The Press Box - President Trump Impeached for the Second Time

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

Trump has become the first president to be impeached twice. Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker reflect on Pence’s decision not to invoke the 25th amendment, discuss the representatives involved in today's process, and consider the ramifications of impeachment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. This is an emergency edition of the press box. At this point, David, maybe we can save time by just labeling the non-emergency editions of the press box. Like, hey, guys, this is one of those slow ones where we talk about like sports announcers or something. Yeah, this is the regular press box. We should have a different name for it. We can do, how about press box premium? Because the non-politics ones are the ones that people won't listen to.

The news, David, of course, is that Donald Trump, the president of the United States has been impeached for the second time. The final tally of the House of Representatives vote, which was just completed, is 232 to 197 with 10 Republicans joining the Democrats in the eye column. David, your first reaction to this afternoon's news. Well, I'm impressed that they moved so quickly. You know, I mean, that was, that seems like a sort of boring way to address this. But it's still remarkable, isn't it? Because it's remarkable. I see, I feel like I'm.

We're one week from the attack on the Capitol. Yeah. And it's, and it's, listen, it's important, and I've said this over and over again to not, to let yourself go into the abstract, to let this feel like a thing from the past. even though it's only a week ago, to let it feel like part of another political argument. This is much more significant than that. But that said, Trump is going to be out of office in a week.

And as much as this is a concrete thing that he did and that the terrorists that attacked the Capitol did, and they should all face the judgment for that. that all that being said a lot of what's happening today does have a symbolic component to it and so it's important that this be treated um with with urgency um and and i'm glad to see that it kind of is is getting done i think what took us out of both politics and symbolism at least for a little while today and i'm cribbing this off cable news lots of people have said this but it is amazing that the House members whose workplace was invaded last week, who were hunted in the halls of the Capitol by these pro-Trump forces, are the same people that were voting today. You know, there was very little room to make this into an abstract thing

where we say, okay, the president made this phone call and did he say this or did he say that? Or, you know, to go back a little bit, the president had this relationship and did he lie about it? and now we're going to go to impeachment. No, no, they were voting on this idea that the president incited people to come into their workplace and get them. I mean, this is, right. I mean, the people that are voting on this, this is why they like, you know, move trials to other cities in, you know, the normal flow of the judicial system, right? Because you don't want a jury that has too close a connection to a case, to, you know, to personal connections. That said, you know, that we, this wasn't, shockingly, there were people that voted against impeachment.

Now, we'll get into the details of it. But the argument against did seem to be sort of tied into a sort of denial of what happened, which seems just frankly shocking based on, I mean, I'm going to say, don't take this the wrong way because, you know, for all I care, Ted Cruz and Josh Holly can be. banished to, you know, a desert island somewhere. I would actually watch that show. It would be fantastic. But I understand their persistence from a week ago on some abstract level that you, that it's much

more difficult to change your mind, to change course than it is to just sort of insist upon what you would already plan to do, right? despite the inhumanity and sort of abject cruelty of that, I understand why they both chose to persist. This feels like, and even though the other senator or congresspeople that did the same, but today feels like the opportunity to get it back, right? Today feels like you had a fresh chance to acknowledge reality and reality about something that you faced head on.

and, you know, some people chose not to do that. There's been a lot of Republicans who've looked at slow pitches right down the middle of the plate. I can walk back into the House chamber after the riot and say, you know what? I'm going to let this fake

voter fraud stuff go. Didn't do it. They could have said today, I'm going to walk into the chamber of the house and vote to impeach the president because of something he clearly did. They didn't do it. They didn't do it. And I don't how much you dipped into the speechifying today, but I sure didn't hear many arguments that

even address the nature of the charges. I mean, everybody was making the process arguments we talked about on the last episode where it was, this is too late, this is going to offend, a word I actually heard today, offend people who voted for Donald Trump. This is going to undo the overturn the will of the people. Overturn the Will of the People. You mean like those people that were in the Capitol last week were trying to do that that overturning the will of the people those were the arguments no no nobody I heard one person one guy and I wish I could I wish I knew his name but MSNBC was not putting the kairon of any of these people up on there and he said he didn't yeah he said he didn't think that Donald Trump incited people to do

that he actually he actually went went up there and made that argument but that was the only person I heard even address the charges uh yeah I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of things were said that I think, I mean, just kind of beggar believe. But I saw one person again, I'm not sure who it was, say that the president didn't, I'm not saying the president didn't exercise poor judgment, but, and then, you know, the rioters exercised their own judgment, I guess, was the follow-up to that. There was some all-conference of what-aboutism, about, mostly about the protest this summer,

too, you know? Oh, you know, look, something terrible happened last week, but did you know, you you see the protests this summer? You know, what? What are you talking about? Right. A lot of people, particularly on Twitter, but a bit of we saw a good bit of it on the floor today are comparing.

