Stuff You Should Know - How Impeachment Works

Episode Date: January 4, 2018

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.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. How are you doing first? Let's get the pleasantries out of the way. I'm doing well and I wanna give a shout out at the head here

because just yesterday in real time, I went over to my in-laws' house for my grandmother-in-laws' 97th birthday. Happy birthday, Mary. Happy birthday, Mary. The lead general, the Stuff You Should Know 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 everyone chime in from where they are because she literally sits there and reads through like 600 comments from all over the world. Oh, that's cool. And it is like one of the best things for her. That's really great. It's really neat.

So anyway, we're over there and my father-in-law, Steve, who is the best dude, comes up to me and says, how about a show on impeachment? Yeah? And he didn't recommend, he knows better. He doesn't recommend shows, topics. And he went, how about one on impeachment? And I went, wow, Steve, that's a great idea.

And I said, well, why haven't we done that yet? Because it's 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 turns out, strange, act American style. I'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 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.

All right, Steve, good idea. For this idea. It's the summer of Steve. It's winter, although he's from Ohio, but now he's in Georgia, so it is like summer for him. I'm sure. All right, so Chuck, let's get down to this. Let's get down to impeachment.

Are we going in the wayback machine? Run off the bat here? Do you want to go back to 1868? You want to start there? Well, you know I do. Okay, well, let's get in the wayback machine then. Because you know, I loved me the spring of 1868. It was a good one.

Sure was. That's funny. You say that there's this really great short story from the 50s or 60s. I think it's like a horror short story called The Vintage Season. It's about these future travelers who in the future you can travel through time and find the perfect spring

or the perfect whatever. Oh, interesting. It's pretty good. Check it out, okay? All right, well, now let's get in the wayback machine. All right, let's fire it up. Okay, so remember we're invisible. We can do anything.

I know, I just booped Edmund Ross on the nose. Yeah, I just took off my shoes. Everyone's like, what's that on my nose and what's that in my nose? Right, so there's this dude, that dude you just bopped on the nose, Edmund Ross. Senator. He's a senator actually.

And he's kind of new. What is this? This is May of 1868. Just the previous July, he was appointed to his seat as the senator, the junior senator of Kansas. He had like some experience in newspapers and that was his jam. No real political experience.

And now all of the entire Senate is wondering, what is this guy going to do? We're right in the middle of an impeachment trial. The actually, the impeachment hearing of President Andrew Johnson, who is the successor of Abraham Lincoln, right? That's right. And so by December after the assassination

of Lincoln in April of 65, his own party was turning against him and saying, hey, we want to get this guy out of here. So let's, 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. His own party turned on him. Totally set up.

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 seceding and for the civil war. And Johnson was from Tennessee and wasn't having that. He vetoed a bill that would have given like basic civil rights to black Americans. He was against the 14th Amendment.

He decided it should be up to the states to figure out how they wanted to handle the post-slavery laws regardless of what effect that had 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 UK at fire that dude law. Why did, yeah, that's basically the gist of it. The tenure act, I believe, the tenure of office act. So you know when a 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? Right. So the 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, right? So what the radical Republicans did was pass a bill that said, if you hire somebody, if you appoint somebody, we get to confirm them. If you try to remove somebody, we have to approve that as well. And again, it was just flew in the face of the constitution as we know it.

And right away, Andrew Johnson fired his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton. And he was impeached right out of the gate. 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 met all the Obama employees and was like, oh, so like,

how many of these people are gonna be staying on? 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 he just bought a company and he's like, oh, how many people

are gonna be staying around? Oh my. Yeah. So now Andrew Johnson is impeached. He's broken a law that Congress had just passed and they've impeached him. So what's going on? Well, here's the deal at the time.

And it's kind of like this now to a certain degree, but everybody knew how everyone was gonna vote ahead of time, except for him. So basically- Except for Ross, right? Yeah, basically everybody knew the outcome, what the outcome was gonna 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 just sitting there, apparently just shredding this paper up as they were going around the room and everyone was saying, guilty or not guilty, because you need two thirds of the Senate vote or a super majority 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 sighed and this article points out, they don't know if it was a sigh of relief or upset, probably both depending on which side of the aisle you were on.

