn't mean like, oh my god, that's that's such
a huge crime crime right, Yeah, they did grow hemp
(19:10):
by the way. Um, but the high crime or a
high misdemeanor is it's a type of crime that can
only be committed by a high person a k a.
An elected or federal official. That's it's still just a
crime or a misdemeanor. Like I think it's still vague,
so okay, So later later scholars have interpret high crimes
(19:33):
and misdemeanors. I mean, it's a it's a crime or
a misdemeanor that is carried out and can only be
carried out by somebody in an elected position. So it's
a betrayal of the public trust that an elected or
federal official is given. Okay, and that the crimes part
that throws people off. A high crime can be Um,
(19:55):
it doesn't have to be an actual crime, Okay, So
you can be impeached for a high crime that, if
you go and read the US Code, is not actually
a federal crime. You're not breaking the law, but you
could still be impeached for it even though it's not
an actual crime. And then conversely, an actual crime isn't
necessarily an impeachable offense. That what the framers were trying
(20:16):
to get at here was that the the president or
the vice president, whoever was being impeached, had betrayed the
public trust, had used their elected position, their high position,
in a way that was that rendered them unfit to
serve any longer. They could not be trusted any longer.
They had proven themselves a alleged a terrible person, and
(20:38):
had had discharged their duties as president in a in
a mallow malodorous way, said the guy who shoes her
off in Congress. That cleared the room man pretty quick.
It's like Elizabeth Warren taking the taking to the podium.
(21:00):
When she takes her shoes off, people clear out of there.
She's had like onions for lunch, that lady. You'll just
the whole onion raw? Have you ever seen it? It's amazing.
Where did I see that recently? A whole onion raw?
It's like a movie or something. Oh, I know what
it was. The movie that was the kid was hungover
(21:22):
and the parent comes in the next morning and they're
like here, like, eat this onion, trust me, And the
kid starts to eat the onion and they're like, just kidding.
I can't remember what movie it was. Back to the
Future too, Yeah, that was it, when Marty Marty's Hangover.
That was the full name Back the Future to Marty's
Hangover colon the onion. Um. So here's the deal though
(21:48):
with it's one of two things though, when it comes
to impeachment. It's either literally a crime, but it doesn't
have to be. And if it's not a crime literally,
then it's probably something political going on in that it is.
They feel that it is subverting the office of the president. Right,
(22:09):
that's the general interpretation. But again I mean like they
didn't say high crimes and demeanor or high crimes and
misdemeanors asterisks, right and then define that. So it's open
to interpretation and it still is today, which is why
unless you are a president or a vice president have
been actually caught, um, accepting bribes or committing treason, there's
(22:33):
a lot of wiggle room for you to get out
of this. Yeah, an impeachment doesn't send you to jail,
like you can then be tried for treason and that
would continue to jail. Yeah, it's specifically says in the
Constitution that this is strictly to remove the person from office,
possibly to prevent them from ever holding federal office again.
But that do you have to leave it to the
(22:55):
regular courts to um to try and punish them. If
it's an rual crime separately, that's different. But it's weird
because the impeachment processes will see is very much like
a uh trial, a kangaroo court trial. Basically, well, let's
go and talk about it, okay, So if you're impeached,
(23:17):
if you're a president and you do something that enough
people in the House of Representatives find unsavory, you may
find yourself facing impeachment. Usually that means the people in
the House of Representatives are representatives are in a different
political party than your own. Usually, yes, you would have
to be pretty bad for your own party to be
(23:38):
the ones who drew up the articles of impeachment to start, right,
So with the articles of impeachment, it can be introduced.
Typically these days, from what I understand, there's a judiciary
Judiciary committee in the House, and they will be responsible
for drumming up the articles of impeachment and then introducing
them to the House as a whole. But in individual
(24:01):
representative can come up with articles of impeachment himself for
herself and introduce it on the House flora to be
voted one way or another, which just happened actually at
the beginning of December. Um as a loan representative, Al
King I think from Texas introduced articles of impeachment and
it got voted down. So you can do it yourself.
(24:22):
Is just a just a loan dude or DoD s um.
But normally it's the Judiciary Committee, I think, because the
parties tend to try to keep a strangle hold on
stuff like that. And like even with this case, the
Democrats were like easy, easy, ol, like just settle down
where we're going to get there, but Al was like
I hate him so much too early, Al stand down,
(24:45):
so as Al stalks off. But the process continues apparently
under more normal circumstances. But he was a great example
that any any representative can introduce articles of impeachment, and
an article of impeachment Chuck is like presidents who have
been impeached have had I believe Johnson too, but definitely
Nixon and Clinton, UM and now Trump. He wasn't impeached,
(25:10):
but he's had articles of impeachment brought up against him,
which is a significant in and of itself, because what
it's saying is we are accusing this president of this crime,
and each crime or each betrayal of office, whatever you
want to call it, each high crime and misdemeanor or
each actual crime, it gets its own article of impeachment.
So very frequently and president will be impeached with multiple
(25:33):
articles of impeachment and the House is forced to vote
on each one. So so if you if you have
like five, that means there's five chances that that president
can be impeached depending on the evidence. And so each impeachment,
each article of impeachment is going to say, this is
what the president did. Here's all the evidence that backs
up us saying this, Um and House, what do you think?
(25:56):
Then the House will vote on it. That was Al Green,
by the way, not now King, his legendary soul singer,
Al Green. It was Al Green. It wasn't Al King.
His name is Al Green, Yeah, but it wasn't legendary
soul singer. Right. Um, So if the vote gets the majority,
then the president is officially impeached to that point, um,
(26:17):
which and it's just a simple majority, yeah, in the House,
and that means that basically, that means it's a it's
like a criminal indictment, um if we're gonna be comparing
it to like, you know, the civilian legal standard. So
you're officially accused of this wrongdoing, which could mean you
could be removed from office officially if the House is
voted with a simple majority. But it's not over because
(26:41):
then what happens is it moves over to the Senate.
And at that point that's where you need the two
thirds majority another to finish the prosecution. And here's the
thing is, they didn't, like I said, it was a
very kind of short um insert as far as how
to go about this. So there there aren't any like
(27:01):
hard and fast rules. So whenever this has happened, they're
kind of just like, all right, how do you want
to do this? Um, We're not gonna have prosecutors. We're
gonna have what we call managers, which is a weird
word for sure, but they're gonna act as prosecutors and
they're gonna be called to argue the case before the Senate.
And these are members of the House who are managing
(27:22):
the impeachment proceedings in the Senate on behalf of the House,
because the House has said, we the House, I think
this president should be removed, and now we're gonna send
some of our members to argue this case. Yes, and
the Senate is essentially the jury at this point in
the proceedings, right, But they're the jury, and they're also
the ones who are making up the rules. They're in
charge of that as well, which is very strange. It
(27:43):
is you want to hear something kind of fun. But
my uncle was a manager for Clinton's impeachment trial. No
Bob Bars your uncle. No, not Bob Barr. There there
are several managers. My uncle ed Bryan really yeah, talk
of before he was Republican congressman from Tennessee and he
(28:03):
was one of the managers because he was an attorney
and a former Army judge advocate general and judge Japoka general.
Is that what he was jack? Was he a jack?
But that's what it stands for. I can't remember now,
maybe I'm just thinking to the TV show. But he
held the legal position in the Army, uh and then
(28:25):
was well the Navy. I think are the Jags right? Oh,
I don't know. He was in the army though, okay,
but he was one of the managers in the in
the Clinton impeachment that is fascinating trial. And he and
I gotta say, like Uncle Ed and I are are
politically divergent. But he's a good dude and an honest,
like kind man. I can say that for sure. Uh
(28:49):
So I was always proud of him as a person,
even though he didn't like see I politically, but he was, Um,
he's such a good guy that Monica Lewinsky requested him
personally to depose her because he was just regarded as
like one of the good guys and one of the
like fair like decent humans. So he was the guy
who deposed Monica Lewinsky for the Clinton impeachment trial. My
(29:11):
father's brother. He needs a T shirt that says that man, right,
that's crazy and that wouldn't it wow? So how does
he feel about it? Because most, um, I shouldn't say most,
A significant number of legal scholars and historians look back
at that and the Andrew Johnson won and say those
(29:32):
impeachment proceedings never should have happened, never should have passed.
