What A Day - A Big Beautiful Impeachment

Episode Date: December 19, 2019

The House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. But Pelosi isn’t giving up the articles just yet. We discuss what went down yesterday and where we go from here.  We ask the Crooked team about their personal political highlights and lowlights of the past ten years, in a segment we call “Shoutouts and Strikeouts Of The 2010s.”  And in headlines: record heat in Australia, a spine-tingling crypto-mystery, and how to have the best Yang fit.

It's Thursday, December 19th. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What a Day, the family dog who greets you like you never left of daily news podcasts. That sounds really nice, but I've never had a dog, so I guess no one misses me when I leave. You have a WAD dog now. It's all of us. On today's show, the hits and misses of the decade, and as always, some headlines. But first, another impeachment news blast. The House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump on Wednesday night with two articles. They were abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. This all stems from

Trump's attempts to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate a political rival. It's the third time this has happened to a president in the country's history. Good evening. December 18th, a great day for the Constitution of the United States. A sad one for America that the president's reckless activities necessitated our having to introduce articles of impeachment. Yeah, so obviously that was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the votes were actually cast. It's sort of funny the entire day she's been taking all these efforts to keep mentioning how like solemn the occasion is. She's literally wearing all black as if it was a funeral. Yeah, right. And that she doesn't want other members of the caucus to seem overzealous and

excited. And she even had this funny moment before this press conference where she appeared to be shushing them in the chamber as the votes were coming in. It was perfect. It was very much a face that a mom gives their kids that are like acting up in the backseat. But yeah, the day went on for hours before the ultimate vote with a lot of hyperbole from a number of Republicans. Yeah, of course. And I mean, some Republicans got a little more inventive with their language about impeachment, comparing it to everything from Pearl Harbor to the Salem witch trials, and even the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Before you take this historic vote today, one week before Christmas, I want you to keep this in mind. When Jesus was falsely accused of treason, Pontius Pilate gave Jesus the opportunity to face his accusers.

During that sham trial, Pontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus than the Democrats have afforded this president in this process. I yield back. Wow. Donald Trump has a harder life than Jesus. I hope that representative doesn't read the rest of the Bible. All right. Well, that was obviously Republican Representative Barry Loudermilk, accurate name, from Georgia. The milk couldn't have been louder. It couldn't have been louder in that statement. Meanwhile, President Trump was not even in D.C. He was doing his own personal pep rally in Michigan, saying some crazy shit.

Yeah, all kinds of stuff. At the end of the day, a Trump rally is a Trump rally. Go check it out if you feel you need to. But let's talk for a second here about what comes next now that the House has actually voted to impeach. We were talking on some previous episodes about some of the back and forth over the next step, which is a trial in the Senate. But yesterday, something interesting happened on that front before they even get to the point where there is going to be that trial. Yeah, some Democrats wanted to actually hold on to the articles of impeachment as leverage against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in order to get him to agree to a fair trial in the Senate, which he's already said he's not going to do.

Right. And holding on to the articles right now, in practical terms, which he's already said he's not going to do. Right. And holding onto articles right now in practical terms means that Pelosi is not physically giving them over to the Senate just yet. That's what she said on Wednesday. And Democrats are saying that they would want to do this, like we said, because maybe they exact something from Republicans by, you know, making them sweat a little bit. And also they know that if they do just give it to the Senate immediately, Republicans have the majority, Democrats don't have the votes, and there will be a pretty swift acquittal, we think, I mean, based on what McConnell's

been projecting. And then President Trump will just use that as proof of exoneration during an election year. Yeah, that's a it's pretty dark, but it is par for the course for this president. You know, he's, he's got witch hunt is like an auto correct for like any other phrasing. that they think that it makes Democrats look like they're scared because they don't want to give it up immediately to the Senate and then have it be shot down, that they have like a weak case or something, and they're waiting to just sort of get more evidence to make it happen. And then, on the other hand, it's unclear if the Senate legally even has to wait in order for this to take place and go on to the next step. But in a world where they do wait, and it goes on indefinitely, and we take this all to its logical conclusion, then we're in some sort of purgatory

where the Senate trial is indefinitely delayed, and then maybe you don't get that swift acquittal of Trump. But all that, you know, will get sorted out in the next couple of weeks to months. We'll keep track of that storyline and everything else as this goes on. And that was today's Impeachment News Blast. Yeah, flame it. Fire. It's almost the end of the year, guys, and the end of the decade.

