The NPR Politics Podcast - Witness Vote Fails, But Impeachment Trial Stretches To Next Week

Episode Date: February 1, 2020

The Senate adjourned for the weekend, but the impeachment trial of President Trump is not over. Senators voted not to hear from new witnesses on Friday — a move Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it a "grand tragedy." This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional editor Deirdre Walsh, and Congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It is 8.06 p.m. on Friday, the 31st of January. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Deirdre Walsh, congressional editor. And guys, the Senate just adjourned, but impeachment is not over. It definitely is not over. It definitely is not over. So we will get into what comes next later in the podcast, but let's get to this momentous vote that happened earlier tonight. The yeas are 49. The nays are 51. The motion is not agreed to. Earlier this evening, the Senate voted 51-49

not to hear from witnesses, not to get any new evidence in the impeachment trial of President Trump. You know, I think one of the most interesting things about that, though, is the Republicans mostly voted together except for two of them. And the two are the two people we have been watching all along, right? Two of the people, at least, we've been watching all along, Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, just enough people to show that there were some Republicans who might want to hear from witnesses and who are open to something approaching the possibility of having John Bolton appear before the whole Senate. And, you know, not actually having to do that. Right. And not enough to make it go to a tie, which would have been an interesting situation. I mean, the two votes is a convenient space to be in because it expresses that possibility that

some Republicans were open to it. It lets two Republicans go free and vote their conscience, but it doesn't require the Senate to actually call the witnesses. It's that little space that we call not a lot of bravery. Not a lot of bravery. Is that what you just said? I mean, the Senate is not well known for that in the first place. But people tend to vote in groups. They tend to do what is politically safest in going against this president, even if some of them maybe wanted to hear from John Bolton or had reasons that they thought maybe additional other witnesses or documents should be let in. It would have been a really surprising move to see Republicans buck President Trump at this level. I want to I want to get to a little bit more of what this day sounded like. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described the day as a tragedy. To not allow

a witness, a document, no witnesses, no documents in an impeachment trial is a perfidy. It's a grand tragedy, one of the worst tragedies that the Senate has ever overcome. America will remember this day, unfortunately, where the Senate did not live up to its responsibilities, where the Senate turned away from truth and went along with a sham trial. OK, so how did we get to this point? I'm I'm hoping that we can talk about a couple of the senators that we were also watching who didn't end up siding with Collins and Romney and the Democrats. And one of those is Lamar Alexander. He is a Republican from Tennessee. He is retiring. And he was somebody that people were watching. He spoke with NPR's Steve Inskeep this morning. You don't apply capital

punishment to every offense. There's a reason why in 230 years, we've never removed a president through the impeachment clause, because the founders envisioned that the people would make the decision about who the president is. And in this case, the election to determine the president begins on Monday in Iowa. And even though Senator Alexander voted no, and he was explaining it, let's let the voters decide, he did in his written statement last night chide the president for his actions. I mean, he took issue with the way that the president conditioned security aid for Ukraine on a political investigation. But his argument was that it didn't rise to an impeachable offense and the voters should decide. I mean, that was very different than the explanation we heard from his colleague,

who he's very close to, Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski. And what did she say? She basically blamed the House process and said it was broken. You could see Lisa Murkowski telegraph her concerns in the questions that she asked over the two days of written questions that senators submitted. I counted at least two where she asked the defense team and the managers about the House process and why they chose to not go to court over subpoenas and why they didn't go to court or reissue subpoenas after they had an official vote to launch the impeachment inquiry. Well, you know, what's striking is that it wasn't just that she said that the House process was broken. She said that Congress failed. Just so

people can understand the totality of the way she described it, she said, given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I've come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don't believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It's sad for me to admit that as an institution that Congress has failed. That is a pretty mind-blowing statement from a senator who is a part of that process. An indictment on the system she represents. Yes. In the end, there was some number of Republican senators who had legitimate, serious concerns with what the president did or what the president was accused of doing. Alexander seemed to say that the House managers made their case on Article 1, at least.

But in the end, they all determined that it doesn't matter, that that witnesses wouldn't change anything. We should point out that part of what Alexander is arguing there is not just that he agrees with them, but he it wouldn't make a difference to him because he doesn't think that what they're arguing is an impeachable offense. So so witnesses would not have clarified for him further that this thing that the president did that he believes is wrong is wrong enough to get him out of office. Part of what Murkowski said, she was talking about this not being a fair trial. It's interesting because that is the very language that Democrats have started using. I don't think that she's agreeing with the Democrats, but that language about whether this will be seen in the eyes of history as a fair trial is something that Val Demings, one of the House impeachment managers, was talking about as she was making their case for witnesses earlier. Is this a fair trial? Is this a fair trial? Is this a fair trial? Without the ability to call witnesses and produce documents, the answer is clearly and unequivocally no. Isn't that kind of a classic move in politics, though? When you are on the losing side of an argument, it's easiest and

sometimes best to say that the process that you are losing in is unfair. Yes. It's also the talking point we started hearing from Democrats on the Hill the last few days is this process has been playing out clearly like the writing's on the wall. They weren't going to get the witnesses. So the talking point became and we heard it from Speaker Pelosi yesterday is it's not a real acquittal because it wasn't a real trial because there weren't witnesses. And the reality is that by the time we got to this morning, by the time senators showed up, by the time the House managers were making their argument and the president's legal team was making his argument, this was sort of a done deal on witnesses. Right. At that point, the last