The House and that they were partisan proceedings. Yeah, I
don't know. You know, we're not super in touch anymore.
But now that I'm older, I would love to pick
his brain a little bit about this. Uh, and I'm
sure he would spill it, you know, conference me in Okay,
I like the next Christmas, I'll be like, yeah, uncle, Lettie,
(29:53):
just um, hold on a minute, I'm just gonna put
this phone down next to you, and don't pay attention
to that picture of Josh his avatar. I'll be like,
did you give my T shirt I sent you? Ah? Yeah,
pretty interesting, so I know. Right. So, at any rate,
the managers are they're arguing the case before the Senate,
who acts as jury that are also making up the
(30:14):
rules as they go. And uh, two thirds, like we
said a couple of times, you need that two thirds
Senate vote. And then at that point, if two thirds
vote guilty, then that's it man, the president you're done. Yeah,
and then the vice president takes over and um, that's that.
You probably can't hold a federal office again after that either,
(30:37):
although I don't think it's automatic. Right, So let's should
we take a break. Yeah, all right, let's take a
break and we'll talk about We've already talked about Johnson.
We'll talk a little bit more about Mr. Bill Clinton
and President Richard Milhouse Nixon. Right it for this If
you want to know Luck, just to Chuck, Okay, Chuck. Yes. So,
(31:22):
like you said, we talked about Johnson, he got off
by one vote. Man, that must have been so tense. Um.
And then up next was so president wise. We'll find
that there are plenty of other people who've been impeached,
but in the United States, president wise, the next president
was Richard Millhouse Nixon. Was a long break in between. Yeah,
over a hundred years, like a hundred and four years,
(31:45):
I think something like that. So Nixon is getting his
own episode. Were you're doing a Watergate episode hopefully in
the not too distant future. Such a fascinating case. So um. Well,
but the whole, the whole premise of what Nixon was
(32:05):
eventually moved out of office for what. He didn't actually
get impeached. He resigned, but he probably would have been
removed from office. He probably would have been impeached, He
probably would have been convicted, and he would have been removed.
But he didn't give him the satisfaction he resigned. But
he he went and this was just in a few weeks.
He won the election by an enormous margin. Um. The
(32:29):
electoral college vote was five twenty Nixon seventeen, McGovern seventeen,
five to seventeen. That's what that's the landslide that he
won re election with. And within a few weeks he
was he was out of office. And it was all
because of that Watergate break in. And it wasn't even
necessarily the break in, which was bad enough that like
(32:50):
some operatives from the White House broke into Democratic headquarters
in the Watergate hotel and we're caught trying to replace
the phone tap that they had on the phone um
and it turned out that it was traced back to
the to the White House. The president probably had involvement.
That's bad enough, but the cover up is what ultimately
(33:12):
led to Nixon being railroaded out of out of the
White House. Yeah, for sure, But like you said, the
writing was on the wall, and he said, well, you
know what, I quit, I resign, And everyone went, oh, man,
I know, we really wanted to impeach you. We brought
the bail of Hay and everything. I mean, I saw
all the presidents men again the other day for the
(33:33):
first Simon so great, so um so Nixon was He's
a pretty pretty instructive example as well. Like he had
multiple articles of impeachment against him. One was tax evasion
when he was president he failed to pay like four
grand and taxes, which is like two point six million today,
which that's a substantial amount of money. Plus he was
(33:57):
president when he failed to pay those taxes, so crazy.
He didn't get he again, he was never here. They
didn't get to the point where they voted on the
articles of impeachment. But that was one against the obstructing
justice was one. Using the office to um obstruct justice
was a big one. He had like a hand pick
c I a task force um that was trying to
(34:18):
keep the FBI from investigating Watergate. So he had a
lot of different articles of impeachment against him, and surely
one of them would have stuck and he would have
been removed. But then after Nixon that was two up
comes Clinton about twenty I think twenty six years later,
wasn't it. M M. I think yeah, okay, well depends
(34:40):
on you know, the whole the whole kitten caboodle was
over a couple of years for sure, right. So Clinton
was up next, Yes, and very famously he um. He
did not get impeached because he uh did bad things
in the White House with Monica Lewinsky. He was impeached
because he perjured himself, very famously said I did not
(35:02):
have sexual relations with that woman. Yeah, that was good,
did uncle. I'll bet uncle and Clinton to doubt it. Uh. Yeah,
I mean I remember in college, in uh actually just
post college, I remember Bill Clinton looking America in the
eye on television and lying to all of us. Very disappointing.
(35:23):
And he was a man in power who used that
power to Some people say, take advantage of a younger coworker.
Other people say, you know, it was consensual relationship. But
he was the president and she was a political junkie,
so sure. And he also was accused of trying to
(35:45):
get her too. She was a witness. Monica Lewinsky was
a witness in a sexual harassment case against him by
Paula Jones, and he was he was accused of trying
to get her to lie for him as a witness,
which is big time obstructing justice, especially if you're president. Um,
and so if you if you look at it in
(36:06):
that light. Was he having that relationship with Lewinsky to
influence her to lie to the jury, which makes it
doubly worse somehow tripoli or quadruple e worse. Even so,
there was, um, there were a lot of there was
a lot of beef against him. I mean, the stink
from that mess affected this most recent election, you know,
(36:30):
Oh yeah, yeah, for sure, definitely. I mean, like the
Clinton's have a pretty bad rep still from that among
certain parties, pretty pretty extensive parties, I would say, and earned,
you know. I mean I remember being very upset that
Bill Clinton lied to my face. Well that's not why
he was. Um, he didn't perjured to the American people.
(36:53):
He he lied to a grand jury as well under oath.
Oh yeah, but he said the same thing to the
grand juries. He said our faces. But I remember feeling
especially let down because he looked me in the eye,
you know, like when the president is facing camera and
says something very seriously like that, Uh, they're talking to you,
They're talking to their constituents like it's a personal relationship.
(37:17):
I remember being just really upset about the whole thing. Well, okay,
I didn't I don't think I felt quite like that.
Really yeah, I just assumed he I just assumed he
was lying. Really yeah, he's president, man, I believed him.
I was. I was much more naive in my younger days. Well,
I think it's sweet Chuck. Yeah, that's slick Willy always
(37:41):
with the smooth talk. That's right, Tricky Dick and slick Willy.
You need to stop electing people with those nicknames. Right now,
we're just asking what about what about honorable Frank Why
did he ever get elected? He doesn't have any campaign money. So, okay,
so Clinton escaped fit at the vote was fifty fifty. Um. Yeah, yeah,
(38:04):
so he was actually impeached like Andrew Johnson was, and
they did it did come up to vote, the articles
of impeachment came up to vote, and they were It
was fifty fifty, which was pretty close to party lines. Um.
I think five Republicans five Democrats voted for impeachment and
ten Republicans voted against. Like I can't remember, but it
(38:25):
was very close to party law. Was ten Republicans voted
for acquittal. Um. Two of which are still there. Susan
Collins of Maine. She was a brand new either freshman
or sophomore. And Richard Shelby of Alabama. Wow, is still there.
So they voted against acquittal, they voted, they voted against impeachment,
(38:48):
I should say, yeah, yeah, they were Republicans. So, uh
so Clinton Clinton made it out and I was reading this,
there's this really fascinating five thirty eight blog about UM.
I think it's called will Trump be Impeached? And it's
you know, it's five thirty eight. So they've got all
this data and everything to back up what they're saying.
(39:09):
So they were saying one of the one of the
sure signs that uh, an impeachment's probably not going to
go through is like how divided the parties are. If
the parties are are um within themselves, no no between
the two, Like, if you're probably going to have a
party line vote, it's probably people. Probably people aren't gonna
(39:31):
defect enough to actually vote for impeachment, or if they do,
they're not gonna defect enough to vote for um for
conviction in the Senate. Right, And that was the case
of Clinton, right right, right, But today it would take
Republican senators to say to get together and say, hey,
(39:53):
maybe even get this guy out of here and get
pens in there, and like and commit uh you know,
what's it called on ship mutiny? Commit mutiny? Yeah, it almost.
