Front Burner - From Nixon to Trump: How public opinion shapes impeachment proceedings

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

This week marks the first time in 20 years that public hearings could result in the removal of a U.S. President from office. In question is a whistleblower’s complaint alleging the U.S. President attempted to pressure the Ukrainian president into investigating his political rival by threatening to withhold military aid. Today on Front Burner, CBC’s Washington correspondent Alex Panetta preps us for day two of the Donald Trump public impeachment inquiry by explaining why these hearings are so important, and what we can learn from past examples like Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. So we've been hearing about impeachment in the United States for what feels like forever. It's easy to zone out or get lost in all of the coverage. But this week, things are really ramping up. For the first time in 20 years, public hearings could result in the removal of a president from office.

At the center of all of this is a whistleblower's complaint alleging that Donald Trump attempted to pressure the Ukrainian president into investigating his political rival by withholding military aid. A summary of that conversation went public. Trump then says, I'd like you to do us a favor, and soon enough mentions Biden's son, who had financial interests in a Ukrainian company. Some new damning testimony came out on Wednesday, and today we'll hear from the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was abruptly ousted by Trump last spring. My colleague Alex Panetta is here with me, and we're going to talk about why these hearings are important and what we can learn from Nixon and Clinton, and maybe Andrew Johnson, too. This is FrontBurner. Hi, Alex.

Hi, Jamie. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. So it's day two of the public impeachment hearings, but I want to start today with some headlines here. What were the biggest revelations from Wednesday's testimony? We saw William Taylor, the acting ambassador to Ukraine, testify, and George Kent, deputy assistant secretary in the European and Eurasian Bureau at the U.S. Department of State. And so what were your big takeaways? So I think undoubtedly the first and most interesting detail to come out of that hearing was Ambassador Taylor saying that he learned from a staffer of his who would have overheard a conversation between President Trump and his ambassador to the European Union talking about pressing Ukraine for essentially what the president wanted,

which was an investigation into Joe Biden's son. Ambassador Sondland told President Trump the Ukrainians were ready to move forward. Following the call with President Trump, the member of my staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about ukraine ambassador solon responded that president trump cares more about the investigations of biden which giuliani was pressing for and that was that was to me the big takeaway from the first the first televised hearing and and why was this such a big deal one of the reasons it's an interesting development is the white house has thrown a whole bunch of arguments at the wall about why this is no big deal why this this investigation is a sham one of those arguments

is the american national interest we wanted ukraine to clean up its corruption and in the process of cleaning up that corruption we wanted them to look into this energy company which happened to have the son of my possible 2020 election opponent on the board. I don't care about Biden's campaign, but I do care about corruption. His campaign, that's up to him. Politics, that's up to them. I don't care about politics. Well, this conversation, if it's accurate, what it would have revealed is that the president cared more about nailing Joe Biden than he cared about Ukraine.

And that's exactly, according to the testimony, what his ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, said of the president's state of mind. And like when we're talking about data points here for like the president, like the president's involvement in this, we now have the transcript where he asks the president of Ukraine for a favor and essentially asks him to investigate Joe Biden. He doesn't explicitly link U.S. aid to an investigation, but say Democrats, it's absolutely the implication. And now we have this, this testimony about this phone call, right? Yeah. You know, I was chatting with someone who was an expert on the Watergate impeachment process, gives lectures about it. He says what's different in this case is we started off with a smoking gun.

You know, there's a transcript of the president saying, I need you to do me a favor. And that favor happens to be, you know, two different things having to do with American domestic politics. And then you'll get the money that Congress has mandated. Right. So, you know, in the case of Watergate, you have all these allegations, and you build up to the tape. The way to handle this now is for us to have Walters call Pat Gray and just say, stay the hell out of this.