Actually, we saw that, I think there's a tweet. I mean, there's a tweet, there's a clip from Fox and Friends this morning with Brian Kilmeet, I believe, making this case, but comparing what happened a week ago, the attack on the Capitol to the protest in Portland over the summer. And I don't know. I mean, clearly this has not been a week of introspection that you might expect from the world, or certainly from the people who are kind of most tangentially or directly related to the problem that this country is facing. But if you're comparing the terrorist assault, domestic terrorist assault on the Capitol to the protests that we're going on in Portland over the summer,

well, you're, you are the problem, right? I mean, you have to quit promoting imaginary adversaries for your, cause, right? I mean, you believe this lie you've been spreading. And that's exactly why these, Trump was able to to rally an army to assault the capital because they've been spreading because they've all bought into the bullshit they're spreading for so long. It's, it's, what aboutism is, is a kind way to put it at this point. I saw Madison Cawthorne, newly elected representative from North Carolina at the great state of North Carolina. And one of his many lines was Wonderful state.

The wonderful state. One of his many lines was we need to put aside partisan politicking. Madison Cawthorne is calling for higher values than partisanship. Come on. Come on. You did not go to Washington to put aside partisan politicking. You went, you're going to Washington because you channeled partisan politicking in your particular district. Come on now.

I mean, it's just, it's just right. Yeah, there was a quote here from Jeff Mason's, tweeted this quote from Representative McClend, Republican Representative McClintock. He said that of the Black Lives Matter protests had been prosecuted more forcefully than the rate of the Capitol may not have taken place. And Jeff Mason commented he does not explain the connection in this argument. It's absolutely mind-boggling. Like, why even bother drawing those connections?

You can just vote no. You know, I mean, or you can just, you can just shut up. It seems just so beside the point. I mean, it is beside the point. Like, why are you talking about anything else right now? Yeah, New York Magazine's Olivia Nuzzi also had this one. Representative Barry Moore, I believe it's from Alabama, says he asked his staff this morning how many times the president has been impeached in American history.

Did he really not know that, Nuzzi writes? At 54 years old, he's lived through most of them. you know how congresspeople have been saying for four years now i didn't see the trump tweet this is like the next iteration i didn't see the previous impeachment or even bill clinton's impeachment don't we really don't remember how many people it's a short list it's not that's not a stumper at pub quiz how many people have how many times is the president been impeached thank god for barry more staff yeah we don't need to go through every stupid thing that was said i mean some of them are but but a lot of these stupid people are making stupid arguments

that have led to the insurrection in this country. And it's one person, again, I don't have the name said. It's not about the president's words, but about how the Democrats want to interpret his words, which is, I understand the argument there. At least it's not specious, but like, I think with all due respect, what's important is how the domestic terrorists in front of him interpreted his words. And they interpreted them, by the way, correctly, right?

The people who, to whom Trump said, They understood what he wanted, understood explicitly what he meant. Absolutely. I don't know. I don't think interpretation is the problem there. I completely agree. More seriously, there were reports all over.

I saw it on CNN from Politico's Tim Alberta, that Republican representatives were afraid of physical violence if they voted to impeach Trump today. So you have the people invading the Capitol. And then on that very same note, you have Republican representatives say, if I vote to impeach, if I think that's the right thing to do, I'm afraid that I'm going to be a target. Who?

This is a bad moment. It sounds a little bit like, it sounds a little bit like, yeah, it sounds a little bit like terrorism, kind of, right? I mean, doesn't that sort of exactly the object of terrorism to strike such fear into your political opponents that they, they cower before you? I think you got it. I think you got it. I want to talk about the events of yesterday, Dave, which were almost as compelling as the events of today. Democrats have basically spent the day trying to pressure Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, invoke being the official verb of the 25th Amendment, where he essentially can get members of the cabinet together and force Trump from office.