I mean, with the introduction of Pen's out of nowhere,
it definitely seemed like that was plan B from the
party all along. I would not be at all surprised
(40:13):
if that actually happened. I don't think very many people
would be surprised if that happened. But I saw that
in that same five thirty eight blog there's um like
a betting odds website that they cited that that gave
like even odds that Trump would um would not finish
out his full four year term, which is that's pretty significant,
(40:35):
you know, fifty chance, that's crazy. Yeah. My call from
the beginning was that he would not finish out his
four year term because he would resign. He would not
allow himself to be impeached. I don't think so either,
is that he would resign and claim to be a
victim of the political system and basically say I told
(40:57):
you all along it was the swamp. I couldn't drain it.
Now I'm a victim of it. Man. So p T.
Barnum played by Hugh Jackman, Hugh Jackman from Subway And
then now this one if this goes through, just call
me nostro Chukas from now on. Oh man, it's not fat.
(41:21):
So there's I have two T shirts. Uh, there's a
very um interesting And the reason I said that this
is right after he got elected was because I was like,
I don't think he really wants to be president for
four years. I read that in multiple places that he's
not He doesn't actually enjoy the actual presidency. Yeah, and
(41:42):
and from what I've heard, he gets very bored with
doing the same thing and politics is certainly not the
way he's used to doing business. And like, I was
just like, man, the guy's gonna get tired of this
after a couple of years and just want to go
back to his kushy civilian life. Uh, and then be
a be a martyr political and say, yeah, I couldn't
do what I wanted to do, so I'm a victim.
(42:03):
M So that's ducks. You heard it here first. So
so if so, Trump hasn't been impeached it, but they
they've already brought it up. It sounds like, although it
kind of waxed and waned in early December, all of
the especially the left leaning um news outlets, were like impeachment.
(42:23):
People are actually talking about impeachment. It is probably gonna
happen now, and then if you look like a week later,
all of those articles are gone. They just moved on
to something else, right, which is pretty ridiculous, But the
status quo these days, so, um, who knows what's gonna
happen with Trump, But the chances of him actually being
(42:43):
impeached and convicted are extraordinarily low because he's president. Right.
That's just such an enormous thing to remove a president
from office. What's not quite as enormous is to remove
a federal judge, which is why out of the sixty
people in the Ied States who have ever been impeached,
I think it's even more than sixty, um and convicted,
(43:07):
which is down to fifteen, all of those I believe
were federal judges. Correct, Um, they were you know, you
name it. They were d u I drunks or drunk
in court, or tax evaders or accepted bribes or perjuring themselves.
Like yeah, federal judges have have sort of carried the
(43:30):
mantle for impeachment, you know. Yeah, and in a really
weird way they are laying their impeachment trials have laid
the groundwork for the big ones that you see. Yeah,
I'm sure if you asked your uncle he would tell
you that. Yeah. They went back and looked at impeachment
trials for federal judges to see, you know, what procedures
were used and followed and what the rules were. So these,
(43:52):
the impeachment of federal judges who were drunk on the bench,
are paving the groundwork for for presidents to be in
peached with you know, impeached by um. And then there
was a Senator, William Blunt from North Carolina. He was
the only Senator to ever be impeached, and his trial
actually established that senators and representatives couldn't be impeached. They
(44:15):
were immune to impeachment because they weren't civil officers. That instead,
their own party could run them or their own body.
I'm sorry. So, if you were a senator, two thirds
of the Senate could vote for you to get out
of the Senate. If you were a representative, two thirds
of the House could vote for you to get out
of the House. And that's what they did to Blunt.
They said, we can't impeach you, but we can use
(44:37):
this other thing. And and it's basically like a vote
of no confidence, which also comes from Parliament as well. Interesting. Yeah, uh,
well this week in real time, this will already have
happened by the time this is released. But I think
tomorrow there is a special election within the Democratic Party
(44:57):
on who will be the top Democrat on the House
Judiciary Committee. Uh, this is gonna happen in the midterms.
But when Democratic Representative John Conyers stepped down over sexual
harassment allegations a couple of weeks ago, um, they had
to hold a special caucus for an election. It's gonna
happen tomorrow. And it looks like two people, either Jerry
(45:20):
Nadler of New York or Zoe Lofgren of California, are
the top two competing for this top spot. And they're
both well aware that, um what that means. Uh. In
this article here, it's called the battle to lead Trump's
potential impeachment. Um, they know what they're It says they're
signing up to be Trump's chief antagonist. But they also said, hey, listen,
(45:44):
we're not gonna go in there and just start saying impeachment, impeachment.
Like if this is ever going to happen, it's got
to be the will. We have to feel like it's
the will of the American people, Like we have to
feel like there are enough Trump supporter is out there
that have turned on him because of something he's done. Well, yeah,
(46:05):
it'll it'll be like what you said, where it's it's
you've just proven everything the guy has said from the
moment he started campaigning him from the beginning, and that
the elites have it so rigged that even if you
do win, they'll just get rid of you. Yeah, I
mean one of them they Nadler even said there's not
some there's not much point in impeaching and president and
having him acquitted in the Senate because that's what happened
(46:26):
with Clinton. And like you said, even Republicans largely look
back and say, of course that was just a big
distracting waste of time. Yeah, that's I mean, that's what
I've read as well, is that they it's not looked
upon as the finest moment in legal American legal history. Yeah,
so what we'll know the outcome tomorrow in real time.
And and both of them they are kind of on
(46:47):
the same page as as far as that goes there,
like we need it needs to be something like legit
worth impeaching and president for that most of the American
people would agree with. We're not just out to get him,
but if he does something, we're out to get him.
Or if we find something that he's already done. Yeah exactly. Yeah,
So well there you have it. Yeah, if it turns
(47:08):
out that he um did obstruct anything, that that would
be a big deal to the Two of the three
presidents who have been impeached were had at least articles
impeachment that included obstruction against them. Yeah, but his his
attorneys are saying, have literally said the president can't be
(47:32):
guilty of obstruction of justice because they are justice. That's
the most ridiculous legal interpretation I've ever heard in my life.
I'm going to go on record as saying that they're
saying they're above the law. I I am the law.
That's what it says. How can I obstruct the law?
I'm the law? A crush At any rate, we should
(47:56):
probably stop now, all right, Well, if you want to
know more about impeachment, uh, you can type that word
into the internet and some really interesting stuff. I Mean
a lot of it is bone dry, but it's like
people are really into like the legal history and um
constitutional interpretation. So you can find some pretty interesting articles
(48:18):
all around the internet on stuff like this. So just
give it a shot, see if it's if it's up
your alley. Yeah, and at the very least, if this
does happen to play out over the next couple of years,
you know, it's good to know how it all works.
You know exactly exactly you can I press your friends. Yeah,
it could be like they're they're never going to get
a supermajority and your friends will be like, what did
(48:39):
you just say? What magic word was? What does this
have to do with comic books? So, since Chuck said
comic books, it's time for listener mail. Uh, this is
follow up on cakes. Hey guys, listen episode on cakes
so that you might like you might like to know
a little bit more about the color of red velvet
cakes and experi arians amateur baker who's tested several several
(49:03):
red velvet recipes learned it will now mails some down
to Johnson Chalk. That's right. It's true that red velvet
cake originally got their color from the chemical reaction of
the cocoa, vinegar and buttermilk. That is no longer the case.
The way cocoa's process has changed since the recipe was invented,
So if you rely on the chemical reaction for the color,
you will be sorely disappointed. Your cake will simply be brown,
(49:23):
but it will be nothing like the red we have
come to expect from red velvet cakes. Originally, red velvet
cakes from more of a rust color than the bright
red we think of now. The cacao in the cake
cocoa that the two on the cake also as minimal
in comparison to a chocolate cake. Cocoa was originally added
(49:45):
to cut the flour create a silky or less glutinous texture,
rather than create a chocolate cake. Velvet cakes using vinegar,
I guess that's where the velvet comes from. Uh. Using
vinegar is a rising agent have a long has a
long tradition in American baking, and it is not deserved
only for red velvet cakes. Also, you mentioned banana bread
with some confusion over age musty bananas, and a lot
(50:06):
of people wrote in about this. I'm just a dummy.