Yeah, the whole things were counted really well in this book called Impeached by the historian, David O. Stewart, which I think where this guy got this, but he does a good job like getting to the heart of the matter, which was this guy, Edmund 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 that since then. I've read a couple of articles that are like, actually he was just looking out for himself. Johnson was his benefactor and had basically appointed him

and 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, this guy is your hero because he did save the constitution with that one vote. That's right.

So what took place was an impeachment proceeding and that one was awfully close. That was the first impeachment proceeding of a US president, but that would not be the last. There's been three more or two more presidents, three total that have faced down the impeachment gun and there've been varying results, but as yet, there has never been a president

that was successfully convicted once they've been impeached because impeachment is not convictions, a couple of different things. You wanna take a break and then get into it? Yeah, cause I don't wanna confuse people right off 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 podcast or potty break, be back right after this. If you wanna know, then you're in luck, just listen up to Josh and Chuck, stuff you should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper

cause you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself,

what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right, should we talk about French and Latin real quick? Yes. Because the roots of words are always fun to talk about. The French word, impertiaire, means to prevent, related to the English word impede,

and both originally derived from the Latin term, impedecaire. Man, your French is just so romantic. And that means to fetter. So basically, what impeachment root-wise means is to put a stop to movement of something. In this case, and not always the presidents, we'll see. Any, was it any elected official?

Any civil officers what they finally landed on. But yeah, like a federal official, somebody who is appointed by the president, the president, the vice president, judges typically, but not senators or Congress people. They can just be run out of town on a bail of hay. There's the, yeah, basically, yeah. Man, once you see that bail of hay coming,

and you know that it tolls for thee. You know the tar is right behind it. That's a bad day for you. All right, so the origins of impeachment, though, pre-United States. So we're talking British legal history here. There's a dude named T. F. T. Plunkett, Plucknit. Interesting.

Plucknit. He's a 1940s historian. I guess so. I could have sworn it was Plucknit. So T. F. T. Plucknit says that 14th century parliament was the first time impeachment came about. And during that time, there were a couple of different cases over an 11-year period that had a pretty big shift

from one to the next that would kind of frame how impeachment works. Right, so at the time, back then in the 14th century, right, the king could appoint, there were all manner of 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. And as long as you had the king's favor, there was nothing anyone could do. So 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 and executed for arranging the murder of King Edward II.

Yeah, that counts. And then Chief Justice Willoughby, who was accused of corruption and tried. 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 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? The House of Commons were the ones who would take it upon themselves to say,

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 revolutionary 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 is this role, this office of the presidency, which is a very strong executive ruler, a king almost.

And 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, it ended up being very important, but it was almost an afterthought in how they went about it. Because upfront, they weren't saying, hey, we need to really 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, without impeachment, you know what? The only other thing we can do is,

if we get a bad president, shoot him in the head. And they went, oh, well, that won't do. Bulley, bully to that. So maybe we should write something down. I know we're all tired. We've been working on this document for 30, 45 minutes. They had fatigue. So they ended up saying over, what, 180 words.

I think it was actually less than that. I don't know where this guy came up with that, yeah. All right, well, seven sentences. No, it's even less than that. Really? Yeah. Oh, good lord. I count of four run-on sentences, two of which included

colons. But I mean, it's a sentence, four sentences. And 103 words says Microsoft Word. Really? Yeah. Well, they didn't have Microsoft Word back then. All right, so regardless of how long it was, it was short. And it was, here's the thing, it was

written in a very vague language, which ended up being very troublesome. Because they weren't quite sure. I think they didn't want to hem themselves in too much. Yeah. Is my feeling on exactly what it would take to start this process. So initially, they called it, it was a George Mason

call it maladministration. Right. In other words, just being a bad president. Yeah, and they took that out. There was a couple of reasons why. They said, no, this is 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. Right. James Madison at the very least said, this is just really unclear as to what this can 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. Yeah. But they're still like her saying, no, this isn't,

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 treasonous act. So maybe we need to add something. So that's when he came up with maladministration that said, no, no, that's stupid.

But then they came up with something else. Yeah. He finally said, because again, they didn't want to be hindered 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 impeachment for. So he finally said, all right, good god.

It's late. What about high crimes and misdemeanors? And then we're, oh, perfect. Yeah, that's great. Well, no one even knows what it means. It'll be perfect. What's funny is no one now knows what it means, but apparently it was quite clear what it meant at the time.