That was not happening. Mike Pence said, I'm not doing that. But two remarkable things happened from the Republican side of the aisle yesterday. Liz Cheney, number three Republican in the House, daughter of the former vice president, came out for impeachment. And she came out with a vengeance, quoting her statement, the president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack. There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. Whoa, that was big news.

and then you had Mitch McConnell, David, from the great state of Kentucky, as long as we're doing great states. Big blockbuster New York Times piece by Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, and Nicholas Fondos yesterday that said McConnell has concluded that President Trump committed impeachable offenses and believes that Democrats moved to impeach him will make it easier to purge Mr. Trump from the party, according to people familiar with Mr. McConnell's thinking. There was some question on, at least in the Fox Newsverse yesterday. about that story. Well, today McConnell came out and all but confirmed it. He said, I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate. Translation, I am not definitely voting not to remove Donald Trump if and when this impeachment article is referred to the Senate. Yeah, I mean, whatever he does, I think this sort of, you know, if he was looking for, if he was making a political calculation here and certain.

He was. Even the kindest reading, even the kindness reading of it, that's explicit. The leak itself gets him a little bit of like bipartisan cred, if that's what you want to call it, right? I mean, he's not just going to go down as a diehard trumpist. But, well, it remains to be seen, you know, how quickly he chooses to operate over the next week or two. The Cheney, the Liz Cheney part is interesting. I mean, has a, you know, a little bit of political intrigue there, too. I mean, she is a, you know, we, I probably disagree with her about 99% of the time,

but she does seem to be, um, this, the, she does seem to be being, like, morally honest here. I mean, this is, she seems, she seems to be, you know, she seems to think like she's doing the right thing and she is. Um, but, uh, you know, and people are already voting or, are suggesting there should be a censure of her, right? That, that's, you know, maybe not surprising. but there's going to be, you know, there is a political act going on between her and Kevin McCarthy at this point, too, because if everybody, because if she's number three, if one and two go down on the Trump ship, that puts her in a real position of power in Congress, even more than she has right now. So it's unclear how much of that is a calculation for her. Yeah. And the people who spoke up on Twitter, whom I trust all said that this, this was, you know, whether, you know, how much is calculated or not? Well, we can't crawl inside somebody's brain. But this, this hurts. her in the immediate, in her standing in the Republican caucus in the house, as we saw those people today, right? This might cost her her leadership job, period. She's, this is not, this is not McConnell

playing 9D chess. Not to mention Liz Cheney is up for reelection every two years, you know, McConnell just got reelected for six years. Liz Cheney could be, it probably has a primary campaigns against her starting like 10 minutes ago. Well, maybe that's a bellwether. I mean, maybe that's a sign that she's more in tune with the way things are trending. It'll be interesting. And obviously, this is, we're extrapolating way out. But, you know, the news networks are doing it before we are, which is to say that it's potential, I mean, potentially, if Trump is impeached and then a vote, subsequent to that, a vote from the Senate will make it, make him ineligible to run for office again, which, you know, if, if McConnell is right, this process could sever Trump from the Republican Party, which I think would suit sort of everybody that's speaking. out against him right now. Well, that's McConnell's calculation. So Donald Trump is leaving the White

House in a week, but he is going to continue to make life hell for Mitch McConnell for another four years. But if the Senate were to take that additional vote so that he cannot run for federal political office, then maybe that somehow makes Trump less threatening to Republicans. Clearly, that is Mitch McConnell's calculation here now, whether he actually votes for, that or not, it remains to be seen. But clearly that's its calculation. And a lot of people pointed to the vote in Georgia as being the incident that pushed Mitch McConnell into this place, right? He made Donald Trump help make Mitch McConnell the minority leader by making it all but impossible for those two Republicans to win in Georgia. You know, seats that even I think your most

optimistic Democrats did not think they would win both of those seats at the beginning of this cycle. Well, I mean, it might not be 90 chess, but there has to be a deeper level to this, too, right? Because if McConnell thought that a slightly placated Trump would spend the next four years rallying or just abetting whatever McConnell wanted to do in the Senate, I'm sure he would, it's not, Georgia would not change his mind. I mean, it would not necessarily drive this wedge, right? I mean, it's clearly he thinks that the future of the republic, of getting the bills he wants passed. that it's a more hopeful future with Trump totally excised from the party, right? That, I mean, he has better odds not having to deal with the then-ex-president at all. By the way, Caitlin Collins tweeted as we're recording this, that McConnell has officially said

