The NPR Politics Podcast - Democrats Tell Senators A Conviction Could Prevent Future Violence

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

The House impeachment managers concluded their case against Donald Trump by characterizing a Senate conviction as a way to prevent of future violence — a warning to future presidents who might be also inclined to encourage violence. Tomorrow, the former president's defense team mounts their response.Follow our live coverage.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.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, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Nina Totenberg, and I cover the law. And it is 5.40 Eastern on Thursday, February 11th, and House Democrats wrapped up their presentation today in the second impeachment trial of President Trump. They made a lot of different arguments today, but the one I'd like to start out with and talk about is this idea that impeachment is not necessarily a punishment,

but a preventative step the Senate could take to prevent future violence. Here's the lead impeachment manager, Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. My dear colleagues, is there any political leader in this room who believes that if he is ever allowed by the Senate to get back into the Oval Office, Donald Trump would stop inciting violence to get his way? Would you bet the lives of more police officers on that? Would you bet the safety of your family on that? Would you bet the future of your democracy on that? Kelsey, let's start with this, because I think one reason this really jumped out to me was that this is in itself a political argument, isn't it?

This is trying to put some sort of stakes on the vote that senators will be taking at some point in the next few days. Well, right. I mean, this is a political trial. This is not a criminal trial. This is not a court in except for the fact that they turn themselves into a Senate court when they're doing impeachment. This is a political trial. This is not a court, except for the fact that they turn themselves into a Senate court when they're doing impeachment. This is a political proceeding. And Democrats repeatedly, it was kind of like their mantra, was that this is not a trial about punishing him. It is a trial about ensuring that no attack like that ever happens again. And their argument was that the only way to convey that to not only

Trump, but any future president, that the conduct that led to January 6 was not acceptable, is to go through impeachment. And they said that the act of impeachment, the act of conviction is just as important. Nina, did you think this was persuasive? Well, as a political matter, I think it was persuasive. That said, they're sort of between a rock and a hard place because even though they really were pretty concise about their presentation, it got repetitive. Now, they have a lot of the video and that's the compelling part, but the legal argument can sometimes get long. Yeah. And Kelsey, yesterday was really gripping, was really honestly disturbing to sit through for a lot of reasons. Chief among them, you know, this trial is happening at the scene of the crime. Senators are sitting there in the Senate chamber watching videos of people ransacking their desks and then hunting them down in the hallways. But we heard a lot of Senate Republicans say yesterday, that was a terrible day. I don't think it's directly connected to former President Trump.

So then the manager started off their arguments today, detailing how many people who have since been arrested said, I was there because the president told me to be there. Another Trump supporter who's been federally charged is Texas real estate agent Jennifer Ryan. Personally, I do not feel a sense of shame or guilt from my heart from what I was doing. I thought I was following my president. I thought I was following what we were called to do. He asked us to fly there. He asked us to be there. So I was doing what he asked us to do. Part of what they are arguing here is that as lead impeachment manager Raskin

framed it, that they called it a pattern of practice, that Trump went through a process of riling up his base and they used previous times that his supporters were incited to violence as evidence that Trump had done it before. And, you know, they basically said the incitement is clear because the rioters were admitting that they came to the Capitol because they believed they were doing it at the direction of the president. They showed video of people saying that in interviews and in the videos that they shot of themselves, Democrats were trying to connect those dots for senators in a way that it would make it very difficult for them to deny that fact. You know, as one of our reporters who was out there covering the Trump campaign in 2015 and 2016, it really jumped out to me how they went all the way back to that campaign, to those moments where there would be protesters and he would encourage the crowd or the security to rough people up and kind of going from that moment forward and how this kept happening and kept escalating. couple different points, the managers played video montages of either Republican members of the House or Republican governors condemning the former president and saying he was directly responsible