Oh, really? Yeah. Supposedly high crime, it doesn't mean like, oh my god, that's such a huge crime. Or I'm super stubborn. Right. Yeah. They did grow hemp, by the way.

Yes. But a high crime or a high misdemeanor is a type of crime that can only be committed by a high person, AKA an elected or federal official. Yeah, but it's still just a crime or a misdemeanor, like I think it's still vague. So later scholars have interpreted high crimes and misdemeanors to mean 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. And that the crimes part that throws people off, a high crime can be, it doesn't have to be an actual crime. 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 to get at here was that the president or the vice president or whoever

was being impeached had betrayed the public trust, had used their elected position, their high position, in a way that rendered them unfit to serve any longer. They could not be trusted any longer. They had proven themselves a lech, a terrible person, and had discharged their duties as president in a malodorous way. Said the guy whose shoes are off in Congress.

That cleared the room, man, pretty quick. Nice work. It's like Elizabeth Warren taking to the podium. Right, when she takes her shoes off. People clear out of there. She's had onions for lunch. That lady will just eat a whole onion raw. Have you ever seen it?

It's amazing. Where did I see that recently? A whole onion raw? No, it was like a movie or something. Oh, I know what it was. The movie, the kid was hungover, and the parent comes in the next morning, and they're like, here, 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's hangover. That was the full name. Back to the future, too, Marty's hangover. Colon, the onion.

So here's the deal, though, 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 they feel that it is subverting the office of the president. Right.

That's the general interpretation. But again, they didn't say high crimes and misdemeanors, asterisks, and then define that. So it's open to interpretation. Yes. And it still is today, which is why, unless you are a president or a vice president, and have been actually caught accepting bribes

or committing treason, there's a lot of wiggle room for you to get out of this. Yeah, and impeachment doesn't send you to jail. You can then be tried for treason, and that would continue to jail. Yeah, it 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 you have to leave it to the regular courts to try and punish them if it's an actual crime separately. That's different. Right. But it's weird because the impeachment processes, we'll see, is very much like a... Trial.

A kangaroo court trial, basically. Well, let's go and talk about it. OK. So if you're impeached, 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 in a different political party than your own, usually. Yes, you would have to be pretty bad for your own party to be the ones who drew up the Articles of Impeachment to start, right? Correct. So with the Articles of Impeachment, it can be introduced typically these days from what I understand, there's a 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 an individual representative can come up with the Articles of Impeachment himself or herself and introduce it on the House floor to be voted one way or another, which just happened, actually, at the beginning of December.

Yes. A lone representative, Al King, I think, from Texas, introduced Articles of Impeachment, and it got voted down. So you can do it yourself as just a lone dude or a dude-ess. But normally, it's the judiciary committee, I think, because the parties tend to try to keep a stranglehold on stuff like that. Yeah, and even with this case, the Democrats were like,

easy, easy, Al. Right. Just settle down, we're going to get there. But Al was like, I hate him so much. Too early. Too early, Al. Stand down. So as Al stalks off, but the process continues, apparently,

under more normal circumstances. But he was a great example that 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. And now, Trump, he wasn't impeached, but he's had Articles of Impeachment brought up

against him, which is 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, a president will be impeached with multiple Articles of Impeachment,

and the House is forced to vote on each one. Yeah. So if you have like five, that means there's five chances that that president can be impeached, depending on the evidence. And so 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.

And House, what do you think? And then the House will vote on it. That was Al Green, by the way, not Al King. Oh, sorry. It was 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 Al King. Right, sure. So if the vote gets the majority, then the president is officially impeached to that point. Yeah, and it's just a simple majority, 51%. Yeah, in the House. And that means that basically that means it's like a criminal indictment,

if we're going to be comparing it to the civilian legal standard. So you are 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 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 insert as far as how to go about this. So there aren't any hard and fast rules. So whenever this has happened, they're kind of just like, all right, how do you want to do this?

Right. We're not going to have prosecutors. We're going to have what we call managers, which is a weird word, for sure. But they're going to act as prosecutors, and they're going to be called to argue the case before the Senate. And these are members of the House

who are managing the impeachment proceedings in the Senate on behalf of the House. Correct. Because the House has said, we the House think this president should be removed, and now we're going to 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 is.