I didn't get it. Bananas are softer, it cuts back
on the work of the baker. Also, banana is naturally
sweetened as they ripe yeah, I didn't think about that either,
So I guess they're just so sugary and sweet. Once
they get black like that, you get little fuzzy sweaters
on your teeth when you bite into them. They're that sweet.
I remember the first time I heard that expression, sweaters
(50:28):
on your teeth, and I was like, oh my god,
that's it. Nailed it. Um blah blah blah. Baking, baking,
baking nice. Who is that from? Uh? Diana, By the way,
she says, if you're not adding chocolate chips your banana
nut bread, then you're doing it wrong. Huh, and then
she says, best wishes from Diana Garten. Thanks a lot, Diana.
(50:50):
That's very nice. If you please do send us some
baked goods. It's not joking at all. Uh. If you
want to send us some bake goods or just say
hi or whatever, who cares. You can tweet to us
at josh onm clark or s y s K podcast.
You can hang out with us on Facebook dot com,
slash Stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
send us an email the Stuff podcast at how Stuff
(51:11):
Works dot com, and as always, joined us at at
Home on the Web Stuff you Should Know dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
It How stuff works? Dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and
this is business Baby Stuff you Should Know on Impeachment. Yeah, guilty. Uh,
(00:30):
how how are you doing? First? Let's get the pleasant
treats out of the way. I'm doing well. And I
want to give a shout out at the head here
because just yesterday, in real time, I went over to
my in law's house for my grandmother in law's seven birthday.
Happy Birthday, Mary, Happy Birthday Mary. The lead general the
(00:52):
Stuff you Should Army, I don't know you're not on Facebook.
So every year I put a happy Birthday on the
Stuff you Should Know page and have every and chime
in from where they are because she literally sits there
and reads through like six comments from all over the
world and it is like one of the best things
that's real. It's really neat. So anyway, we're over there
(01:13):
in my my father in law, Steve, who is the
best dude, comes up to me and says, uh, how
about a show on impeachment? Yeah? And he you know,
he didn't recommend he knows better. He doesn't recommend shows topics,
(01:34):
and he went about one on impeachment. Went wow, Steve,
that's a great idea and said it is. Why haven't
we done that yet? Because it's uh relevant, as we
will see at the end of our show today, we'll
talk about kind of what's going on in today's terms.
And it's just a really weird, vaguely written, as it
(01:54):
turns out, strange act American st um. I'm'm not exactly
sure how they do it in other countries, but the
way we do it is weird. I think it's just
about as weird in other countries because it was adopted
either from the British or from the Americans, and we
adopted it from the British. Yeah, it seems to have
(02:16):
like been understood in Great Britain, but the framers of
the Constitution didn't bother to ask what anybody meant. They
just kind of borrowed it. So anyway, big shout out
to Steve. Alright, Steve, good idea for this idea. It's
the summer of Steve. It's winter, although he's from Ohio,
(02:37):
but now he's in Georgia, so it is like for
him for I'm sure. Alright, So Chuck, let's get down
to this. Let's get down to impeachment. Are we going
on the way back machine? Run off the bad here?
Do you want to go back to eight eight? You
want to start there? Well, you know I do. Okay,
let's get in the way back machine then, because you
know I loved me the Spring of eighteen sixty eight.
(02:58):
It was a good one. That's funny you say that.
There's this really great short story from the fifties or sixties.
I think it's it's like a horror short story called
the Vintage Season. It's about like these future travelers who,
like in in the future, you can travel through time
and find like the perfect spring or the perfect whatever.
It's it's pretty good. Check it out. Okay, all right,
(03:19):
well now let's get in the way back machine. Alright, okay,
so remember we're invisible. We can do anything. I know.
I just I just booped Edmond Ross on the nose. Yeah,
I just took off my shoes and everyone's like, what's
(03:40):
that on my nose? And what's that in my nose? Right,
So there's this dude, that dude you just popped on
the nose Edmund Ross he's a senator actually, uh, and
he's kind of new his what is this? This is
May of eight, just the previous July. He was appointed
to his seat, um as the senator or the junior
(04:00):
Senator of Kansas. He had like some experience in newspapers
and that was his his jam, no real political experience.
And now all of the entire Senate is wondering, what
is this guy going to do? Um. There, we're right
in the middle of an impeachment trial, the actually the
impeachment hearing of President Andrew Johnson, who is the successor
(04:25):
of Abraham Lincoln. Right, that's right. And so by December,
after the assassination of Lincoln in April of sixty five, UM,
his own party was turning against him and saying, hey,
we want to get this guy out of here. So
(04:45):
let's we we haven't tried this impeachment thing on a
president yet, and we're kind of eager to. Yeah. And
you can make the case that he was kind of
set up the his own party to turning on totally
set up. But the but the Republicans hated him out
of the gate. The Republicans were the ones who were
pushing reconstruction and really wanted the South to pay for
(05:06):
succeeding and for the Civil War. UM and Johnson was
from Tennessee and wasn't having that. He vetoed a bill
that would have given like basic basic civil rights to
black Americans. He was against the Fourteenth Amendment. He decided
it should be up to the states to figure out
how they wanted to handle the post slavery laws, regardless
(05:28):
of what that what effect that had on on the
former slaves. So it wasn't very well liked by the
abolitionist Republicans, and they wanted to get rid of them.
And the way that they did was to set up
this new law which was patently unconstitutional, and it was
called the what was it called the you can't fire
(05:49):
that dude law? Why didn't Yeah, that's that's basically the
gist of it. Um. The Tenure Act, I believe, is
the Tenure of Office Act. So you know, when when
president comes in and they appoint like cabinet members or
you know, a Supreme Court judge or something. They can
pick the person, but the Senate has to either confirm
them or say no, not this one. Right, So the
(06:13):
Senate has confirmation powers and the President's ability to hire.
The Constitution even says it in there. The Constitution doesn't
say anything about firing those appointees. And so it had
long been that the president could fire whoever of their
appointees he wanted to write. So what the what the
radical Republicans did was pass a bill that said, you,
(06:36):
if you hire somebody, if you appoint somebody, we get
to confirm them. If you try to remove somebody, we
you we have to approve that as well. And again
it was just it just flew in the face of
the Constitution as we know it. And um, the right away,
Andrew Johnson fired his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, and um,
(06:57):
he was impeached right out, right out of the gate.
That reminds me. That reminds me of when earlier this
year when Jared Kushner was taking his first big tour
of the White House after the election. Remember when he
like met all the Obama employees and was like, oh, so, like,
how many of these people are gonna be staying on?
(07:17):
And they're like, nobody, this wasn't a corporate takeover. You
realize it's not how government works. He's like, oh yeah, sure,
well yeah, no, I didn't hear about that. It was
pretty funny, like like he just bought a company. He's like,
how many people are gonna be staying around? Oh yeah?
(07:39):
So um so now so, now Andrew Johnson is impeached.
He's he's broken a law that Congress had just passed,
and they've they've impeached him. So what's going on. Well,
here's the deal. At the time, they and you know,
it's kind of like this now to a certain degree,
but everybody knew how everyone was going to vote ahead
(07:59):
of time, um, except for him. So basically Ross right, Yeah,
basically everybody knew the outcome what the outcome was going
to be, except for Ross, meaning that he was the
deciding vote. Like it was that slim of a margin,
and so that's why he was so nervous. He was
he was just sitting there, apparently, just shredding this paper
(08:20):
up as they were going around the room, and everyone's
saying guilty or not guilty, because you need two thirds
of the Senate vote or a supermajority to to enact
this impeachment. So he was just sitting there and no
one knew what was gonna happen. He stood up, he
said he thought later on that he were facing death
and he said not guilty, and everyone side and this
(08:45):
article points out they don't know if it was a
side of relief or upset, probably both, depending on which
side of the aisle you're on. Yeah, the the whole
things recounted really well in this book called Impeached by
the historian David oh Stewart, um, which I think where
this guy got this, but he, um, he does a
(09:05):
good job like getting to the heart of the matter,
which was this guy Emmon Ross was from that moment
on celebrated as this hero, this constitutional hero, like he
stood up and said, you know what, I'm not going
to let the Constitution be railroaded because you guys don't
like Andrew Johnson. And he's been kind of honored as
(09:26):
that since then. I've read it a couple of articles
that are like, mm, actually he was just looking out
for himself. Johnson was his benefactor and um, he had
basically appointed him, and uh, he had a lot of
favoritism with him, and this new guy who would have
come in, I think Benjamin Ward would not have carried
on the same thing. But regardless, if you are a constitutionalist,
(09:49):
this guy is your hero. Because he did save the
constitution with that one vote. So what that what what
took place was an impeachment proceeding, and that one was
awfully close. That was the first impeachment proceeding of the
US president, but that would not be the last. There's
been three more or two more presidents, three total, yes,
(10:11):
that have have faced down the impeachment gun. Uh. And
there have been varying results. But as yet there's never
been a president that was successfully convicted once they've been impeached,
because impeachment is not convictions. A couple of different things.