for what was happening. I could not be fatter or more disappointed with the way our country looks at this very moment. People are getting hurt. Anyone involved in this, if you're hearing me, you're hearing very loud and clear, this is not the American way. Mr. President, you have got to stop this. You are the only person who can call this off. Call it off. The people we heard there are House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Congressman Mike Gallagher, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. So I think part of what they're trying to do there is play for the Republicans sitting in the room

with their own party members, we're saying at the time, trying to drive home the way it was being received in the moment, not how Trump's actions and the response kind of have changed over time. They're trying to bring them back to the moment, to the horror and to the immediate reaction that people had. So the last big point of the day was a lengthy pre-buttle from the Democrats saying, we anticipate this is the argument that the Trump team will make tomorrow. Here's why it's wrong. Kelsey, can you give us the quick summary of what that argument was? Yeah, they were responding to arguments that Trump's lawyers made on the first day, the day when they were debating constitutionality, where they said that this was essentially a question of whether or not they were trying to go after President Trump for what amounts to

protected political speech. But the impeachment manager said Trump isn't just some guy on the street expressing unpopular political ideas. Jonah Goose, who is a Democrat from Colorado, framed it as the Senate would be telling future presidents that inciting a murderous riot is constitutionally protected way to respond to losing an election. He said that Trump stood in the middle of a powder keg that he created and that his speech before that crowd on January 6th was more than just a political speech. Standing in the middle of that explosive situation, in that powder keg that he had created over the course of months before a crowd filled with people that were poised for violence,

at his signal, he struck a match. And he aimed it straight at this building, at us. Nina, what do you make of that argument from Trump's lawyers? They're basically saying that, you know, all of Trump's speech is protected under the First Amendment as political speech. I have to say that the argument they're making in this particular case, you know, they always say about lawyers, if you don't have the facts and you don't have the law, you pound the table. Well, this is the moral equivalent of that. This is, I think, is in fact a pretty silly argument.

And there are almost 150 constitutional First Amendment scholars who actually sent the Senate a letter, and it included lots of liberals and conservatives saying, this is a crazy argument. It doesn't apply here. It has nothing to do with this case. I guess that's the difference between the types of trials that you're normally covering and the type of trial this is, whereas a judge would say this is irrelevant or could. I mean, this is an easy out for a lot of Senate Republicans who do not want to vote to convict the former president. I think the easier out is just to say we shouldn't have impeached him in the first place because he's not president anymore. I think this one seems, it seems when you think about it, and you heard Jamie Raskin at one point say,

this would be as if you not only, the fire chief not only cried fire in a crowded theater, but then proceeded to set fires. So I think the easier one is going to be for a lot of people to just say, oh, well, we shouldn't have done this anyway because he's not president anymore. All right. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we will talk a little bit more about this pre-buttle from Democrats and then look forward to what we can expect tomorrow. This message comes from NPR sponsor Sotva, the comfort company. Sattva luxury mattresses are made in America by expert craftsmen using the highest quality materials so that your mattress will provide comfortable sleep for years and years. Sattva mattresses are always delivered to your home and set up in the room of your choice.

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We are back. And before we talk through what's going to happen next in this trial, I'm just wondering what big picture takeaways you have from this closing argument from the Democrats today? They've done, I think, an extraordinarily good job by and large, and they have a lot of evidence that's audio, that's video. It's almost all Trump and occasionally people reacting to Trump, and it's pretty scary stuff. But in the last analysis, you need 17 Republicans to cross over, and while there may be more than we expect at this minute, I don't see any way that they're going to be 17. Yeah, Kelsey, we had this test vote of sorts earlier in the week when the Senate voted on whether the trial was legitimate to proceed since Trump was out of office. And you ended up having

six Republicans vote yes. What is your thinking right now about how many Republican votes are legitimately up for grabs based on just the political realities we're in? Well, if you're in an environment where only six Republicans who are acting as jurors in this trial are interested in engaging with this argument on the merits of the argument, it's a pretty small universe because not even all of the six of them are likely to be thinking about voting for conviction. So, I mean, we saw Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana. He was the one person who changed his vote and originally said that the trial was unconstitutional and then changed his mind. He even said in his statement when he put that out that he was not necessarily convinced in any way that Trump was responsible for inciting the riot. He just thought that the House Democrats made a better argument. So it could be a universe of just a couple, maybe two, three.