You want to hear something kind of fun? What? Yeah. My uncle was a manager for Clinton's impeachment trial. No. Bob Barr's your uncle? No, not Bob Barr. There are several managers.

My uncle, Ed Bryant. Really? Yeah, I've talked about it before. He's a Republican congressman from Tennessee, and he was one of the managers because he was an attorney and a former Army judge advocate general and judge advocate general. Is that what he was?

Jag. Was he a jag? Well, that's what it stands for. I know, but I can't remember now, and maybe I'm just thinking of the TV show. But he held the legal position in the Army, and then was one of the Navy, I think, are the Jags, right? Oh, I don't know.

He was in the Army, though. OK, go ahead. But he was one of the managers in the Clinton impeachment. That is fascinating. He was in the Clinton trial, and I got to say, Uncle Ed and I are politically divergent. But he's a good dude and an honest, kind man, I can say that for sure.

So I was always proud of him as a person, even though he didn't see eye to eye politically. But he was such a good guy that Monica Lewinsky requested him personally to depose her because he was just regarded as one of the good guys and one of the fair, like decent humans. So here's the guy who deposed Monica Lewinsky for the Clinton impeachment trial.

My father's brother. He needs a t-shirt that says that, man. You're right. That's crazy. And oh, isn't it? Wow. So how does he feel about it? Because most, I shouldn't say most,

a significant number of legal scholars and historians look back at that and the Andrew Johnson one and say those 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. And I'm sure he would spill it, you know. Conference me in. Yeah, I'll do that. OK. I'll like it the next Christmas. I'll be like, yeah, Uncle Eddie, just hold on a minute.

I'm just going to put this phone down next to you. And don't pay attention to that picture of Josh as his avatar. And I'll be like, did you get my t-shirt I sent you? Yeah, pretty interesting. So that's fascinating. I know, right? So at any rate, the managers are there arguing the case for the Senate, who acts as jury that are also

making up the rules as they go. And 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 is done. Yeah, and then the vice president takes over. And that's that.

You probably can't hold a federal office again after that either, although I don't think it's automatic. Right. So let's, shall we take a break? Yeah. All right, let's take a break. And we've already talked about Johnson. We'll talk a little bit more about Mr. Bill Clinton

and President Richard Milhouse Nixon, right after this. If you want to know, then you're in luck. And just listen up to Josh and Chuck, stuff you should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts

flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted

Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place,

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. OK, Chuck.

Yes. So like you said, we talked about Johnson. He got off by one vote, man. That must have been so tense. Yeah. 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 Milhouse Nixon. It was a long break in between. Yeah, over 100 years, like 104 years, I think, something like that. So Nixon is getting his own episode. We're doing a Watergate episode, hopefully in the not too distant future.

For sure. Such a fascinating case. Yeah, man. So the whole premise of what Nixon was eventually moved out of office for, 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 went, this was just in a few weeks, he won the election by an enormous margin. The electoral college vote was 520 Nixon, 17 McGovern, 17,

520 to 17. That's the landslide that he won re-election with. And within a few weeks, 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 some operatives from the White House broke into democratic headquarters in the Watergate Hotel and were trying to replace the phone

tap that they had on the phone. And it turned out that it was traced back to the White House. The president probably had involvement. That's bad enough. But the cover-up is what ultimately led to Nixon being railroaded 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 resigned. And everyone went, oh, man. I know. We really wanted to impeach you. We brought the bail of hay and everything. I saw all the president's men again the other day

for the first time in a while. So great. Such a good movie. So Nixon was, he's a 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 $400,000 in taxes, which is like $2.6 million today,

which that's a substantial amount of money. Plus he was president when he failed to pay those taxes. So he didn't get, again, they didn't get to the point where they voted on the articles of impeachment. But that was one against him. Obstructing justice was one, using the office to obstruct justice was a big one. He had like a handpicked CIA task force that was trying

to 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 1972, up comes Clinton about 20, I think 26 years later. Wasn't it in 1998? I think yeah, 97, 98.

Well, it depends 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 did not get impeached because he did bad things in the White House with Monica Lewinsky. He was impeached because he perjured himself.