In this case, we have President Trump in a transcript, and now we have additional data points. Apparently, there was a second witness to this conversation between Trump and Sondland. So it's pretty clear to most people, most people of good faith, and including, I think, most Republicans, that the president did want something in exchange for delivering the aid to Ukraine that Congress had voted on. And, you know, another thing I noticed on Wednesday is that there was a bunch of testimony, you know, essentially recounting

conversations that made it seem like Ukraine was also feeling this pressure, right? Absolutely. And that's one of the reasons Toronto came up a couple of times in the testimony. Yes, Toronto made a bunch of cameos. I'm from Montreal, and I resent the fact that Toronto ends up nudging its way into every conversation. However... Before President Zelensky joined the call, Ambassador Volker separately told the U.S. participants that he, Ambassador Volker, planned to be explicit

with President Zelensky in a one-on-one meeting in Toronto on July 2nd. So you guys ended up in this story over there in Toronto because President Zelensky went to a conference organized by Canada. It's an annual Ukraine reform conference. Happy Canada Day. And this was at the height of that moment where Ukraine felt some pressure to open investigations. Now, the president will point out, President Trump will point out that President Zelensky says he never felt pressure. I think, and you read it, that nobody pushed me.

In other words, no pressure. But, you know, based on the back-channel conversations that are being reported now in the testimony, there obviously was some feeling of some pressure to announce an investigation into Joe Biden's sons' company. Right, right. And this is according to the testimony from these two guys that we heard. Yeah, and one of those conversations was in Toronto.

Yeah. In that meeting, Ambassador Volker planned to make clear what President Zelensky should do to get the White House meeting. I did not understand what this meant, but Ambassador Volker said he would relay that President Trump wanted to see rule of law, transparency, but also specifically cooperation on investigations to get to the bottom of things.

And so, look, both sides here are spinning narratives, right, about why this is a big deal or not such a big deal. And so what what did we start to see on Wednesday? So we started to see Republicans try to muddy the waters by casting doubt on every conceivable aspect they could. One is that this conversation, these conversations were hearsay. I now recognize ranking member Nunes for any remarks you may wish to make. Officials alarm at the president's actions was typically based on second-hand, third-hand, and even fourth-hand rumors and innuendo. Now, in the case of Sondland and Trump, overheard by now two, apparently, witnesses,

I suppose it is hearsay. But the transcript in which the president says, I need a favor from you, and again, that favor is, you know, to look into the 2016 election and then look into the son of the potential opponent in 2020. Well, that's I don't know how you call that hearsay. And that's anyway. So that's it's fascinating that another thing the Republicans have continued to talk about is this whistleblower.

The staff of the Democrats on this committee had direct discussions with the whistleblower before his or her complaint was submitted to the inspector general. Republicans can't get a full account of these contacts because Democrats broke their promise to have the whistleblower testify to this committee. Who's the whistleblower? We need to know who this person is, what his agenda is. And what Democrats are saying is that's another red herring. Who cares who the whistleblower is? Who cares if he's got an agenda against you you've confirmed what he said you know but the republicans are also arguing that you know the president hasn't done anything wrong here like you the ukraine actually did end up getting this aid and um the ukraine did not end up investigating biden this spectacle is doing great damage to our country. It's nothing more than an impeachment process in search of a crime. Yeah, and that's, I think, ultimately, look, Republicans are not

going to remove Donald Trump from office. I mean, it would take, you know, the old joke that he made. They say, I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? That's not true about independents and other Americans, but, you know, among Republicans, he's lost very little support and he's not going to lose it in a few weeks and months. The idea that 20 Republican senators will impeach him and remove him from office after zero Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to start this process is inconceivable. But do you think that's the case? Because, look, like we didn't know about this phone call

until a couple of days ago, right? So I get your point that no Republicans in the House wanted to start this impeachment process in the first place. But is it possible that new evidence will be unearthed throughout this process that might change the public opinion and therefore change the position of lawmakers? Look, I could tell you what I think it would take for 20 Republican senators to turn on President Trump, but I probably wouldn't want to say it on the radio. All right. It's it's it. I just cannot imagine a universe in which it happens. And the reason I say that, in addition to the way Republicans have reacted to this from the very beginning, is just what the polling says is 10% of Republican voters