You want to take a break and then get into it, Yeah,
because Uh, I don't want to confuse people right off
(10:32):
the bat here any more than we need to. I
think it's a little late for that. So we'll go
gather our thoughts. Take a little podcaster potty break. Be
back right after this. If you want to know, luck
just to chuck all right. Should we talk about French
(11:09):
and Latin real quick? Yes, because the roots of words
are always fun to talk about. The French word impatia
means to prevent, related to the English word impede, and
both originally derived from the Latin tern impedical man, your
friends is just so romantic, and that means to fedter.
(11:31):
So basically what impeachment root wise means is to put
a stop to movement of something. In this case, the
uh not always a president, as we'll see. Um any
um is it any elected official, any federal civil civil
officers what they finally landed on. But yeah, like a
(11:53):
federal official, somebody who is appointed by the president, the president,
the vice president, um, judges typically, but not senators or
congress people. They can just be run out of town
on a on a bail of Hey, there's the yeah.
They basically yeah, man, w you see that bail of
(12:13):
hay coming and you know that it tolls for the
you know the tars right behind it. That's a bad
day for you. Um alright, So the origins of impeachment
though pre United States. UM, so we're talking British legal
history here. There's a dude named T. F. T. Plunkett Plucknet. Interesting,
(12:34):
m hmm Plucknett. Uh he's in his Storian I guess so, uh,
I could have sworn it was Plunkett. So T. F. T.
Plucknett says that um fourteenth century Parliament was the first
time impeachment came about. And during that time there were
a couple of different cases over like an eleven year
(12:56):
period that had a pretty big shift from one to
the next that we kind of frame how impeachment works. Right.
So at the time, back then in the fourteenth century,
right the the king could appoint. They were all manner
of like positions that the king could appoint, and once
you were appointed by the king, that was it. You
only answered to the king. You could do anything you wanted,
(13:19):
and as long as you had the king's favor, there
was nothing anyone could do. So UM at one point,
and I'm not sure how they took it upon themselves,
but this article says that it grew out of a
trial of Roger Mortimer, who was convicted in um executed
for arranging the murder of King Edward the second, and
(13:40):
then a Chief Justice Willoughby, who was accused of corruption
and tried UM. These two guys were like high appointed
officials and they were removed from office, and the way
that they were removed was basically the parliament got involved.
So this idea of impeaching people grew out of the
(14:01):
notion that wait a minute, Parliament and specifically the House
of Commons, which is, if you take Parliament and Congress
in the United States, the House of Lords is like
the Senate, and the House of Commons is like the
House of Representatives, right. Um, the House of Commons were
the ones who would take it upon themselves to say
(14:21):
this person is bad and we're going to get rid
of them. We're going to act as their jury and
try them and remove them from their appointed position. And king,
there's nothing you can do about it, because we're the
ones who hold the purse strings, really, so you better
go along with this. And this idea of impeaching was huge.
It was revolutionary in Great Britain, and it was equally
(14:43):
revolutionary in in the founding of the United States too,
because if you'll remember, the United States was founded at
a time where Americans were very very wary of kings
pushing them around. And in the Constitution as this role,
this office of the Press that did see which is
a very strong executive ruler a king almost um. And
(15:05):
there's a legal scholar, Cass Sunstein, who wrote this great
article about all this about impeachment, and he says a
lot of historians agree that the Constitution probably wouldn't have
been ratified if these few words about impeachment hadn't been
added into the Constitution to give Americans the power to
remove a corrupt president from office. Yeah, I mean they
(15:29):
it was almost I mean, it ended up being very important,
but it was almost an afterthought and how they went
about it because up front they weren't saying, hey, we
need to really like make sure we include this impeachment
thing in here. They're worried about framing the US Constitution.
And then at the end Ben Franklin very famously said, hey,
you know, without impeachment, you know what, you know what,
(15:50):
the only other thing we can do is is, uh,
if we get a bad president is shoot him in
the head. And they went, oh, well that won't do
bully bully to that, So maybe we should we should
write something down. I know, we're all tired. We've been
working on this document for minutes. They had fatigue, and
(16:11):
they so they ended up saying over what hundred and
eighty words? I think it was actually less than I
don't know, really I came up with that. Yeah, alright,
well seven sentences. Now it's even less than that, really, Yeah,
good lord, I kind of four run on sentences two
of which included Colon's but that I mean, it's a sentence,
(16:33):
four sentences in a hundred and three words, says microsoft word.
Really Yeah, well they didn't have microsoft word back then,
so alright, So regardless of how long it was, it
was short, and it was here's the thing it was.
It was written in a very vague language, which ended
up being very troublesome because they weren't quite sure. I
(16:57):
think they didn't want to hem themselves in too much,
is my feeling on exactly what it would take to
to start this process. Like, uh so, initially they called it, uh,
it was it. George Mason called it um mal mal
administration in other words, just being a bad president. Yeah,
(17:20):
and they took that out. There was a couple of
reasons why they said, no, this is a little it's
a little vague. But later constitutional scholars have interpreted the
fact that it was suggested and removed that the framers
of the Constitution didn't consider not being a very good
president as a reason to be removed from office. James
Imagine at the very least, said, this is just really
(17:43):
unclear as to what this couldn't even mean. Sure, so
maladministration comes out they hit upon and I'm not sure
if they hit upon it right out of the gate
or if it came later, but they hit upon bribery
and treason, which there's no issues with that. Everyone knows
what bribery is, everyone knows what treason is. It's pretty clear.
But they they're still like her saying no, this isn't
(18:05):
it's still not quite there. James Mason spoke up again.
He said, you can really screw with the democracy of
America even without taking bribes, even without committing a statutory
treason his act. So maybe we need to add something.
So that's when he came up with mal administration and said, no, no,
it's stupid. But then they came up with something else. Yeah,
(18:26):
he finally said, because again they didn't want to be
hinderen too much, but they also didn't want to be
so specific with just bribery and treason that that was
the only thing that you could use uh impeachment for.
So he finally said, alright, good god, it's late. What
about high crimes and misdemeanors and everyone, yeah, that's great. Well,
(18:48):
no one even knows what it means. It will be perfect.
What's funny is no one. No one now knows what
it means, but apparently it was quite clear what it
meant at the time. Yeah, it's supposedly high crime. Is.
It doesn't mean like, oh my god, that's that's such
a huge crime crime right, Yeah, they did grow hemp
(19:10):
by the way. Um, but the high crime or a
high misdemeanor is it's a type of crime that can
only be committed by a high person a k a.
An elected or federal official. That's it's still just a
crime or a misdemeanor. Like I think it's still vague,
so okay, So later later scholars have interpret high crimes
(19:33):
and misdemeanors. I mean, it's a it's a crime or
a misdemeanor that is carried out and can only be
carried out by somebody in an elected position. So it's
a betrayal of the public trust that an elected or
federal official is given. Okay, and that the crimes part
that throws people off. A high crime can be Um,
(19:55):
it doesn't have to be an actual crime, Okay, So
you can be impeached for a high crime that, if
you go and read the US Code, is not actually
a federal crime. You're not breaking the law, but you
could still be impeached for it even though it's not
an actual crime. And then conversely, an actual crime isn't
necessarily an impeachable offense. That what the framers were trying
(20:16):
to get at here was that the the president or
the vice president, whoever was being impeached, had betrayed the
public trust, had used their elected position, their high position,
in a way that was that rendered them unfit to
serve any longer. They could not be trusted any longer.