Very famously said, I did not have sexual relations with that woman. And that was good. Did Uncle, I'll bet Uncle, he does a good Clinton too. I doubt it. Yeah, I mean, I remember in college, and actually just post college, I remember Bill Clinton looking America in the eye

on television and lying to all of us, very disappointing. And he was the man in power who used that power to some people say take advantage of a younger coworker. Other people say, you know, it was a consensual relationship, but he was the president and she was a political junkie, so. Sure, and also, he also was accused of trying to get her to, she was a witness. Monica Lewinsky was a witness in a sexual harassment case

against him by Paula Jones. And 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. And so, if you look at it in that light, was he having that relationship with Lewinsky to influence her to lie to the jury, which makes it doubly worse,

somehow triply or quadruply worse even. So there was a lot of beef against him. I mean, the stink from that mess affected this most recent election, you know? Oh yeah, yeah, for sure, definitely. I mean, like the Clintons have a pretty bad rep still from that, among certain parties. Pretty extensive parties, I would say.

And earned, you know? I mean, I would remember being very upset that Bill Clinton lied to my face. Well, that's not why he was, he didn't perjure to the American people. He lied to a grand jury as well under oath. Oh yeah, but he said the same thing to the grand juries. He said to our faces.

But I remember feeling especially let down because he looked me in the eye, you know? Like when a president is facing camera and says something very seriously like that, they're talking to you, they're talking to their constituents. Like it's a personal relationship. I remember being just really upset about the whole thing. Well, okay.

I didn't, I don't think I felt quite like that. Oh, really? Yeah, I just assumed. I just assumed he was lying. Really? Yeah, he's president. Oh man, I believed him. I was much more naive in my younger days.

Well, I think it's sweet, Chuck. Yeah. That's slick willy always with the smooth talk. That's right, tricky dick and slick willy. We need to stop electing people with those nicknames. No, we're just asking for it. What about honorable Frank? Why did he ever get elected?

He doesn't have any campaign money. So, okay, so Clinton escaped, the vote was 50-50. The Senate vote. Yeah, yeah. So he was actually impeached like Andrew Johnson was and it did come up to vote. The articles of impeachment came up to vote and it was 50-50, which was pretty close to party lines.

I think five Republicans, five Democrats voted for impeachment and 10 Republicans voted against, I can't remember, but it was very close to party lines. It was 10 Republicans voted for quiddle, two of which are still there. Susan Collins of Maine, she was a brand new, either freshman or sophomore senator

and Richard Shelby of Alabama is still there. So they voted against the quiddle? They voted for a quiddle. Or they voted against impeachment, I should say. Yeah, yeah, they were one of the two of the 10 Republicans. So Clinton made it out and I was reading this, there's this really fascinating 538 blog about, I think it's called Will Trump Be Impeached.

And it's 538, so they've got all this data and everything to back up what they're saying. So they were saying one of the sure signs that an impeachment's probably not gonna go through is like how divided the parties are. If the parties are- Oh, within themselves? No, no, between the two.

Like if you're probably gonna have a party line vote, it's probably people aren't gonna defect enough to actually vote for impeachment, or if they do, they're not gonna defect enough to vote 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, maybe we can get this guy out of here and get Pence in there. And like, and commit, you know, what's it called on a ship? Mutiny? Commit mutiny. Yeah, it almost, I mean, with the introduction

of Pence out of nowhere, it definitely seemed like that was plan B from the party all along. Right. I would not be at all surprised if that actually happened. I don't think very many people would be surprised if that happened. But I saw that in that same 538 blog, there's like a betting odds website

that they cited that gave like even odds that Trump would not finish out his full four year term, which is just pretty significant, you know, 50, 50, 50 chance. Yeah. 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 you all along, it was the swamp, I couldn't drain it, now I'm a victim of it. I, man. So P.T. Barnum played by...

Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman. Uh-huh. Jared from Subway. Jared from Subway. And then now this one. If this goes through, just call me Nostrochukas from now on. Oh, man.

That's not bad. So there's... I have two t-shirts to buy now. There's a very 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 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 wanna go back to his cushy civilian life.