want Trump removed. But not only that, Republican voters would be less likely to vote for a member of Congress who votes for impeachment. What does that mean? These people live, these members of Congress live in fear of being primaried. And they know, essentially, that turning on the president is an act of political suicide in the lead-up to a Republican primary. Okay, so that is the landscape right now. So we've got this testimony on day one. We've got testimony of this phone call. Any other big highlights that stuck out to you from Wednesday before we move on?

Because I want to unpack a little bit more of what you just said. Yeah, so I think what was interesting is a lot of the excuses. What I wanted to draw attention to was something that you raised that, you know, Republicans are saying, well, the money did go to Ukraine. Joe Biden wasn't investigated. And that's true. And Republicans are looking for any reason to give the president a pass here. And that what you just said earlier gives them that excuse. They'll be able to say, look, maybe he shouldn't have done it.

Maybe he shouldn't have said it that way. Maybe we don't want to do this kind of stuff in the future. But what matters here is, you know, it didn't happen. To which Democrats are going to say, and most people, I think, are going to say, wait a second, you don't attempt to commit a crime and say, well, I didn't succeed, so, you know, give me a pass here.

I think it may be a flimsy argument, but it might be all that Republicans need don't attempt to commit a crime and say, well, I didn't succeed. So, you know, give me a pass here. I think it may be a flimsy argument, but it might be all that Republicans need to say, let's just can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. So look, like you've been pretty clear here that right now the Republicans are entrenched, right? It's going to be difficult. It seems like an insurmountable task to win Republicans over.

But I want to talk to you about the purpose of these hearings from the Democrats' perspective. You know, why have they made them public? Why are they televised? Like, why is all of this happening? Two reasons, politics and principle. Like, why is all of this happening? Two reasons, politics and principle. I mean, look, I'm not saying there is a 0% chance that they will succeed in removing President Trump.

I think it's very close to zero, but it's not zero. So, I mean, there's one reason. That's one reason to potentially try this. And also, if Trump does get impeached by the House of Representatives and survives a trial in the Senate and runs for re-election, he would be the first major party nominee, the first candidate for president in history to run with an impeachment on his track record. He'd be the third impeached president in history, the first to actually run for a major party again. So that's the first thing. The second thing has to do with principle. And I think, you know, we're probably going to get into the history of impeachment a little bit, but... We are. and I think you know we're probably going to get into the history of impeachment a little bit but we are yeah well the idea that if you just let a president say I'm going to use the funds appropriated by congress and the power of the united states and the weakness of neighbors on

the doorstep of russia or other hostile countries around the world I'm going to use all of these factors to squeeze intelligence agencies and justice departments everywhere on Earth to crush my political opponents at home. Your republic's in big trouble. OK, is it fair for me to say that the purpose, too, of holding these public hearings is to try to win public opinion, too, right? You're absolutely right, Jamie. Either it swings so many hearts and minds that President Trump gets removed from office, or it swings just enough hearts and minds that it could affect next year's election. It's ultimately a political thing. I mean, they didn't need to hold these hearings in public.

They didn't need to hold hearings at all. They chose to do this after having gathered the testimony in private. Right. They've been doing all this stuff in private. Exactly. Because it's a political affair. And this is something that I think is an important point to keep in mind. Exactly, because it's a political affair. And this is something that I think is an important point to keep in mind. Richard Nixon, during Watergate, made a very relevant observation. He said, whoever wins the public relations battle will win the legal battle. And that's absolutely true, because impeachment is not a court trial. It's a political process. Okay, so you just did that segue perfectly for me. Like, let's talk about the other impeachment processes that we've seen. And let's talk about Nixon. You know, the fact that Republicans at first were dead set against impeaching Richard Nixon. But this is what I want to get into with you, because at the beginning of this conversation, you've seemed so hellbent on the idea that the Republicans are probably not going to budge when it comes to Trump. But we did see the Republicans budge when it came to Nixon, right? Like, they moved over time. Well, they moved big time. In the summer of 1973,