that Trump's trial wouldn't happen until next week. They need to concentrate on facilitating a safe inauguration and orderly transfer of power. So, you know, that's, if it wasn't already clear, this will be a, you know, this will be happening. under the watch of the Biden presidency. And as Biden tries to get his nominees for various offices confirmed through the Senate, we have heard very little from deplatformed Donald Trump, David. We did hear yesterday him come out and say his remarks that he had made last Wednesday before the Capitol riot were, quote, totally appropriate,

which then pushed people into this zone of, well, look, he's not even sorry for what he did. now are we sure that being sorry should be any standard here like i understand contrition and donald trump telling people not to commit acts of violence which i guess he did during a statement today is potentially helpful in some small way but if you did what don't know what don't trump did and then you were very sorry about it let's say trump had come out and and somehow apologized or something and said i went too far whatever i don't know that that really makes much of a difference morally speaking after the capital has been...

No, I don't either. Because I think that the... Well, first of all, that statement was released, I believe, after the sixth House Republican said that they would vote to impeach him, I mean, it was under duress of impeachment, right? I mean, this was at the moment when it seemed like the tide might be turning

so that, like, every Republican... I mean, half the Republicans in Congress would be pro-impeachment, right? I mean, this was a very calculated press release and it did not sound like it was written by Trump, not that most press releases are written by the people that release them, but whatever. but I don't even think that that, you know, there's a, there's going to be, if this ever, I mean, Trump was talking about wanting to testify and that's a blustery thing that he said before. But if he, if he were to be on the stand, I think that would be the best case scenario for the prosecution, because it, the hardest thing to prove in this case will be intent, right? I mean, it's actually a very fine line. And I'm not, I mean, you can go look at like Pope.

Pat's Twitter account, like I'm not the person to be, to be, well, adjudicating this, no pun intended, but it's going to be a hard case to prove. And I honestly think the best way to prove it would be by Trump doing the, you know, a few good men, having a few good men code red moment. Because he, because if you ask him, well, I mean, I don't think he's going to say he just, he wanted to lead a terrorist attack or an armed insurrection, but I think he's going to admit to everything right up to that line. At that point, it'll be impossible to distinguish one from the other. And I think that he'd probably make the case pretty well, pretty well against himself, just in his demeanor. Trump has a long history of confessing bad acts. He might have confessed something if he was still on Twitter right now.

All of this is to say, I don't think, I frankly don't think that contrition is neither neither here nor there, because I think that the intent is sort of separate from contrition. I think that he, I think that he led that charge deliberately but also sort of naively. So I'm not sure that, I mean, I don't think he's actually sorry for it, but I don't think it would matter if he was. It's striking to me how little we know about what Donald Trump is doing during all this. You know, we're used to just having the direct pipeline into Donald Trump's brain. I was watching cable news this afternoon and none of these people can get any information. the one thing they were sure about was that Donald Trump was watching the impeachment proceedings on television,

which you probably didn't even need a second source on that one, right? Is Donald Trump watching TV checkbox? Yes. But I also heard the phrase that Donald Trump is, quote, increasingly isolated. We're now in the fourth year of people saying Donald Trump is increasingly isolated whenever there is something bad happening. How few people have to be left in the White House for it even to be possible, that Donald Trump is more isolated than he was, I don't know, like three weeks ago or six months ago. Are we just talking about like just Donald Trump walking into empty rooms now, walking, looking, looking up at the pictures and stuff like that?

I mean, that's, that's like the episode, it's like the episode of Veep when it's the last night of Selena Myers presidency and she's just sort of ambling from room to room with a big glass of scotch or whatever. Just like, you know, just passing out on the couch, I guess Trump wouldn't have the big glass of scotch. But yeah, you don't go for that. But yeah, I mean, I have no idea. I haven't even been keeping up with this stuff. But it does seem like there are a large number of people that aren't showing, that aren't coming into work anymore because it's the end of the term. And it seems even like the people closest around him or his family members are finding

excuses to be out of town. So, I mean, I don't really know. I don't know if it's just, you know, him and the chief of staff like kicking back. There was also reports today, which I was kind of largely unaware of, not, I mean, over the past week, sorry, about how much time, when he and Mike Pence had their sort of falling out, I kind of think I realized for the first time how much, like, FaceTime those two had, that Mike Pence was apparently just spending hours a day in the Oval Office, just going over, you know, just being present. And, you know, those sorts of absences when they, when they occur

are significant. Yeah, the one that was really funny was Larry Cutlow. There was a, there was a story on CNBC that I saw a quote on Twitter there. They said, Larry Cutlow is not resigning. He was just taking vacation this month. Oh, just a long-planned vacation. Oh, I'm sorry. I was actually the last couple weeks of administration when the, when impeachment is lingering and Donald Trump is one of the least popular politicians on earth.

