The NPR Politics Podcast - In Impeachment Trial, Both Sides Make Final Pitch on Conviction vs. Acquittal

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

The White House legal team and House managers made their closing arguments today in the Senate impeachment trial. With an acquittal looking almost certain after Friday's vote against witnesses and evidence, House managers asked Senators how they want their legacy remembered while the White House defense said to let the voters decide. All of this happened as Iowans prepare to caucus tonight, kicking off voting in the presidential primary. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and Congressional correspondent Susan Davis. 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, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It is 3.34 p.m. on Monday, the 3rd of February. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And we are here on this day of the Iowa caucuses to talk about impeachment. Because today is also the day when the president's legal team and the House managers delivered their closing arguments in the Senate impeachment trial. Each side had up to two hours each to make their case. Sue, how did it play out? Well, I think it was echoes of a lot of the

greatest hits of the arguments we've heard from both the House impeachment managers and the White House defense team. It also fit with form that the White House didn't take all their time. They had up to two hours each side. The White House, I think, took maybe a little bit over an hour, but the House team, again, took all of their time, closing again by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, who gave a pretty fiery close in the end, because I think he realizes that the outcome is clear, right? After that witness vote failed on Friday, the outcome, which wasn't really in doubt all along, but truly was no longer in doubt that the president will be acquitted. There will be no more witness testimony or evidence. And that vote is now scheduled for Wednesday at 4 p.m. Those were the final last words in the impeachment trial.

Yeah, I was sort of struck by how you had these people making arguments, making their closing arguments, when in reality they knew and maybe they've known all along, but any mystery about how this would end has been resolved. The suspense is gone. And yet there they were. Yeah. I mean, in the beginning of the process, we said they had two audiences. It was the 100 senators in the room and the public that was watching. And I listened to today from both the White House and the House impeachment managers. Today was really about the court of public opinion, right? They know they're not moving any votes inside this chamber anymore, but I think they wanted to have their most succinct soundbites, their biggest moments, their easiest lines. I think we'll see a lot of these clips in the war for public opinion that is going to continue to rage on what

impeachment meant and why it matters. The war that never ends. The war that never ends. Ayesha, let's start with the defense team. What was the message from the president's team? They weren't out there spiking the football or anything. The Super Bowl was yesterday. So, you know, I got to get that in. You're within the statute of limitations on football jokes. Yes. So but they were basically saying what they've been saying from the beginning, and that's that the president didn't do anything wrong and that they this idea that if you move ahead with impeachment, that you are overturning the votes of everyone from 2016 and that you are interfering in the 2020 election. This is an effort to overturn the results of one election and to try to interfere in

the coming election that begins today in Iowa. You are being asked to do this when tonight citizens of Iowa are going to be caucusing for the first caucus for the presidential season, election season, for the Democratic Party. Tonight! for the presidential season, election season, for the Democratic Party tonight. It is passed in an election year, and we're sitting here on the day that election season begins in Iowa. This is a part of that idea that, look, this has to be decided by the voters in November, that this election is already going on, and so it can't be decided right now with an impeachment. And that's been the most winning argument among Republican senators, especially for the senators who are not total Trump loyalists. Right.

I mean, you look at Lamar Alexander of Tennessee or Rob Portman of Ohio. I mean, they were very clear in saying they actually do think the president did things that were wrong. But they do not believe that impeachment is the right punishment and that they are truly uncomfortable with the idea of voting to remove a president from office when voters will get to decide in a couple of months. I think it was and remains the most politically palatable way to explain their vote. If you cannot embrace the White House defense that nothing wrong occurred here. Well, and then Adam Schiff, the lead impeachment manager for the House, seemed to be going directly to them, making an argument to those senators who do have some pause about what the president is accused of doing. Yeah, I mean, Schiff was really firing the end of times. He seemed really angry and speaking directly to senators and really asking them to think about how this vote will will weigh on them and their place in history. If you find that the House has proved its case and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel and for all of history. But if you find the courage to stand up to him, to speak the awful truth to his rank falsehood,

your place will be among the Davids who took on Goliath. If only you will say enough. Now, will that move any votes? Probably not. I don't think that there's any Republican senators in doubt. The only question mark I still have going into the votes on Wednesday is maybe Mitt Romney. He's been a very strong critic of the president. He's arguably the only Republican in the Senate who could take a vote to convict the president and probably not face too much blowback back home, Utah, where he's incredibly popular, more so than the president himself. But beyond that, I have no doubt, really, that every other Republican senator will vote to acquit. So those are the Republicans or the one Republican who you think might not vote to acquit. So those are the Republicans or the one Republican who you think might not vote to acquit.

What about Democrats? Are any Democrats looking like they might not go with their party and they may actually vote to acquit President Trump? Yes. The three that have been most closely watched are Doug Jones of Alabama, for no other reason that he represents a state where Donald Trump is wildly popular, maybe the state where Trump is the most popular. And he's got a really tough election year ahead. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, he's a, you know, a very well known centrist moderate. He has a good relationship with Trump, certainly in comparison to other Democrats in the Senate. They've said nice things about each other over the years. And then Kyrsten Sinema is a Democrat from Arizona. Part of the reason why she's a question mark is she's just said literally nothing. She's really avoided reporters. She hasn't given any interviews.