It's the decade where we took our first Uber, sent our first Venmo, and threw our first major tantrum when we discovered that the president is actually a bad person. We've got two shows left, but since tomorrow's show is going to focus on the Democratic debate, we're going to be using this day to look back at some of the most memorable political moments of the past 10 years, the ones that made us hopeful and the ones that made us a little uncomfortable. In a segment we're calling Shoutouts and Strikeouts of the 2010s.

Home run, folks. We asked some of our peers from the office to participate in this little exercise of ours. And here is Jon Favreau. My shoutout is June 26th, 2015, which was the day that the Supreme Court decided the Obergefell case, which is the gay marriage case. I chose that because I remember the day well, I had left the White House, I was at my home with my wife and her father, my father-in-law, had decided the Obergefell case when it came to his court in Ohio.

And then, of course, it went to the Supreme Court. And as someone who had been in the Obama White House when Obama finally came out for gay marriage and who had seen this movement of people over just years and years trying to push for this outcome, and then to see that happen and the White House sort of bathed in rainbow at the end of that day, it was a really inspiring moment. So that's my shout out. Solid shout out. Loved it. Yeah.

All right. Let's see what his cringy moment was. My strikeout is during the 2016 campaign when Marco Rubio said that Donald Trump has a small penis, which is something that happened on the campaign. I chose that because it epitomizes the spinelessness of Marco Rubio and the broader Republican Party, and yet their failure to defeat Donald Trump, even when they sunk to his level in that race. And Marco Rubio sucks. There it is. I remember that night far too well. All right, here's Priyanka Arabindi, friend of the WOD. My shout out is to when President Obama sang Amazing Grace in 2015. It was after the shootings in Charleston. It's obviously not a fun shout out is to when President Obama sang Amazing Grace in 2015. It was after the shootings in Charleston.

It's obviously not a fun shout out in the wake of a massacre at a black church by a white supremacist. But while giving a eulogy, he started singing Amazing Grace. And it was a really stunning moment. It really just stopped me in my tracks. I think a lot of people felt the same way. It was a really heartfelt moment. It was, I think a lot of people felt the same way. It was a really heartfelt moment, super sincere. And I think it really exemplified for me the way President Obama was as a leader on a personal level. Obviously, gun violence, white supremacy, all these things haven't really gone away. But how President Obama spoke to the nation about it on that day, so vastly different than what we get now and was inspiring in the wake

of tragedy and something that was unifying and healing, I think, for people to see. Yeah. I remember I was working at Fusion, rest in peace, at the time, and we all stopped to watch it out loud. It was like any newsroom where it's very silent and everybody's on Slack, and someone just unplugged their computer and we all sit around and it was pretty moving. Yeah, that's a really crazy one to revisit because I don't remember that the world was like this at a certain point. Well, here is Priyanka's strikeout. So my strikeout is to Juuls. Fuck Juul. Fuck those fucking nicotine flash drives. They're not cool. They're not ironically cool. If they were just around to help smokers transition away from smoking, which is what they claim to be doing when they started out, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But they're not. They got a bunch of teenagers

addicted to fucking mango flavored nicotine. They sold themselves to big tobacco, took seven figure bonuses at the expense of our public health. They literally became their own public health crisis, which is so hard to do. Do you know how wild that is? The worst thing that happened this decade. Thank you. All right. I guess she won't be buying our WOD branded dual pods.

Strike the vapes from the merch page. All right. Well, here's our next one. To me, the biggest strikeout of the decade was in 2011 in the moments and days after Anthony Weiner accidentally tweeted a picture of his junk instead of direct messaging it, which is what he was trying to do. Yeah. Wow. Also, like a major flashback moment. That's Crooked Media's editor in chief, Brian Boitler. He's, of course, talking about Anthony Weiner, who is the infamous Democratic politician who was being groomed for big time positions in the House when this all happened. That is until his sexting scandals.

It's literally why Donald Trump is president, because Weiner was married to a woman named Huma Abedin, who was a top advisor to Hillary Clinton. And after this Twitter incident in 2011, Anthony Weiner didn't stop. Another woman later outed him for sexting with her under the pseudonym Carlos Danger and eventually it came to light that he had sexted with someone who was under 18 and that's how he ended up under federal investigation which is how the FBI got a hold of the laptop he shared with Huma Abedin which is how they found a tranche of duplicative Hillary Clinton emails and reopened the email investigation in October 2016. And the rest is history. Yeah, expertly argued. Well, here's

Brian with a more positive contribution. Shout out of the decade on a more earnest note goes to a whole range of progressive issue advocates, like Fight for 15, Mom's Demand and many others. Because even though it's on the whole been a rough decade for Democratic candidates, these activists have helped pass initiatives in states and cities around the country to increase wages, pass gun regulations, enfranchise voters, legalize marijuana, and on and on. And it's had the effect of improving people's lives and making the country safer and proving to millions of citizens that they have power even when it seems like their votes don't count. So shout out of the decade to all of you.