when televised hearings began, there were less than half the same number of Americans who wanted to impeach President Nixon as the number who want to impeach Donald Trump today. Okay. More than double support for impeaching today. That includes on the Republican side, on the Republican side in 1973, it took months and months and months before support for impeachment cracked double digits. So how did that happen? A few different things happened. The case against Nixon started to grow. Evidence started to build up. He fired the special prosecutor, which Trump did not do. He wanted to. Well, he fired the head of the FBI.

But, yeah, so Nixon does the infamous Saturday Night Massacre. He starts mowing down the Justice Department until he could get rid of the special prosecutor. Because of the president's action, the attorney general has resigned. Richardson's deputy, William Ruckelshaus, has been fired. And half an hour after the special Watergate prosecutor had been fired, agents of the FBI, acting at the direction of the White House, sealed off the offices of the special prosecutor, the offices of the attorney general, and the offices of the deputy attorney general. That happened. Data points start to accumulate that are concriminating to him. More than 50,000 telegrams poured in on Capitol Hill

today. Most of them demanded impeaching Mr. Nixon. These come from Republicans and businessmen and people, most of whom begin their statement by saying, I've supported the President, I've never believed in impeachment. And I think a couple other things happened, which are quite relevant. The economy starts to sour. There I think a couple other things happen, which are quite relevant. The economy starts to sour. There'd been a string of strong economic quarters. Economy starts to turn. Now, you know, when the economy starts to get bad, the president becomes less popular. Absolutely. Second thing that happened, I think it's relevant that the smoking gun tape comes out,

which is exceptionally damning. exceptionally damning. And this is like essentially a tape where Nixon is heard basically like trying to order the FBI to back off the investigation, the Watergate investigation, which is like this June 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office building. It began before dawn Saturday when five intruders were captured by police inside the offices of the committee in Washington. The five men carried cameras and apparently had planted electronic bugs. Mr. Nixon says emphatically that the White House is in no way involved. Yeah, he had an entire ecosystem of dirty tricks happening under his White House, right?

Just basically break-ins and buggings and dirty money and all kinds of stuff. So one of the things that he was overheard on this taping system doing was speculating with his, well, not speculating, ordering his staff to say, why don't we get the CIA to tell the FBI to back off? Because one of the Watergate burglars is a former CIA agent, and will say that, oh, if you guys look into this, you're going to kick up some information about the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. What we can say is this is a sort of comedy of errors.

This is our hell without an end to it. The president believes it's going to open a whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. So basically trying to use the CIA to take political heat off him. Right. Super damning. Okay. So let's damning. Okay. And okay, so let's talk about Bill Clinton. This is the other impeachment inquiry in the late 90s. And how do you think today's inquiry compares to that? Because this is a case where, you know, ultimately, they didn't have the same kind of public support that existed for Nixon's impeachment.

No. And I think one of the arguments that the Clinton team made at the time, successfully, I think, was that this was an invasion of his privacy. Now, he committed a whole bunch of disgraceful acts, whether it's, you know, taking advantage of an intern, whether it's lying under oath, a whole bunch of things that landed him in legal trouble. lying under oath, a whole bunch of things that landed him in legal trouble. But the case gets to the heart of what impeachment is supposed to be and why it was introduced in the U.S. Constitution. The whole point of having the impeachment stick inside the American Constitution

is to punish and hold back chief executives and any federal officer who abuses his or her authority and to accumulate power through abuse of authority. And in the case of Richard Nixon, he was using, you know, his office to go to tell the CIA to tell the FBI to back off a police probe that could have hurt him. Right. And you can make the argument that in the case of Donald Trump, like allegedly, if you believe that this is true, he was using his office for political gains to dig up dirt on his opponent. This sort of also goes to the heart of it.