And she is someone who has in the past been a critic of the Democratic Party or broken with the party in ways that might surprise. So until she makes clear what her intentions are, she's going to remain in sort of that pool. And I would say there is a more likely outcome that there is a bipartisan vote to acquit the president than there is a bipartisan vote to convict. And that is something I think we can all agree that the president is going to remind the country of time and time again. Even if there is just one Democrat that sides with him, he will not stop. Yes, he will claim a bipartisan acquittal. What that would provide for them is this idea that this has been partisan the whole time and that the only time where you've had any semblance of bipartisanship has been in the president's favor. And so if they're able to say that, that's something that you're going to hear repeated over and over and over again, even if it's just one. Because in the House, it was only it was kind of like two and a half in the House.

I don't know if we want to get into that, but it wasn't a lot. But they're still talking about it, that there was bipartisan support for him not to be impeached. All right. We are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, one of the House impeachment managers said something that makes me wonder what comes next. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Google. what comes next. states, helping businesses get online, connect with new customers, and work more productively. Learn more at google.com slash grow. It's Oscar time and NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour has you covered. Grab your popcorn and binge listen to all nine of our episodes covering the best picture nominees. Search now in Spotify for Oscars 2020 from Pop Culture Happy Hour. And we're back.

And as I was listening to the arguments that House impeachment managers were making today, something that Hakeem Jeffries said really stood out because he seemed to imply that even though the vote is happening on Wednesday, that may not be the end of this story. Whatever the outcome in this trial, we will remain vigilant in the House. I know there are dedicated public servants who know the difference between right and wrong. But make no mistake, these are perilous times. if we determine that the remedy for a president who cheats in an election is to pronounce him vindicated and attack those who exposed his misconduct. So this isn't over. This doesn't end. There will be more investigations. And that has been clear that investigations in the House will continue. We don't know whether that will mean they're going to try to call for more witnesses

or anything like that. But we do know that this isn't going to stop right when that vote happens on Wednesday. The most obvious thing that we're looking for next is does the House try to subpoena former National Security Advisor John Bolton? He was one of the witnesses or maybe the witness that Democrats were trying to make the case for the most. Now, all because this trial wraps up on Wednesday, nothing will stop Democrats from continuing their work on this. And they didn't subpoena Bolton during the impeachment investigation because that was a decision that they made because they didn't want to get tied up in court fights. But now that the impeachment process is over, there's nothing that's going to stop them from issuing a subpoena and trying to keep that story alive, especially as Bolton is scheduled to have a book that comes

out in the spring and potentially more revelations about what happened inside the White House that clearly will not affect the outcome on the president when it comes to the question of impeachment, but goes back to this sort of court of public opinion fight that I think Democrats are now waging as we approach the 2020 election. So I have a question that I really don't know the answer to, though, which is, sure, there is nothing technically stopping them from doing this. And yes, there are sort of electoral 2020 reasons on the presidential side to maybe keep this pot bubbling. But aren't there also major risks to doing that? Like seeming like, you know, they just can't give it up that Donald Trump is, you know, the great white

whale that they're just going to keep chasing? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think that does it look like you really are just out to get them, that it's a political, in the words of the White House, witch hunt with no end? Yes. Although I think Democrats feel like they are on more secure ground, at least right now. And, you know, we'll see how the country's attitude shift on this. And we said it a lot. The country's very divided on the question of impeachment. But the thumb on the scale goes to the Democratic side of this. You know, more Americans than not, even though it's narrowly divided, have indicated that they support impeachment of removal from the president. And even beyond that, even more Americans say they think the president did something wrong and that they would like to hear more evidence. So I don't think Democrats necessarily feel like keeping up the heat on the president is a bad strategy right now. But yeah, the country could start to get kind of tired of this and feel like it's time to move on. And we'll see how the president plays it, especially as he's preparing to give a State of the Union address tomorrow night. A lot of what the president's defense team was talking about, they were also talking about the House being held accountable and people need to be held accountable, whatever that means. But we know that the president is often in the business of wanting to investigate the investigators.

And he still was tweeting out questions about who was the whistleblower. Why did Adam Schiff say what he said? I don't think that those questions are going to go away or the questions about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. And so there could be more investigations in that realm. Sure. And remember, Republicans still control the Senate. So there's been Republicans like Lindsey Graham, who's the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has indicated that Senate committees could do some oversight, too. He's indicated they could look at what were Joe Biden's connections in Ukraine? What was going on with Burisma? Now, I don't know if they're actually going to do that,

but I think they're also sending the message that if Democrats keep this up, they can keep it up, too. You know, it might depend on whether Joe Biden becomes the nominee or not. Yes, very much so. I mean, think about that. If Biden is the nominee, we're going to be talking about Burisma and impeachment all year long. Well, and the other thing that maybe the president's team could have been referring to is that every single Democrat in the House, and Republican for that matter,

will be on the ballot in 2020. All right, we are going to leave this impeachment conversation there for now. But tonight, Iowans begin caucusing at around 8 p.m. Eastern. And so we will be back very late tonight to talk about the results. Until then, if you are anxiously awaiting news of Iowa or just wish you were there in the freezing cold like I do, check out the podcast that the rest of our team posted yesterday. They drove all over the state to hear the top four candidates make their final pitches. They got lost. They learned a lot. It is just a

really awesome listen, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Go listen to it. It's in your podcast feed. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.