That was very nice. Here's another friend of the WOD. Hey, team. It's Jon Lovett, and I've got a strikeout. Number one was when John Travolta said Adele Dazeem to this day, completely unexplained, ultimately. No way to make sense of it. What happened there?

What did happen there? I think that John Travolta was like buffering. Like, I think maybe his robot brain took over and was like, I can't make sense of these letters. Rearranged, like maybe there's some Scrabble game happening in his mind. All right, let's get back to Jonathan Lovett. Hey, 2010, shout out to Obamacare. Shout out to Obamacare.

You know, was it perfect? It was not. But man, did they fight the Democrats too thin and out to prevent that from happening. Ted Kennedy died. We lost a Senate seat. And we still found a way to get it done. In part because of Barack Obama. In part because of Nancy Pelosi.

In part because of a lot of activists. And for a decade that followed, the entire 10 years, they tried to repeal it every three to four minutes. And they couldn't do it. They couldn't do it. So it was a decade bookended by the passage of an important piece of legislation that helped millions of people afford health care. And a doomed effort to try to repeal it, culminating in John McCain giving it a thumbs down, preventing the bill from being overturned before he passed away. Yeah. John Lovett, if you are listening, they are still trying to repeal it. They haven't given up on that. We're definitely talking about it later in the headlines. Yeah.

Pay attention, Mr. Lovett, for God's sakes. Shaniqua McClendon, Crooked's politics director, also chose Obamacare, but for a slightly different reason. It was actually the reason I stayed in politics and went to work on Capitol Hill, because I was like, okay, President Obama did a lot, but Congress is where that bill was created and passed. And it was just really cool to watch it. And I remember being up at some ungodly hour watching C-SPAN and watching Nancy Pelosi preside over the floor when it passed. And so it being up at some ungodly hour watching C-SPAN and watching Nancy Pelosi preside over the floor when it passed. And so it just had like an impact on me. That is so cool. Well, Shaniqua's strikeout was Operation Varsity Blues. If you don't remember

this, I definitely do. It's from earlier this year. Aunt Becky from Full House, she bribed the colleges to get her kid in. Operation Varsity Blues was the code name the FBI gave to that investigation. Here's why Shaniqua picked it. When I was in high school, I was like number six or seven in my class. And this girl, five of us had gotten into UNC Chapel Hill, which was like a big deal for my high school because normally only one or two people got in. She says to us, it's four students of color and one white person who got in. And she goes, you all only got in because you're black. And just took that so personally and then my final we had to do a speech as our final project in that class and mine was on why affirmative action is bad because I was

trying to prove to her that like I didn't get in because of affirmative action I'm smart and then the next year I took a race and ethnic relations class in college and it's like oh this I understand this now. But the reason that story just sticks out is because a lot of the conversation around affirmative action is there are people of color who are not qualified taking these spaces. And in this case, there were literally just rich people who were not qualified. And that's why they had to buy their way in. And it just made me reflect on that and how we come up with these stories to punish certain people and then other people do what people of color are being accused of and benefit from it. Wow. These were so expertly argued and answered. I'm sort of nervous to do mine. But Akilah, what's your strikeout and shout out? Okay, so I'll start with the strikeout. My strikeout is all of the dumb

early 2010s think pieces about millennials that completely disregarded the fact that a majority of us graduated into the recession, that we weren't boomeranging back home because we were lazy, but because there was no economic opportunity. And that even still, there are people who haven't been able to dig themselves out of that. And so, you know, as we come to a part of the discourse where we are now like, stop being mean to boomers. Millennials, you're so mean. I'm like, honestly, do you know how many covers of magazines were like millennials are selfish? Millennials are babies. Millennials don't have the gumption to like go out there and buy a house.

I would buy a house. And so I think history will will agree with me that this was just a complete misread of what the situation was. And, you know, will probably affect millennials for the rest of our lives. So that's my my strikeout. I think my shout out is diversity in politics overall, especially in the 2010s. It's the most diverse time in American history for, you know, the political stage. And I think that part of the reason why politics is the dominant conversation in this country is not just that we have, you know, a terror in office, but I think more people feel engaged and feel like they're represented. And, you know, we have younger candidates than ever who reflect our values, you know, so when we talk about millennials, it's great to see AOC out there saying like, yeah, I had to work as a bartender. And it taught me a