I actually was planning to be skiing this week. I'm sorry, I'm going to miss the, have to miss those festivities. That was pretty funny. I also heard on ABC right before we came on the air here that Donald Trump's likely lawyers for a Senate trial would be, wait for this, Rudy Giuliani and Alan Dershowitz. Speaking of increasingly isolated,

that's what we're down to. I can't even make the jokes I want to make about that. That's, yeah, that's just, that's, that's sad. Remember when Pat Riley, like, own the trademark to three Pete? Do you think Alan Dershowitz owns a trademark to the dream team as it applies

to lawyers and that whenever a dream team is announced that he is just contractually obligated to be part of it. Oh, dream team. Okay, I'm in. No matter how awful the cause, I'm in. That is so sad. But is Lynn Wood

not available? Is he like, is he somehow like crazy his way out of circulation in the White House? I don't think, yeah. It's kind of unbelievable. Donald Trump may even not want Lynn Wood do to to represent him at this point.

All right, David, should we ease out of this podcast by doing a few overworked Twitter jokes? Would that be tonally appropriate? When Madison Cothorn feel that that would bring us together and rise above pure partisanship on a day? We can all come together in humor and harmony. All right.

Let us do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to At the Pressbox pod where they are always gratefully received, David New England Patriots coach, Bill Belichick, has pulled his own McConnell this week,

his own chaining. He has refused Donald Trump's offer of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Donald Trump is said to be deflated. We would have also accepted, we're on to Biden. Thanks to Craggar's NYC,

N.H. Murray's, Eben M. Anderson, Austin, Alter, J.M. Junkins, Jonathan Gallo Derek Burke and Kyle McMillan for that one. By the way, weirdest and most underplayed story of last week was on Thursday, the day after the Capitol was invaded, Donald Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Golfers, Gary Player, and Anika Sorenstam. Just went ahead with it. That was just, I know I used this line way, way too much, but when you read those Rick Pearlstein books about stuff that happened way back when and then he finds these little details, that's the kind of stuff. that's going to go straight into like Rick

Pearlstein 2035. Donald Trump gave a medal to golfers the day after the Capitol was invaded. My God. Unbelievable. David, remember the Viking guy who was inside the Capitol the other day?

Yeah. The Washington Post says he has allegedly been identified as Jacob Chansley and Chansley has been arrested. Then we got a tweet from Arizona reporter Melissa Blasias, Jacob Chansley's mom, quote, says he hasn't eaten since Friday because the detention facility won't feed him all organic food. Jacob Chansley has not eaten because the facility did

not have organic food. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, maybe Antifa did infiltrate the rioters of the Capitol. Thanks to Mike Sauce for that one. Speaking of odd people to pick out of the Capitol last Wednesday, Cleet, Kelloggles. who was a gold medal winning American swimmer at the Olympics, he was on the relay team with Michael Phelps, was allegedly seen inside the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday. It was an overworked Twitter joke that Keller should have stayed in his lane. Thanks to Andrew Hertz.

And finally, finally, I'm getting off stage here, folks. As you mentioned, David, the Donald Trump-Mich, Mike Pence relationship has hit rock bottom. The New York Times reports that in his bid to get Pence to help him steal the election, Trump told the Veep, quote, you can go down in history as a patriot or you can go down in history as a P word that I'm not going to say on the air.

Okay? Patriot or other thing. It was an overword Twitter joke to write, oh, to be a fly on Mike Pence's head right now. Thanks to Ben Wagner and enemies list 19. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic is always. always by Erica Servantes, who is crushing it with all the podcasts we are turning out. David, we are back with a non-emergency podcast. I repeat, put the siren on Twitter, non-emergency podcast tomorrow with John Crackauer, who's going to talk about the 25th anniversary of his book, Into the Wild. Plus, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, buddy. Later, Brian.