They had proven themselves a alleged a terrible person, and
(20:38):
had had discharged their duties as president in a in
a mallow malodorous way, said the guy who shoes her
off in Congress. That cleared the room man pretty quick.
It's like Elizabeth Warren taking the taking to the podium.
(21:00):
When she takes her shoes off, people clear out of there.
She's had like onions for lunch, that lady. You'll just
the whole onion raw? Have you ever seen it? It's amazing.
Where did I see that recently? A whole onion raw?
It's like a movie or something. Oh, I know what
it was. The movie that was the kid was hungover
(21:22):
and the parent comes in the next morning and they're
like here, like, eat this onion, trust me, And the
kid starts to eat the onion and they're like, just kidding.
I can't remember what movie it was. Back to the
Future too, Yeah, that was it, when Marty Marty's Hangover.
That was the full name Back the Future to Marty's
Hangover colon the onion. Um. So here's the deal though
(21:48):
with it's one of two things though, when it comes
to impeachment. It's either literally a crime, but it doesn't
have to be. And if it's not a crime literally,
then it's probably something political going on in that it is.
They feel that it is subverting the office of the president. Right,
(22:09):
that's the general interpretation. But again I mean like they
didn't say high crimes and demeanor or high crimes and
misdemeanors asterisks, right and then define that. So it's open
to interpretation and it still is today, which is why
unless you are a president or a vice president have
been actually caught, um, accepting bribes or committing treason, there's
(22:33):
a lot of wiggle room for you to get out
of this. Yeah, an impeachment doesn't send you to jail,
like you can then be tried for treason and that
would continue to jail. Yeah, it's specifically says in the
Constitution that this is strictly to remove the person from office,
possibly to prevent them from ever holding federal office again.
But that do you have to leave it to the
(22:55):
regular courts to um to try and punish them. If
it's an rual crime separately, that's different. But it's weird
because the impeachment processes will see is very much like
a uh trial, a kangaroo court trial. Basically, well, let's
go and talk about it, okay, So if you're impeached,
(23:17):
if you're a president and you do something that enough
people in the House of Representatives find unsavory, you may
find yourself facing impeachment. Usually that means the people in
the House of Representatives are representatives are in a different
political party than your own. Usually, yes, you would have
to be pretty bad for your own party to be
(23:38):
the ones who drew up the articles of impeachment to start, right,
So with the articles of impeachment, it can be introduced.
Typically these days, from what I understand, there's a judiciary
Judiciary committee in the House, and they will be responsible
for drumming up the articles of impeachment and then introducing
them to the House as a whole. But in individual
(24:01):
representative can come up with articles of impeachment himself for
herself and introduce it on the House flora to be
voted one way or another, which just happened actually at
the beginning of December. Um as a loan representative, Al
King I think from Texas introduced articles of impeachment and
it got voted down. So you can do it yourself.
(24:22):
Is just a just a loan dude or DoD s um.
But normally it's the Judiciary Committee, I think, because the
parties tend to try to keep a strangle hold on
stuff like that. And like even with this case, the
Democrats were like easy, easy, ol, like just settle down
where we're going to get there, but Al was like
I hate him so much too early, Al stand down,
(24:45):
so as Al stalks off. But the process continues apparently
under more normal circumstances. But he was a great example
that any any representative can introduce articles of impeachment, and
an article of impeachment Chuck is like presidents who have
been impeached have had I believe Johnson too, but definitely
Nixon and Clinton, UM and now Trump. He wasn't impeached,
(25:10):
but he's had articles of impeachment brought up against him,
which is a significant in and of itself, because what
it's saying is we are accusing this president of this crime,
and each crime or each betrayal of office, whatever you
want to call it, each high crime and misdemeanor or
each actual crime, it gets its own article of impeachment.
So very frequently and president will be impeached with multiple
(25:33):
articles of impeachment and the House is forced to vote
on each one. So so if you if you have
like five, that means there's five chances that that president
can be impeached depending on the evidence. And so each impeachment,
each article of impeachment is going to say, this is
what the president did. Here's all the evidence that backs
up us saying this, Um and House, what do you think?
(25:56):
Then the House will vote on it. That was Al Green,
by the way, not now King, his legendary soul singer,
Al Green. It was Al Green. It wasn't Al King.
His name is Al Green, Yeah, but it wasn't legendary
soul singer. Right. Um, So if the vote gets the majority,
then the president is officially impeached to that point, um,
(26:17):
which and it's just a simple majority, yeah, in the House,
and that means that basically, that means it's a it's
like a criminal indictment, um if we're gonna be comparing
it to like, you know, the civilian legal standard. So
you're officially accused of this wrongdoing, which could mean you
could be removed from office officially if the House is
voted with a simple majority. But it's not over because
(26:41):
then what happens is it moves over to the Senate.
And at that point that's where you need the two
thirds majority another to finish the prosecution. And here's the
thing is, they didn't, like I said, it was a
very kind of short um insert as far as how
to go about this. So there there aren't any like
(27:01):
hard and fast rules. So whenever this has happened, they're
kind of just like, all right, how do you want
to do this? Um, We're not gonna have prosecutors. We're
gonna have what we call managers, which is a weird
word for sure, but they're gonna act as prosecutors and
they're gonna be called to argue the case before the Senate.
And these are members of the House who are managing
(27:22):
the impeachment proceedings in the Senate on behalf of the House,
because the House has said, we the House, I think
this president should be removed, and now we're gonna send
some of our members to argue this case. Yes, and
the Senate is essentially the jury at this point in
the proceedings, right, But they're the jury, and they're also
the ones who are making up the rules. They're in
charge of that as well, which is very strange. It
(27:43):
is you want to hear something kind of fun. But
my uncle was a manager for Clinton's impeachment trial. No
Bob Bars your uncle. No, not Bob Barr. There there
are several managers. My uncle ed Bryan really yeah, talk
of before he was Republican congressman from Tennessee and he
(28:03):
was one of the managers because he was an attorney
and a former Army judge advocate general and judge Japoka general.
Is that what he was jack? Was he a jack?
But that's what it stands for. I can't remember now,
maybe I'm just thinking to the TV show. But he
held the legal position in the Army, uh and then
(28:25):
was well the Navy. I think are the Jags right? Oh,
I don't know. He was in the army though, okay,
but he was one of the managers in the in
the Clinton impeachment that is fascinating trial. And he and
I gotta say, like Uncle Ed and I are are
politically divergent. But he's a good dude and an honest,
like kind man. I can say that for sure. Uh
(28:49):
So I was always proud of him as a person,
even though he didn't like see I politically, but he was, Um,
he's such a good guy that Monica Lewinsky requested him
personally to depose her because he was just regarded as
like one of the good guys and one of the
like fair like decent humans. So he was the guy
who deposed Monica Lewinsky for the Clinton impeachment trial. My
(29:11):
father's brother. He needs a T shirt that says that man, right,
that's crazy and that wouldn't it wow? So how does
he feel about it? Because most, um, I shouldn't say most,
A significant number of legal scholars and historians look back
at that and the Andrew Johnson won and say those
(29:32):
impeachment proceedings never should have happened, never should have passed.
The House and that they were partisan proceedings. Yeah, I
don't know. You know, we're not super in touch anymore.
But now that I'm older, I would love to pick
his brain a little bit about this. Uh, and I'm
sure he would spill it, you know, conference me in Okay,
I like the next Christmas, I'll be like, yeah, uncle, Lettie,
(29:53):
just um, hold on a minute, I'm just gonna put
this phone down next to you, and don't pay attention
to that picture of Josh his avatar. I'll be like,
did you give my T shirt I sent you? Ah? Yeah,
pretty interesting, so I know. Right. So, at any rate,
the managers are they're arguing the case before the Senate,
who acts as jury that are also making up the
(30:14):
rules as they go. And uh, two thirds, like we
said a couple of times, you need that two thirds
Senate vote. And then at that point, if two thirds
vote guilty, then that's it man, the president you're done. Yeah,
and then the vice president takes over and um, that's that.
