Impeachment Trial Underway

The impeachment trial against President Trump is finally underway in the Senate. Tom discusses how we all need to pay attention, for no matter how this turns out it will have implications for our country.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I heard radio presents Tom broke off now here. This
so the impeachment proceedings now are underway. The trial itself
will begin next week. And for all the dismissive comments
from the President of the United States and his Republican
colleagues on Capitol Hill, this is a very serious matter.
It's the third time in America's history that our president

(00:22):
has been called before a jury of his peers, effectively
the legislature the converse of the United States. And there's
the possibility that new evidence will turn up every day.
There's also the strong possibility the Democrats don't have a
case that they expect to have. This will not be
judged by the American people. It will be judged in

(00:44):
that arena, the United States Capital. But the American people
will have a voice because Republicans especially will be looking
to them for support. And if there's a crack and
the President's support, Republicans will have a very tough time
patching it back up on the fly. Already, Free Republicans
have indicated that they may not support the President in

(01:06):
these proceedings, and one or two others are also suggesting
that they can be moved across the line as well,
but here's the most interesting development of the week. One
of the presidents defenders, who was working with Rudy Giuliani
now has come forward after he was convicted on other
charges and said, in fact, the President knew what was

(01:26):
going on. He was trying to, in fact, trying to
manipulate the Ukrainian government to crackdown on Joe Biden's son,
to expose him as somebody who was corrupt because the
President is worried about running against him. Joe Biden's son
made a big mistake. In my judgment, The vice president
made a big mistake in allowing us son to take

(01:46):
that job at sixty a month. But so far there's
been no indication that he didn't do anything criminally wrong. Nonetheless,
that will get a lot of attention. Now we're learning
at the same time that a principal on the House
side has been talking with people in the Ukraine who

(02:07):
could help the president. At first he said, you know,
I don't remember that conversation. Now Representative Newness has come
out to say, in fact, I did have that conversation.
That conversation was an attempt to enhance the President's case.
It was not a casual where you're going to go
on vacation kind of conversation. They were trying desperately to

(02:29):
beef up the president's case against Vice President Biden. So
that's where we are at the moment. But we have
to know is what the Republicans are going to do
once it gets to the floor. How many of them
will stick with the president if there is more evidence
than in fact he was involved, maybe not all the
way ups with elbows, but he made telephone calls and

(02:51):
he instructed people to in fact line up with him,
that he was just doing normal business with Ukraine. The
Republican Party so far has been holding its troops together,
but once the gabble goes down next week, how long
will that last if the Democrats have some surprising evidence.

(03:13):
On the other hand, the Democrats are on trial as well,
because if they don't have the evidence, if they have
a flimsy case, that will hurt them come next spring,
next fall for the presidential election and the control of
the Congress. So these are high stakes for all concerned.
Bill Clinton, you may recall, was impeached because of his

(03:36):
relationship with Monteka Levinski and how he lied about it.
But in fact Darryl Bumpers, his colleague from Arkansas, made
a persuasive case that it didn't measure up to high
crimes and misdemeanors. It was a terrible mistake, but it
should not have cost the president his presidency. That was
the argument of Dale Bumpers, and it passed in a

(03:58):
more democratic Congress than what we see right now. At
the same time, here's what we have to think about.
How will Donald Trump react to what he sees going
on on the hill. Will he be tempted to do
something desperate, another strike in the Middle East, for example,
to draw attention to the positive things that a president

(04:19):
can do. What will he say on television, especially to
his friends at Fox Television, about how he is being
betrayed by what he calls a demented Democratic Party. So
at a time when this country needs to be coming
together more than being divided, because there are so many
challenges out there, we're in for a long period of

(04:41):
great division, great hostility across party lines. It will not
be a kind of Perry Mason courtroom case. It will
be filled with vitriol. People will be making very strong
accusations across the aisles. My worry is that if this
the not succeed for the president, people in the future

(05:03):
will say, well, we can get rid of the president,
will have an impeachment if it does succeed for him. However,
if in fact there's a mountain of evidence against him,
but the Republicans hold the line, then what does that
say about the integrity of the American way big stakes,
high drama. How much the country will pay attention. It's

(05:24):
hard to say, but in fact I hope that the conclusion. However,
it turns out that wise members of both parties will
meet and say, we've got to repair this country. We
have challenges before us that we have not had for
some time, and if we don't all work together, will
only have deeper, deeper difficulties in the months and years ahead.

(05:49):
And in the world where the economy is so important
to China that it will do almost anything to improve it.
So we're Vladimir Putin and Russia now is extending his
term of office so that he can be our principal
adversary in the world, whereas we know in the Middle
East there will be continuing fights, continuing assassinations, continuing raids

(06:13):
because we have not stamped out the adversaries that exist there.
They are like amboos. They reinvent themselves every thirty seconds
to carry on with a c as howay crusade against
the West and especially against the United States. This may
look like nonsense to a lot of people, like child's play,

(06:35):
but it is important that both sides conduct themselves seriously
with gravitas, and that the American system at the end
of it all, is still in place. However it turns out.
It may be tempting to say, I just don't want
to get involved in that, but this is time for
all citizens to be paying attention. I'm Tom broke Off

(06:58):
for I Heart Radio. Now Here are this