Yeah, to help him get reelected. Whereas Bill Clinton, another thing I don't want to get into deep details on the radio, was he was trying to cover up a very different act. Right. His sex life, essentially. Exactly. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never. Indeed, I did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong.

Alex, tell me a little bit more about why this provision exists in the first place. You know, like I couldn't help but notice on Wednesday, Adam Schiff, Democrat, starts his opening statements with a quote from Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of a country America was to become. A republic, he answered, if you can keep it. I'm glad you asked that. It's a great question. That quote cuts right to the heart of why the impeachment provision exists in the U.S. Constitution. So you take yourself back to 1787.

The United States had just fought this revolutionary war against the king. They started to consider him a tyrant. The United States fights the revolutionary war. They're not happy with the way the system of governance is working. They said, we need a constitution. This is Hamilton, the musical. Exactly.

What are you waiting for? What do you stall for? What? We won the war. What was it all for? Do you support this constitution? Of course. Then defend it.

So they come in and say, okay, let's come up, let's design this Constitution, which they do in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia. And they debate this provision that would allow future presidents, successors to George Washington, or to prevent them from ever becoming another George III. I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love. And they debate how far they want to go in allowing this impeachment provision to be wielded as a stick. On the one hand, they start off with, you know, somebody proposes making maladministration, is the word they used at the time, grounds for impeachment. Which are basically being, you know, being a bad president.

If you stink as president, we can get rid of you. And they say, well, you know, that's a little bit too broad. We've got to find something a little narrower. And then they say, okay, well, what about bribery, corruption, and treason? And then they say, well, that's a little bit too narrow. You've got to be able to remove someone from abusing their authority in some other way. And they settle on this idea of high crimes and misdemeanors, which was understood to mean abusing the power of the office and undermining the republic. So at the end of this process, Benjamin Franklin leaves Constitution Hall in Philadelphia, walks outside, and a woman asks him, I don't even know if this story is apocryphal, but it's certainly a piece of American historical lore. A woman asks Benjamin

Franklin, so have you settled on a monarchy or a republic? And he apparently turns to this woman and says, a republic, if you can keep it. And the point of that being, it is the responsibility of every successive generation to preserve this fragile democracy by holding abuses of power in check. Alex, that was a very nice history lesson. Thank you. Okay, so a second hearing is set for today with Marie Yovanovitch. She was ousted from her post as U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine in the spring. And do we have any sense of anything we can expect to hear today? Yeah, this will be, I think, pretty gripping day of testimony. You know, I'm not sure whether the testimony will be more damning than the first day's testimony, but I think it'll be more touching. Maria Ivanovich was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was removed essentially because

she wouldn't play along with this idea of helping Rudy Giuliani and company. And she had quite a poignant series of exchanges in her closed door testimony, including one exchange where she describes how she was fired. And a State Department official told her, you got to get on the next plane, like get out of Kiev now, get home because you're in trouble and i don't think i can protect you you know it sounds ominous but what he meant was when he was interpreted to mean was the president you know he might start trash talking you on twitter and that's not a good way to end your posting let's just get out of there and i think she was apparently visibly moved during this testimony and And we might see somebody sharing a story about personal pain

and anguish when you're trying to do the right thing, in her opinion, and she's being pushed to do something unethical by her supervisors. Okay, so definitely something to watch over today. Alex Panetta, thank you for this conversation. My pleasure. from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show is produced by Imogen Burchard, Elaine Chao, Shannon Higgins, and Ashley Mack. A big thank you this week to Sylvain Gilchrist. Derek Vanderwyk is our sound designer. Our music is by Joseph Chavison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of Frontburner is Nick McCabe-Locos.

Thanks so much for listening and see you all next week.