And then be a martyr, a political martyr, and say, yeah, I couldn't do what I wanted to do, so I'm a victim. So that's Chuck's call. You heard it here first. So Trump hasn't been impeached yet, but 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 news outlets were like, impeachment, people are actually talking about impeachment, it's 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 who knows what's gonna happen with Trump, but the chances of him actually being 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 this 60 people in the United States who have ever been impeached, I think it's even more than 60, and convicted, which is down to 15, all of those I believe were federal judges. Correct, they were, you name it, they were DUI drunks, or drunken court,

or tax evaders, or accepted bribes, or purging themselves. Like, yeah, federal judges have sort of carried the 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, the precedent? 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 what procedures were used and followed and what the rules were. So the impeachment of federal judges who were drunk on the bench are paving the groundwork for presidents to be impeached with, you know, impeached by.

And then there was 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 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 this other thing.

And it's basically like a vote of no confidence, which also comes from parliament as well. Interesting. Yeah. 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 on who will be the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. This is gonna happen in the midterms, but when Democratic Representative John Conyers stepped down over sexual harassment allegations a couple of weeks ago, they had to hold a special caucus for an election.

It's gonna happen tomorrow. And it looks like two people, either Jerry 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 what that means, in this article here, it's called the battle to lead

Trump's potential impeachment. They know what they're, it says they're signing up to be Trump's chief antagonist. But they also said, hey, listen, we're not gonna go in there and just start saying impeachment, impeachment. Like if this is ever going to happen, it's gotta 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 supporters out there that have turned on him because of something he's done. Well, yeah. Or else it'll be like what you said, where you've just proven everything the guy said

from the moment he started campaigning. Right, that they're just out to get 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, Nadler even said there's not much point in impeaching a president and having him acquitted in the Senate

because that's what happened 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, I mean, that's what I've read as well is that it's not looked upon as the finest moment in American legal history. Yeah, so we'll know the outcome tomorrow in real time.

And both of them are kind of on the same page as far as that goes. They're like, it needs to be something like legit worth impeaching a 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 out that he did obstruct anything, that would be a big deal. Well, two of the three presidents who have been impeached were had at least articles of impeachment that included obstruction against them. Yeah, but his attorneys are saying,

have literally said the president can't be 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 gonna go on record as saying that. They're saying they're above the law. I am the law. That's what it says.

How can I obstruct the law? I'm the law. A crush. And anyway, we should probably stop now. Yes. All right, well, if you wanna know more about impeachment, you can type that word into the internet and some really interesting stuff.

I mean, a lot of it is bone dry, but people are really into the legal history and constitutional interpretation. So you can find some pretty interesting articles all around the internet on stuff like this. So just give it a shot, see 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,

it's good to know how it all works. Exactly, exactly. You can impress your friends. Yeah, you could be like, they're never gonna get a super majority and your friends will be like, what did you just say? I don't know. What magic word was that?

What does this have to do with comic books? So since Chuck said comic books, it's time for listener mail. This is follow up on Cakes. Hey guys, listen to episode on Cakes. Thought you might like to know a little bit more about the color of red velvet cakes. And experience amateur baker who has tested

several red velvet recipes. Learned a few things. And will now mail some down to Josh and Chuck. 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, but it will be nothing like the red we have come to expect from red velvet cakes. Hmm.

Originally red velvet cakes for more of a rust color than the bright red we think of now. The cacao in the cake, cocoa? The tattoo. The tattoo on the cake also is minimal in comparison to a chocolate cake. Cocoa was originally added to cut the flour, create a silkier, less glutinous texture

rather than create a chocolate cake. Velvet cakes using vinegar. I guess that's where the velvet comes from. Using vinegar as a rising agent has a long tradition in American baking. And it's not reserved only for red velvet cakes. Also, you mentioned banana bread with some confusion over aged mushy bananas.

And a lot 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 bananas naturally sweeten as they ripe. Yeah, I didn't think about that either. Yeah, 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 on your teeth and I was like, oh my God, that's it, nailed it. Blah, blah, blah, baking, baking, baking. Nice. Who was that from? Diana, by the way, she says if you're not adding

chocolate chips to your banana nut bread, then you're doing it wrong. And then she says best wishes from Diana Garten. Thanks a lot, Diana, that's very nice of you. Please do send us some baked goods. Yes. I'm not joking at all. If you want to send us some baked goods

or just say hi or whatever, who cares? You can tweet to us at Josh on Clark or SYSK podcast. You can hang out with us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

visit howstuffworks.com. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance

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