The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's Second Impeachment Will Be Bipartisan

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

In a nearly party-line vote, the House encouraged Mike Pence and the presidential cabinet to sideline the president via the 25th amendment. Pence said no. Now, the House will move to impeach Trump over "incitement of insurrection" in what is expected to be a bipartisan vote. The Senate may be warming to the idea of removal.This episode: political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.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 Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. It is 11.52 p.m. on January 12th, and it is our second podcast of the day. We've had a lot of news today, so let's get right to why we are here so late at night. We are talking about the 25th Amendment. Vice President Mike Pence said in a letter to top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi tonight that he will not be invoking the 25th Amendment to sideline President Trump in the final days of his term. This is something that House Democrats very much want.

So let's get started with you, Domenico. Tell us about this letter. What was Mike Pence's reasoning for not supporting this? Well, what Pence said in his letter is that with just eight days left in the president's term, he said, I don't believe that such a course of action is in the best interest of our nation or consistent with the Constitution. He kind of dismissed the effort, he said, as quote unquote political games. And, you know, look, Pence has said that he's done what he needs to do as far as the Constitution goes. He's

affirmed that Biden and Harris are going to be president and vice president. And at this point, he just wants to be able to move on and has already indicated that he doesn't want to have to go through with invoking the 25th Amendment, and he's not going to do so, and it's not happening. Right. And as Pence sent that letter over to Nancy Pelosi, the House was debating a measure asking Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment. It ultimately passed in a vote almost entirely among party lines. Only one Republican voted for it. No Democrats voted against it. But of course, Kelsey, the 25th Amendment is something that the cabinet and the vice president do. And this was a non-binding resolution. So what was the importance of this? It was important to Democrats to say that they tried everything, that they,

you know, put the ball into the vice president's court, that they left it up to the cabinet, they left it up to Republicans to resolve the issue amongst themselves. And then barring that resolution, the House was going to move forward with a formal article of impeachment, which they're planning to do tomorrow morning. So, Kelsey, what was debate on the floor like? What were their cases? It was heated. Democrats were essentially arguing that the Capitol was under attack and they had no choice but to do something to hold President Trump accountable because they said it was on his command that the people left a rally near the White House, traveled to the Capitol and

descended on the building as Congress was doing its constitutional duty of affirming the electors from the election. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland in the nearby suburbs right here outside of D.C., was just named the lead impeachment manager for a potential impeachment trial in the Senate. And he gave a long argument explaining why Democrats were doing this. This president is not meeting the most minimal duties of office. He is not meeting the oath that he swore to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. He is not protecting and defending the democracy itself, the process of electing the president. He's not respecting the peaceful

transfer of power. He is not taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. He is not protecting the republic against mob insurrection. But the Republicans who did speak up in this debate, I would point out that we did not hear from Republican leaders in this debate. Those who did speak up, Many of them said that, you know, Democrats were doing this for political reasons. And we repeatedly heard from Republicans that they felt that Democrats have been obsessed with impeaching the president since before he was elected. Here's Jim Jordan of Ohio. This is scary where this goes, because this is more than about impeaching the president of the United States. This is about canceling the president and canceling all the people you guys disagree with. That's what scares me more than anything. We have seen it play out

over the past several days. I never thought I'd see the things that we are now witnessing. And I don't know where it ends. But I tell you what, it should scare us all. One of the things that got Democrats really upset about Jordan's speech in particular is he talked about a cancel culture mob. And Democrats pointed out that a real actual mob showed up at the Capitol last week. And that's what they're responding to. from almost any of the kind of hard right Republican members of Congress on any day of the week, you know, sort of just trolling on cancel culture, frankly. Well, speaking of culture, some of the news tonight wasn't just about the debate on the House floor, the content of it, but the culture, the atmosphere of the House floor tonight, because there are some new rules that lawmakers were operating under and it created some disagreements. So, Kelsey, tell us about what some of those were. Well, there are new rules that members have to wear a mask on the House floor or be fined. It's $500 the first time, and then the

fine escalates if they continue to flout the rules. There were also metal detectors placed at the entrances to the House floor, which is not something that usually happens. There are metal detectors at the entrances of the building to get into the Capitol. But members of Congress even kind of walk around those too. They don't have to go through them. So for them to have to go through metal detectors on the floor, it was met with some frustration from largely from Republicans. We heard about a lot of Democrats thanking Capitol Police for protecting the floor. And we heard about particularly some of the more outspoken pro-Trump members that have been recently elected

getting into fights with Capitol Police. I mean, this is the kind of thing that Republicans want to sort of pick a fight on with their base, because they get to talk about the Second Amendment and infringing on liberty, and the liberty part of this being about mass, all of it is cultural, you know, and shows very little that's changed in that segment of the Republican Party. But there has been a little bit of movement, you know, away from a lot of what the president said, with some Republicans actually condemning what the president had to say. Right. And we are going to get to some of that movement in the Republican Party. Let's take a quick break. And then we'll talk about what to expect tomorrow as the House again

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the news you need in about 10 minutes from NPR News. Listen every day. And we are back. And tomorrow, the House is set to again impeach the president. Guys, what is the schedule as we know it right now? So the House will come into session at 9 a.m. They'll begin to debate on what's called the rule. It's what sets up. They're going to debate how they're going to debate, essentially.

