The NPR Politics Podcast - A Few Republicans And The American Public: Democrats Target Their Impeachment Message

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

On the second day of their opening arguments in the Senate impeachment trial, Democratic managers honed their case. They hope to persuade a narrow band of Republican senators to support the introduction of new evidence and witnesses.And some Republicans have begun to voice concerns about the White House legal team's approach to the trial. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he wants the team to respond directly to claims made by the Democratic side.This episode: campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and congressional editor Deirdre Walsh.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, real quick before we start the show, we have some news. We have a live show coming up in Des Moines, Iowa later this month on January 31st. It's going to be an exciting time in Iowa right before the Democratic caucuses. To get your tickets, head over to nprpresents.org. Okay, enjoy the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It is 721 Eastern on Thursday, January 23rd. And I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Deirdre Walsh, congressional editor. Today was the third day of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. The Senate will convene as a court of impeachment. Please join me in

reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. That right there is Chief Justice John Roberts leading the Senate in the Pledge of Allegiance, which was notable because it was the last time for hours and hours that senators were allowed to talk out loud. Instead, they spent the day listening to the second day of arguments from the Democratic impeachment managers making their case as to why President Trump should be removed from office. One of those managers, Democrat Adam Schiff, joked about how much he appreciated the senator's silence. I'm not sure the chief justice is fully aware of just how rare it is, how extraordinary it is for the House members to be able to command the

attention of senators sitting silently for hours or even for minutes for that matter. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the morning starts out every day with the sergeant at arms warning you that if you don't, you will be in prison. So far this week, no senators have been arrested. They all did do a lot of listening, though, to Schiff and his fellow managers making their case today. Representative Jerry Nadler was one of the people making those arguments. A president who uses his office to ask for, or even worse, to compel foreign nations to meddle in our elections,

is a president who attacks the very foundation of our liberty. That is a grave abuse of power. So today's focus was on the abuse of power article of impeachment about that phone call with Zelensky and about the withholding of the meeting and also the question of withholding the military aid in exchange for them investigating the Bidens. You know, in some ways, although they were making their arguments for the removal of the president of the United States from office, they were also making a pre-buttle to the arguments that we can expect to hear from President Trump's legal team down the line. So they were trying to make the case that when President Trump asked President Zelensky of Ukraine and others in the Ukrainian government asked for investigations into Vice President Joe Biden, asked that those investigations be announced in a public way, that this wasn't official U.S. policy. This was the president of the United States directing actions, asking a foreign government to do something that was for his own personal benefit, not for the public good.

Right. And I think the impeachment managers were very attuned to the fact that they know that members of the president's defense team, like Alan Dershowitz, have already been out in public saying none of this was a crime. You may not agree with what the president did. And a lot of senators have said that, but they say it doesn't approach the level of an impeachable offense or crime. So I think what members of the managers team were trying to do today was say, look, listen, it doesn't have to be a crime. The president was using his official role in leveraging a political investigation on a meeting. And that's that's something that he did as president of the United States. And there was a really notable moment today when we've talked about how the Democrats have been going to the videotape a lot, playing snippets of testimony, playing snippets of the

president. They went way back to the 1999 impeachment trial of President Clinton to play a clip of another House impeachment manager at the time, one now Senator Lindsey Graham, making this point about Bill Clinton. What's a high crime? How about if an important person hurt somebody of low means? It's not very scholarly, but I think it's the truth. I think that's what they meant by high crimes. Doesn't even have to be a crime. Which is exactly opposite the argument that Graham and the other allies of President Trump and especially the president's lawyers are going to be making that, you know, not only did the president do nothing wrong, but even if he did abuse power, that isn't a crime and therefore that isn't impeachable. That led to the House impeachment

managers going back to the founders again. There have been a lot of times where the impeachment managers have gone back to the intent of the founders as they were writing the Constitution. Since President George Washington took office in 1789, no president has abused his power in this way. Let me say that again. No president has ever used his office to compel a foreign nation to help him cheat in our elections. What we've seen in the Senate today shows what we saw in the House. There really isn't a feeling that senators need to be consistent with their past positions on this. That's really a key theme in Congress sometimes.

True. I mean, and Democrats haven't been consistent in the positions they took during the Clinton impeachment trial compared to the ones that they're taking in the Trump impeachment trial. Well, Deidre, I want to go back to that clip of 1999 Lindsey Graham. Sounded a lot more folksy than he does today, but that 1999 Lindsey Graham, because that gets to a point we've talked about the past few days, and that's are the House impeachment managers earnestly trying to make a case to convince Senate Republicans to vote to remove Trump for office? Or are they talking past those senators and speaking more to the public, people who may be watching or listening to this trial? Well, the lead impeachment manager, Adam Schiff, admitted yesterday that his task is to make the arguments to two different audiences, to the Senate and to the American people. And so he obviously is staring at 100 senators on the floor every day, all day long. But he knows that the cameras are there. And this is an event that's

being carried live on multiple networks and radio outlets outlets and that he's trying to remind the public about what the president did, why it amounts to an abuse of power, an impeachable offense, and have the public weigh in with their lawmakers. And there's sort of this constant effort to remind the public that there are things they still don't know and that there's a reason that they need to call witnesses and ask for more documents. And on the witnesses, have we seen any signs yet? I know we've talked a lot about how the vote on whether or not to call witnesses will come after the opening statements and questions for senators. But usually in the Senate, if there is some sort of deal to take place, we usually get some evidence that a deal is in the making. There are sidebar meetings, there are conversations. Have we seen any sign at all that anything like that is underway?