You probably can't hold a federal office again after that either,
(30:37):
although I don't think it's automatic. Right, So let's should
we take a break. Yeah, all right, let's take a
break and we'll talk about We've already talked about Johnson.
We'll talk a little bit more about Mr. Bill Clinton
and President Richard Milhouse Nixon. Right it for this If
you want to know Luck, just to Chuck, Okay, Chuck. Yes. So,
(31:22):
like you said, we talked about Johnson, he got off
by one vote. Man, that must have been so tense. Um.
And then up next was so president wise. We'll find
that there are plenty of other people who've been impeached,
but in the United States, president wise, the next president
was Richard Millhouse Nixon. Was a long break in between. Yeah,
over a hundred years, like a hundred and four years,
(31:45):
I think something like that. So Nixon is getting his
own episode. Were you're doing a Watergate episode hopefully in
the not too distant future. Such a fascinating case. So um. Well,
but the whole, the whole premise of what Nixon was
(32:05):
eventually moved out of office for what. He didn't actually
get impeached. He resigned, but he probably would have been
removed from office. He probably would have been impeached, He
probably would have been convicted, and he would have been removed.
But he didn't give him the satisfaction he resigned. But
he he went and this was just in a few weeks.
He won the election by an enormous margin. Um. The
(32:29):
electoral college vote was five twenty Nixon seventeen, McGovern seventeen,
five to seventeen. That's what that's the landslide that he
won re election with. And within a few weeks he
was he was out of office. And it was all
because of that Watergate break in. And it wasn't even
necessarily the break in, which was bad enough that like
(32:50):
some operatives from the White House broke into Democratic headquarters
in the Watergate hotel and we're caught trying to replace
the phone tap that they had on the phone um
and it turned out that it was traced back to
the to the White House. The president probably had involvement.
That's bad enough, but the cover up is what ultimately
(33:12):
led to Nixon being railroaded out of out of the
White House. Yeah, for sure, But like you said, the
writing was on the wall, and he said, well, you
know what, I quit, I resign, And everyone went, oh, man,
I know, we really wanted to impeach you. We brought
the bail of Hay and everything. I mean, I saw
all the presidents men again the other day for the
(33:33):
first Simon so great, so um so Nixon was He's
a pretty pretty instructive example as well. Like he had
multiple articles of impeachment against him. One was tax evasion
when he was president he failed to pay like four
grand and taxes, which is like two point six million today,
which that's a substantial amount of money. Plus he was
(33:57):
president when he failed to pay those taxes, so crazy.
He didn't get he again, he was never here. They
didn't get to the point where they voted on the
articles of impeachment. But that was one against the obstructing
justice was one. Using the office to um obstruct justice
was a big one. He had like a hand pick
c I a task force um that was trying to
(34:18):
keep the FBI from investigating Watergate. So he had a
lot of different articles of impeachment against him, and surely
one of them would have stuck and he would have
been removed. But then after Nixon that was two up
comes Clinton about twenty I think twenty six years later,
wasn't it. M M. I think yeah, okay, well depends
(34:40):
on you know, the whole the whole kitten caboodle was
over a couple of years for sure, right. So Clinton
was up next, Yes, and very famously he um. He
did not get impeached because he uh did bad things
in the White House with Monica Lewinsky. He was impeached
because he perjured himself, very famously said I did not
(35:02):
have sexual relations with that woman. Yeah, that was good,
did uncle. I'll bet uncle and Clinton to doubt it. Uh. Yeah,
I mean I remember in college, in uh actually just
post college, I remember Bill Clinton looking America in the
eye on television and lying to all of us. Very disappointing.
(35:23):
And he was a man in power who used that
power to Some people say, take advantage of a younger coworker.
Other people say, you know, it was consensual relationship. But
he was the president and she was a political junkie,
so sure. And he also was accused of trying to
(35:45):
get her too. She was a witness. Monica Lewinsky was
a witness in a sexual harassment case against him by
Paula Jones, and he was he was accused of trying
to get her to lie for him as a witness,
which is big time obstructing justice, especially if you're president. Um,
and so if you if you look at it in
(36:06):
that light. Was he having that relationship with Lewinsky to
influence her to lie to the jury, which makes it
doubly worse somehow tripoli or quadruple e worse. Even so,
there was, um, there were a lot of there was
a lot of beef against him. I mean, the stink
from that mess affected this most recent election, you know,
(36:30):
Oh yeah, yeah, for sure, definitely. I mean, like the
Clinton's have a pretty bad rep still from that among
certain parties, pretty pretty extensive parties, I would say, and earned,
you know. I mean I remember being very upset that
Bill Clinton lied to my face. Well that's not why
he was. Um, he didn't perjured to the American people.
(36:53):
He he lied to a grand jury as well under oath.
Oh yeah, but he said the same thing to the
grand juries. He said our faces. But I remember feeling
especially let down because he looked me in the eye,
you know, like when the president is facing camera and
says something very seriously like that, Uh, they're talking to you,
They're talking to their constituents like it's a personal relationship.
(37:17):
I remember being just really upset about the whole thing. Well, okay,
I didn't I don't think I felt quite like that.
Really yeah, I just assumed he I just assumed he
was lying. Really yeah, he's president, man, I believed him.
I was. I was much more naive in my younger days. Well,
I think it's sweet Chuck. Yeah, that's slick Willy always
(37:41):
with the smooth talk. That's right, Tricky Dick and slick Willy.
You need to stop electing people with those nicknames. Right now,
we're just asking what about what about honorable Frank Why
did he ever get elected? He doesn't have any campaign money. So, okay,
so Clinton escaped fit at the vote was fifty fifty. Um. Yeah, yeah,
(38:04):
so he was actually impeached like Andrew Johnson was, and
they did it did come up to vote, the articles
of impeachment came up to vote, and they were It
was fifty fifty, which was pretty close to party lines. Um.
I think five Republicans five Democrats voted for impeachment and
ten Republicans voted against. Like I can't remember, but it
(38:25):
was very close to party law. Was ten Republicans voted
for acquittal. Um. Two of which are still there. Susan
Collins of Maine. She was a brand new either freshman
or sophomore. And Richard Shelby of Alabama. Wow, is still there.
So they voted against acquittal, they voted, they voted against impeachment,
(38:48):
I should say, yeah, yeah, they were Republicans. So, uh
so Clinton Clinton made it out and I was reading this,
there's this really fascinating five thirty eight blog about UM.
I think it's called will Trump be Impeached? And it's
you know, it's five thirty eight. So they've got all
this data and everything to back up what they're saying.
(39:09):
So they were saying one of the one of the
sure signs that uh, an impeachment's probably not going to
go through is like how divided the parties are. If
the parties are are um within themselves, no no between
the two, Like, if you're probably going to have a
party line vote, it's probably people. Probably people aren't gonna
(39:31):
defect enough to actually vote for impeachment, or if they do,
they're not gonna defect enough to vote for um for
conviction in the Senate. Right, And that was the case
of Clinton, right right, right, But today it would take
Republican senators to say to get together and say, hey,
(39:53):
maybe even get this guy out of here and get
pens in there, and like and commit uh you know,
what's it called on ship mutiny? Commit mutiny? Yeah, it almost.
I mean, with the introduction of Pen's out of nowhere,
it definitely seemed like that was plan B from the
party all along. I would not be at all surprised
(40:13):
if that actually happened. I don't think very many people
would be surprised if that happened. But I saw that
in that same five thirty eight blog there's um like
a betting odds website that they cited that that gave
like even odds that Trump would um would not finish
out his full four year term, which is that's pretty significant,
(40:35):
you know, fifty chance, that's crazy. Yeah. My call from
the beginning was that he would not finish out his
four year term because he would resign. He would not
allow himself to be impeached. I don't think so either,
is that he would resign and claim to be a
victim of the political system and basically say I told
(40:57):
you all along it was the swamp. I couldn't drain it.
Now I'm a victim of it. Man. So p T.
Barnum played by Hugh Jackman, Hugh Jackman from Subway And
then now this one if this goes through, just call
me nostro Chukas from now on. Oh man, it's not fat.