There will be a vote on the rule and then they will move on to the official debate on that one single article of impeachment. We don't know exactly what time they will be done. It could take it could take a long time. This may not be a quick thing. We're expecting that this will be heated debate. And this is not likely to be a thing that they come and go in an hour or so. Well, Kelsey, very basic question here. What is in the article of impeachment? The title of the article is Incitement of Insurrection. And it walks through the events of January 6th, starting with the House and Senate meeting for a joint session to count the vote to the Electoral College. And then they move over to President Trump addressing a rally near the White House. They say that President Trump repeatedly issued false statements, asserting that the presidential election results were the product

of widespread fraud and should not be accepted. They then walk through the statements that Trump made to that crowd. Particularly, they call out a phrase where he says, if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. And they say that those words paired with his attempts to spread misinformation, the words are subvert and obstruct the certification of the results, all together combined for an impeachable offense. Yeah, and they issued about 50 pages of supporting documents that you can expect them to walk through as well, either in this impeachment round or after it passes and they eventually have a Senate trial. Right. And so based on whatever that debate looks like, it looks like it could take a while. Our podcast tomorrow, long story short, might be a

little late, ideally not too much. But guys, let's talk about what that vote will look like. We saw a nearly party line vote tonight, but we already know that won't be the case tomorrow. There are a few Republican House members who have said they will vote yes on impeachment. A couple said so tonight. What's the significance of that? What does that tell us? Well, you know, if you were tuning into C-SPAN like the rest of us nerds, you would have heard a lot of the same kinds of arguments, partisan arguments in particular from Republicans, you know, defending the president or even sidestepping whether he incited, you know, the riot at the Capitol. Some of them mostly talked on process rather than substance and criticized the Democrats. And that's what a lot of what you normally see on Capitol Hill. But what is interesting is that beneath the surface at the margins, for as divided as they are, there are Republicans who are crossing the aisle.

There could be 10 to 20 Republicans who wind up crossing the aisle in the House. I think the Senate could be really interesting as well, even though the Senate is adjourned until the 19th, and Joe Biden is going to be sworn in as president the next day. So you're not going to have a trial start for impeachment until after Biden is sworn in, most likely. And you know, I do wonder what that makeup is going to look like, because there are a lot of grumblings behind the scenes that Republican leaders, including Mitch McConnell, not happy with President Trump and the way he carried himself and the way he spoke on Wednesday. Well, and Kelsey, one of the people saying tonight they

would be voting for impeachment was the number three Republican in the House, Liz Cheney. Tell us more. What does that say? Is there a huge fissure among Republicans right now? in the next cycle. But it's also going to be kind of the focal point, I think, for a lot of Democrats as they try to talk about Republicans. Were they in support of President Trump after this riot in the Capitol? Or were they in support of, you know, as Democrats say, moving forward? Yeah, and Liz Cheney's statement was really strong. I mean, she said that the president summoned this mob, he assembled this mob, lit the flame of this attack. She said that there has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. That is a remarkable thing, not just from one of the top leaders in the House,

but also the daughter of former vice president, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney. Well, let's look ahead. Should the article of impeachment pass the House, proceedings will go to the Senate. What do we know now about how the process will go there or when? Those are great questions. We know very little other than the fact that Democrats say this should be sent over to the Senate pretty quickly. And we know that President-elect Biden has said he wants the Senate to bifurcate the days, so spend half of the day on impeachment and half of the day on approving cabinet nominees, though whether or not he can get that done is a matter that is to be seen, because it would require an agreement with Republicans in order for that to happen. You know, this week, we saw 23,000 deaths from Coronavirus, you know, we're approaching

380,000 deaths overall. And, you know, this is something that President Elect Biden and Vice President Elect Harris are very cognizant of, they don't want to get mired in an impeachment battle without having their cabinet nominees picked and without being able to address the coronavirus, getting financial relief out to people, facilitating vaccinations. These are all things that are critically important to the country, while at the same time, Biden is saying, look, Congress has to do its job. And if they want to hold Trump accountable, then they can go do that too. But it's going to be a really interesting line to walk because there's only so much time in the day. Right. Well, that's a very good perspective. But tomorrow, we will, of course, be focusing

on impeachment again. So stay tuned for that. Until then, I am Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.