I'm not sure. But you have seen the Democrats really try to shame the Republicans. Of course, they've tried this in the past and failed, and they're going to fail this time in all likelihood. But here's Jamie Raskin towards the end of today. What is impeachable conduct if not this? I challenge you all to think about it. If you think this is not impeachable, what is? What would be? If President Trump's lawyers endorse his breathtaking assertion that his conduct in inciting these events was totally appropriate, and the Senate acquits Donald Trump, then any president could incite and provoke insurrectionary violence against us again. If you don't find this a high crime and misdemeanor today, you have set a new terrible standard for presidential misconduct in the United

States of America. I mean, I thought this was a powerful argument. And then Raskin tried to elevate it even more talking about the way that this government was set up and, you know, the legislative branch and the executive branch and how, in effect, the president of the United States directed a mob on the other branch of government. And that is, in fact, what the founders were most worried about was demagoguery and mob violence, insurrection. At the same time, they were trying to set up a three branch democracy. That is the single thing that you see over and over in the Federalist Papers that they're most worried about is that the president, who's not supposed to be a king, and Raskin today said at some point that he was trying to be a king, was that a president would turn into a tyrant with the aid of an insurrectionary

mob. Let's look forward to tomorrow. Kelsey, what can we expect? What do we know about the former president's defense so far in terms of how long it's going to take or what it's going to focus on? argue that Trump had no tie to the violence. They say Democrats ignored part of the speech where Trump called for peaceful protest. Democrats did bring that up a bit, but we imagine that that's going to be a large portion of their argument. He also said the videos that Democrats played took things out of context, and he didn't give specific examples of what he meant there, but we would expect that he would extrapolate on that. He also talked about how he says that Trump has condemned the violence and doesn't want to be associated with what happened on January 6th. So that's kind of where he said things would be. We also have heard that they don't plan to use up all of their time. One of Trump's advisors tweeted out that they expect to wrap up tomorrow, which

would be quite speedy. That's only half of the time allotted if they use up the whole day. Nina, you have now heard this full argument from the Democratic side, including that really emotional recreation of the attack on the Capitol yesterday. What do you think Trump's team needs to do here? Well, they need to provide their guys and gals on their side with some little shreds that they can hang their hat on. And there are multiple ways to do that. They can say you violated his First Amendment rights. They can say that you didn't really prove a case, you took stuff out of context. They can say all kinds of things really prove a case, you took stuff out of context. They can say all kinds of things. But in the last analysis, they've got the votes.

This requires a two-thirds vote. That's 67 votes in the Senate of the United States. And in any time, that is a really high threshold to meet. And in the environment, the partisan environment we live in today, and with Trump having considerable impact still within the Republican Party, I think it's very unlikely that there are 17 Republican senators who are going to give them what they want. I do think it is worth saying, especially as we turn to this next phase of the trial, in the history of impeachment trials of presidents, one senator has voted to convict a president of his or her own party, and that was Mitt Romney next time around. So if we do end up with significantly more Republicans voting for conviction, I think it doesn't convict former President Trump, but I think it adds more of a legitimacy to this process, just like the 10

Republicans who voted to impeach him in the House did. Sure. Though I have heard some Republicans argue that the people who are most inclined to vote for conviction represent parts of the Republican Party that maybe are not representative of where the party is heading. So I don't know that this necessarily will resolve for us the question that we've been asking a lot in this podcast and as we talk to sources, which is where's the Republican Party heading with Trump no longer in charge? Yeah, well, that's a question to keep in mind over the next few days as this trial concludes. We will carry all of it in real time on your radio and at NPR.org. And of course, we will be back in your podcast feeds tomorrow night to give you the overview of the Trump defense argument. That is it for today, though. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Nina Totenberg. I cover the law.

Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.