lot about the, you know, the value of a dollar and why we should raise the minimum wage and those sorts of things and why, you know, living wages are important. And so I think that if it weren't for the fact that everything in this country, in media, and in politics and everywhere else got more diverse i think you know i might not be sitting here today so yeah shout out to that yeah those were both very good aren't there still like negative millennial takes they continue to this day in a different way yeah i think they're less like you guys are lazy because we're all in our 30s now right we're aging um but i also think that yeah like the the articles now are just like you guys are too like everybody works for uber like i don't know what their complaint is actually anymore they're just yeah that's bad in general um okay all right gideon it's your turn so my shout out

is to protest broadly i feel like it was like a decade of protests both in the united states and around the world that had very sort of effective reactions to them. I'm thinking of, you know, everything from like Occupy Wall Street to BLM to even more recent things like the Women's March and like climate strikes. It just seems sort of to your point, like a younger generation of people are super, super engaged on all different kinds of things. And I think that that's broadly very very good um and it's always great to see people in the streets about something because if you're not annoyed about something you're not really paying attention to what's going on so um shout out to that i think my strikeout is to the concept of the cool Silicon Valley billionaire man or woman. The start of the decade, like, you know, being like a social media guy, like, or a Silicon

Valley person like Travis Kalanick at Uber or like Mark Zuckerberg or even like later like Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos. It was like, oh, this is a very cool thing to be. And as the decade has progressed, it's sort of revealed itself that all of those people are maniacal in different and bad ways and are impacting our lives in different and bad ways. So that was a negative take similar to the takes about millennials from the start of the decade. Well, there you go. Well, that's it, guys. Thank you to everyone at Crooked who decided to join us. And I don't know about you, but I'm excited to break open a brand new notebook to just start compiling my thoughts.

And for the shout outs and the strikeouts for the next 10 years, I'm pretty pumped. Yeah. So let's agree that no matter how rich, successful or utterly destitute we are in 10 years, you know, aging millennials, we meet up in the exact same spot to record the biggest 2020s shout outs and strikeouts. That's a very confusing way to say we're going to be looking at the whole decade, not just the year 2020. That's exactly right. Well, we have a deal, Gideon. And if you all want to participate, just tweet at us your strikeouts and your shout outs for the 2010s. It could be anything, but we're keeping it political here. Yeah, do it. And now to some ads.

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Many Australians are criticizing the prime minister for not doing enough on climate change and spending his December in Hawaii away from the heat. Surf is freaking up my dog. Lord. A federal appeals court ruled that the Affordable Care Act's individual coverage mandate was unconstitutional on Wednesday. That's the part of the law that requires all Americans to have health insurance. The ruling has little immediate effect on consumers as the penalty for not complying with the individual mandate has already been removed by Congress. But now the case goes back to a lower court and a conservative judge who has a track record of striking down the law to decide whether the rest of the ACA can remain in effect without the individual mandate. No matter what happens, it's impressive how deep in the legal weeds these people have gone to take

away something that pretty much everyone likes. Do you remember the story of cryptocurrency exchange founder Jerry Cotton? I cannot say I do. Well, he died suddenly at age 30 this time last year and took at least $250 million worth of his nearly 100,000 customers money to the grave because nobody else knew his passwords. Well, now creditors want to exhume his body because they think he faked his own death. Honestly, it makes sense. So lawyers representing exchange clients on Friday asked Canadian law enforcement officials to dig him up and conduct an autopsy to, quote, confirm both its identity and the cause of death. Since Cotton has allegedly been dead for a year, the lawyers are recommending they dig him up before spring, citing, quote, decomposition concerns. Oh, Merry Christmas.

Which is a very practical approach to a truly insane problem. Still unclear if the creditors will ever recover Cotton's passwords or all that money. They must have been really good passwords. The newest member of the Yang gang is comedian, rapper, and extremely talented man Donald Glover. He and presidential candidate Andrew Yang announced via their respective Instagram stories that they'll be hosting a pop-up called the 46 campaign today on the same block in Los Angeles where teens wait in line to buy $90 t-shirts from Supreme. No joke, you can hit Yang's store then walk walk a few feet to Tyler, the creator's. The event will feature limited edition merch, and maybe I'll roll by too and try to impress everybody with my Yang fit. Yang is, of course, in town for the Democratic debates, where he'll be the only candidate to represent hypebeasts on the debate stage.

Man, stay woke. All right. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, give us a rating, go ahead and impeach us and tell your friends to listen. By the way, if you're into reading and not just the truly soul nourishing one star reviews of the Cats movie like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's why I never want to be a Bitcoin millionaire.

Because you can't. Because they'll take your money and die. You know what's cooler than a Bitcoin millionaire? A million Bitcoins. What a day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tunn is our assistant producer.

Our head writer is John Milstein and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.