(41:21):
So there's I have two T shirts. Uh, there's a
very um interesting And the reason I said that this
is right after he got elected was because I was like,
I don't think he really wants to be president for
four years. I read that in multiple places that he's
not He doesn't actually enjoy the actual presidency. Yeah, and
(41:42):
and from what I've heard, he gets very bored with
doing the same thing and politics is certainly not the
way he's used to doing business. And like, I was
just like, man, the guy's gonna get tired of this
after a couple of years and just want to go
back to his kushy civilian life. Uh, and then be
a be a martyr political and say, yeah, I couldn't
do what I wanted to do, so I'm a victim.
(42:03):
M So that's ducks. You heard it here first. So
so if so, Trump hasn't been impeached it, but they
they've already brought it up. It sounds like, although it
kind of waxed and waned in early December, all of
the especially the left leaning um news outlets, were like impeachment.
(42:23):
People are actually talking about impeachment. It is probably gonna
happen now, and then if you look like a week later,
all of those articles are gone. They just moved on
to something else, right, which is pretty ridiculous, But the
status quo these days, so, um, who knows what's gonna
happen with Trump, But the chances of him actually being
(42:43):
impeached and convicted are extraordinarily low because he's president. Right.
That's just such an enormous thing to remove a president
from office. What's not quite as enormous is to remove
a federal judge, which is why out of the sixty
people in the Ied States who have ever been impeached,
I think it's even more than sixty, um and convicted,
(43:07):
which is down to fifteen, all of those I believe
were federal judges. Correct, Um, they were you know, you
name it. They were d u I drunks or drunk
in court, or tax evaders or accepted bribes or perjuring themselves.
Like yeah, federal judges have have sort of carried the
(43:30):
mantle for impeachment, you know. Yeah, and in a really
weird way they are laying their impeachment trials have laid
the groundwork for the big ones that you see. Yeah,
I'm sure if you asked your uncle he would tell
you that. Yeah. They went back and looked at impeachment
trials for federal judges to see, you know, what procedures
were used and followed and what the rules were. So these,
(43:52):
the impeachment of federal judges who were drunk on the bench,
are paving the groundwork for for presidents to be in
peached with you know, impeached by um. And then there
was a Senator, William Blunt from North Carolina. He was
the only Senator to ever be impeached, and his trial
actually established that senators and representatives couldn't be impeached. They
(44:15):
were immune to impeachment because they weren't civil officers. That instead,
their own party could run them or their own body.
I'm sorry. So, if you were a senator, two thirds
of the Senate could vote for you to get out
of the Senate. If you were a representative, two thirds
of the House could vote for you to get out
of the House. And that's what they did to Blunt.
They said, we can't impeach you, but we can use
(44:37):
this other thing. And and it's basically like a vote
of no confidence, which also comes from Parliament as well. Interesting. Yeah, uh,
well this week in real time, this will already have
happened by the time this is released. But I think
tomorrow there is a special election within the Democratic Party
(44:57):
on who will be the top Democrat on the House
Judiciary Committee. Uh, this is gonna happen in the midterms.
But when Democratic Representative John Conyers stepped down over sexual
harassment allegations a couple of weeks ago, um, they had
to hold a special caucus for an election. It's gonna
happen tomorrow. And it looks like two people, either Jerry
(45:20):
Nadler of New York or Zoe Lofgren of California, are
the top two competing for this top spot. And they're
both well aware that, um what that means. Uh. In
this article here, it's called the battle to lead Trump's
potential impeachment. Um, they know what they're It says they're
signing up to be Trump's chief antagonist. But they also said, hey, listen,
(45:44):
we're not gonna go in there and just start saying impeachment, impeachment.
Like if this is ever going to happen, it's got
to be the will. We have to feel like it's
the will of the American people, Like we have to
feel like there are enough Trump supporter is out there
that have turned on him because of something he's done. Well, yeah,
(46:05):
it'll it'll be like what you said, where it's it's
you've just proven everything the guy has said from the
moment he started campaigning him from the beginning, and that
the elites have it so rigged that even if you
do win, they'll just get rid of you. Yeah, I
mean one of them they Nadler even said there's not
some there's not much point in impeaching and president and
having him acquitted in the Senate because that's what happened
(46:26):
with Clinton. And like you said, even Republicans largely look
back and say, of course that was just a big
distracting waste of time. Yeah, that's I mean, that's what
I've read as well, is that they it's not looked
upon as the finest moment in legal American legal history. Yeah,
so what we'll know the outcome tomorrow in real time.
And and both of them they are kind of on
(46:47):
the same page as as far as that goes there,
like we need it needs to be something like legit
worth impeaching and president for that most of the American
people would agree with. We're not just out to get him,
but if he does something, we're out to get him.
Or if we find something that he's already done. Yeah exactly. Yeah,
So well there you have it. Yeah, if it turns
(47:08):
out that he um did obstruct anything, that that would
be a big deal to the Two of the three
presidents who have been impeached were had at least articles
impeachment that included obstruction against them. Yeah, but his his
attorneys are saying, have literally said the president can't be
(47:32):
guilty of obstruction of justice because they are justice. That's
the most ridiculous legal interpretation I've ever heard in my life.
I'm going to go on record as saying that they're
saying they're above the law. I I am the law.
That's what it says. How can I obstruct the law?
I'm the law? A crush At any rate, we should
(47:56):
probably stop now, all right, Well, if you want to
know more about impeachment, uh, you can type that word
into the internet and some really interesting stuff. I Mean
a lot of it is bone dry, but it's like
people are really into like the legal history and um
constitutional interpretation. So you can find some pretty interesting articles
(48:18):
all around the internet on stuff like this. So just
give it a shot, see if it's if it's up
your alley. Yeah, and at the very least, if this
does happen to play out over the next couple of years,
you know, it's good to know how it all works.
You know exactly exactly you can I press your friends. Yeah,
it could be like they're they're never going to get
a supermajority and your friends will be like, what did
(48:39):
you just say? What magic word was? What does this
have to do with comic books? So, since Chuck said
comic books, it's time for listener mail. Uh, this is
follow up on cakes. Hey guys, listen episode on cakes
so that you might like you might like to know
a little bit more about the color of red velvet
cakes and experi arians amateur baker who's tested several several
(49:03):
red velvet recipes learned it will now mails some down
to Johnson Chalk. That's right. It's true that red velvet
cake originally got their color from the chemical reaction of
the cocoa, vinegar and buttermilk. That is no longer the case.
The way cocoa's process has changed since the recipe was invented,
So if you rely on the chemical reaction for the color,
you will be sorely disappointed. Your cake will simply be brown,
(49:23):
but it will be nothing like the red we have
come to expect from red velvet cakes. Originally, red velvet
cakes from more of a rust color than the bright
red we think of now. The cacao in the cake
cocoa that the two on the cake also as minimal
in comparison to a chocolate cake. Cocoa was originally added
(49:45):
to cut the flour create a silky or less glutinous texture,
rather than create a chocolate cake. Velvet cakes using vinegar,
I guess that's where the velvet comes from. Uh. Using
vinegar is a rising agent have a long has a
long tradition in American baking, and it is not deserved
only for red velvet cakes. Also, you mentioned banana bread
with some confusion over age musty bananas, and a lot
(50:06):
of people wrote in about this. I'm just a dummy.
I didn't get it. Bananas are softer, it cuts back
on the work of the baker. Also, banana is naturally
sweetened as they ripe yeah, I didn't think about that either,
So I guess they're just so sugary and sweet. Once
they get black like that, you get little fuzzy sweaters
on your teeth when you bite into them. They're that sweet.
I remember the first time I heard that expression, sweaters
(50:28):
on your teeth, and I was like, oh my god,
that's it. Nailed it. Um blah blah blah. Baking, baking,
baking nice. Who is that from? Uh? Diana, By the way,
she says, if you're not adding chocolate chips your banana
nut bread, then you're doing it wrong. Huh, and then
she says, best wishes from Diana Garten. Thanks a lot, Diana.
(50:50):
That's very nice. If you please do send us some
baked goods. It's not joking at all. Uh. If you
want to send us some bake goods or just say
hi or whatever, who cares. You can tweet to us
at josh onm clark or s y s K podcast.
You can hang out with us on Facebook dot com,
slash Stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
send us an email the Stuff podcast at how Stuff
(51:11):
Works dot com, and as always, joined us at at
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