Not really. There's been sort of minimal note passing on the Senate floor, some side conversations in the hallways. But what we typically see when there's a real deal in the works is a group of bipartisan senators. Sometimes it's six, sometimes it's eight. They tend to get named the gang of eight, the gang of 10, or whatever the number is. But there are usual suspects in this gang. There are people who you have an eye on because you've seen them make deals before. Right. And one of them is a key player in this whole impeachment trial. And that's Maine Senator Susan Collins. She's usually like one of the ringleaders in whatever the gang is. She's been in pretty much every bipartisan gang on meaningful negotiations on a variety of issues. But some of the senators

who you see try to spark those conversations have admitted in the last day or two that they're not really happening yet. And the Democrats who want to be part of any kind of deal are trying to give those Republicans some space to get to a place where they want to negotiate. And any sort of vote or deal would probably come early next week after we hear the opening arguments from the president's defenders and after this section of questions. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Who was Qasem Soleimani? And what exactly was his role in Iran? This week on ThruLine, how the assassinated Iranian general and the organization he represented have shaped the relationship between the US and Iran for decades. That's this week on ThruLine from NPR,

the podcast where we go back in time to understand the present. All right, we are back. And let's stick with this theme of two different audiences right now, because that can be a little awkward when you're making a presentation to two vastly different groups of people. What are some examples of talking to senators versus talking to the public that we've seen? Well, pre-trial, you see the House managers and Senate Democrats who aren't allowed to talk on the floor, go to cameras and make their case. Senator Schumer is one of those people who continually is making the argument that the public is watching. He said today more and more people are tuning in. And he argued that there is public support for this effort to subpoena witnesses and documents. It's almost like he was begging that small group of Senate moderates like Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, that, look, the public is with you, vote with us, and we can get some testimony from some of those folks.

And there is some polling to back up the idea that the public wants to see witnesses. There are new polls out that say something like 70 percent of the public, including many Republicans, think, yes, let's hear from John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney and some of these specific witnesses. In terms of supporting removal from office, it's, you know, it's been basically where it is, which is right around 50, 51 percent. Though Sue Davis made a good point in her story today that that aired on All Things things considered that when you look at the polling numbers of did the president do something wrong, they are much higher. Oh, it's like off the charts. Yeah. But getting back to the argument that the impeachment managers are making, there was an interesting moment when, you know, a lot of Senate Republicans are dismissing them out of hand saying we haven't heard anything new. They're not making their case, things like that. But going back to Lindsey Graham, who's, of course, an aggressive defender of President Trump, he made an interesting concession to reporters saying he thought Adam Schiff and co. were doing a good job. He's well-spoken, did a good job of creating a tapestry, taking bits and pieces of evidence and emails and giving a rhetorical flourish.

I think Lindsey Graham was trying to signal something to the president's defense team. You guys have some work ahead of you to dismantle and rebut all of those arguments that the managers are laying out. Have we gotten any indication of how Trump's defense team is viewing this and whether they're planning on changing their approach? There has been this sort of fascinating visual where the tables over by the Democratic impeachment managers, the House impeachment managers, the tables are covered with papers. And there are far fewer papers over on the side of the president's team. Jay Sekulow, one of the president's private attorneys, he said, you know, they are making this constitutional argument. We have constitutional scholars that don't agree with each other on everything, but they agree on the idea that this is not impeachable and the public

is going to hear those arguments. So that at least is what they're saying. I will also say that the rapid response team at the White House has been very active in responding to the arguments of the House managers and also pushing out on social media video, for instance, when the House impeachment managers were talking about a quid pro quo and Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the EU, saying that there was a quid pro quo, then they're pushing out video of Sondland saying, well, yes, but it wasn't specifically told to me in that way, or I just gathered that there was a quid pro quo. So I think that we might see some video in the end. So today focused on that first article of impeachment with the pressure and the official

acts related to the White House trying to get Ukraine to open this investigation. Of course, the trial is still going as we tape right now. So make sure to check out Up First for anything that happens overnight that changes the story. But Deirdre, tomorrow, the second article of impeachment, what can we expect to hear? Right. And that's obstruction of Congress. And I think what we will see is a familiar slide that we've seen sort of earlier on day one, where we see the list of administration officials, former administration officials that declined to cooperate with Congress and the argument from the managers that the White House stonewalled the House impeachment inquiry. And that's why the president is guilty of obstruction of Congress. I do think that the case they have to make on that article is a little bit

weaker than the one on abuse of power. Mostly because they didn't subpoena a lot of these people. Exactly. They didn't. They had the ability to go to court. They chose not to. Their argument was that it would take too long. But I think in terms of senators weighing whether or not to break with their party, the case is a little bit of a higher hurdle on obstruction of Congress than it will be on a piece of power. All right, that is a wrap for now. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow and on Saturday. Until then, you can keep up with all the latest news, all the twists and turns of this trial

at NPR.org and the NPR One app. We are also airing every single moment, gavel to gavel, of this Senate impeachment trial on your local public radio station. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh, congressional editor. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deirdre Walsh.