sort of undecided senator, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, put out a statement confirming that she was a no. And the White House defense team once again made this point of saying, like, we're not going to use all our time. We've got two hours, but we don't need to use it all. And Jay Sekulow in in his sort of closing statement also took a dig again at House Democrats. I could stand here for a long time. I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to say this. They created the record. Do not allow them to penalize the country and the Constitution because they failed to do their job. With that, Mr. Chief Justice,

we yield our time. Republicans went in today in a good mood. They were getting ready to have a vote to say that they weren't going to call witnesses. They feel like their job has been done here for some time. They know what the outcome is going to be, and they feel very confident that there will be a vote to acquit the president when they finally get to that vote. And we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, when that vote is actually going to happen, because it turns out it did not happen today. What does it take to start something from nothing? And what does it take to actually build it? I'm Guy Raz. Every week on How I Built This, I speak with founders behind some of the most inspiring companies in the world.

NPR's How I Built This. Listen now. And we're back. And the Senate is going home for the weekend. Deirdre, can you explain where we now are in the process? What they did was they passed a resolution tonight to set up the next phase, getting us to the end of the trial. The Senate will be back on Monday morning at 11. They'll stay in session until around four o'clock on Monday. That means that all of those senators who are running for president get to go to Iowa for the weekend, but they got to be back in Washington at 11 o'clock on Monday. Then the Senate will stay in session where senators

will be able to make statements on the floor. And this will go until Wednesday. And Wednesday at four o'clock is when we expect the final votes on the two articles of impeachment. Okay, so that is the schedule for the days ahead. How did we get to that schedule? Because when we woke up this morning, the thought was that the whole impeachment process would possibly end as soon as tonight. There was a lot of uncertainty today. We saw the Senate go into a couple of recesses, breaks without anybody talking, without any real answer about what was going to happen. And then they came back and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that they had an agreement not to vote today on the final question of acquittal or

conviction, but to send everybody home. And in a classic move of congressional spin, everybody's taking credit for it now because it seemed like a good idea and they reached an agreement. So both sides say it was their idea. Everybody wants to be able to say their words about why they're going to vote a certain way on the final vote. And even though we all know how they're going to vote, their constituents haven't seen them make that argument. The president hasn't seen them make the argument. He's been watching his defense team all week. And I think it's just sort of like that last chance to make the case. To be perfectly clear, though, not everybody is on board with this. I talked to Senator Lindsey

Graham, and he is one of a couple of Republicans who basically said, we should get this over with. This isn't helpful. We don't really need to do this. But if everybody else thinks it's a good idea, I guess I have to go along. And not only do we now know that the Senate will be back Monday and then Tuesday and Wednesday for speeches and then Wednesday for a vote. We are coming into what I am calling the Sharknado of political news. News tsunami. News tsunami with sharks because Sunday is the Super Bowl. Now, that's not political news, but the president is doing a big interview. Then Monday is the caucuses, the Iowa caucuses. And then Tuesday is the State

of the Union. And then Wednesday, there will be a vote on whether to convict the president or acquit him. And we expect an acquittal. And then on Thursday, all the political reporters pass out. No, they still got to go to New Hampshire. Oh, no. Well, we we have teams in Iowa and we have we even have people in New Hampshire. But I do wonder how this might, you know, affect the state of the union or what this means for the caucuses. I mean, you have multiple senators who are running for president. My absolute favorite observation about the rule that was just passed in the Senate is that the rules of the impeachment trial, which commands that all 100 senators be seated in the

Senate, don't lift until Monday afternoon. So that means that all of those people running for president, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bennett can go to Iowa now if they want, but they got to come back by Monday morning. Which is caucus day. It is caucus day. And they got to go back for Monday night to give their victory speeches or to drop out of the race or whatever they end up doing on Monday night. If their campaigns can so afford it.

Yeah, I mean, there are not a lot of commercial flights to Iowa at this specific times that they are going to have windows for. Well, our editor, political editor Arnie Seipel, points out that Bernie Sanders will be having his caucus night party at a hotel at the airport. So he's well prepared for this. Definitely a good move. As for a State of the Union, we understand that everything is moving along Justice Plan, right, Tam? That is correct. And the White House says that the president is prepared to give a speech regardless of whether he has been acquitted yet or not. That would be a fascinating dynamic because I think they up until this morning, they were planning for it to be probably a pretty much of a victory lap. And now the president knowing that he will be acquitted the following day.

It really will be a new Sharknado. All right. We are going to leave it there for now. But before we go, we want to tell you about an event coming up next week in Birmingham, Alabama, from our friends at StoryCorps and member station WBHM. NPR's Elise Hu will host a night of music, presentations, and conversation that will give people of opposing political viewpoints the opportunity to talk. The project is called One Small Step, a night of courageous conversation. So for our listeners who will be in Birmingham next week, you can check it out at nprpresents.org. And keep an eye on your podcast feeds because we have a lot more coming your way. I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Deirdre Walsh, congressional editor. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.