Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Welcome to this week's episode where we
Speaker 1: talk about the republic and whether it is about to
Speaker 1: collapse entirely. We are in the midst of a genuine
Speaker 1: impeachment inquiry. This time it is not address rehearsal. Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, hold on to your hats to discuss this
Speaker 1: and many other issues. I'm thrilled to have with me
Speaker 1: Seth Burman, a former state and federal prosecutor and my
Speaker 1: spirit guide to all things criminal, no offense, Seth, and
Speaker 1: indeed to all things connected to inquiries, impeachments, and everything
Speaker 1: else we've had to deal with from the beginning of
Speaker 1: this administration on. Seth, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Now, so let's just start
Speaker 1: in the middle of it, Seth. The impeachment inquiry. What
Speaker 1: do you think the whistle blower complained? How do we
Speaker 1: get here? The whistle blower complaint is absolutely fascinating, because,
Speaker 1: first of all, the reality is the whistleblower didn't really
Speaker 1: tell us all that much. That if you weren't paying
Speaker 1: attention you didn't already know. It was well known that
Speaker 1: Giuliani was running around. He was advertising that he was
Speaker 1: running around in Ukraine and trying to get the Ukrainian
Speaker 1: government to dig up dirt on Biden. It was reasonably
Speaker 1: clear that the President was involved in that, because Giuliani
Speaker 1: had said things like that over the time. But what
Speaker 1: the whistleblower complaints seems to have done is number one
Speaker 1: brought tremendous attention to it, and number two was point
Speaker 1: out a way in which the veil of Giuliani doing
Speaker 1: it as the president's lawyer or the president's individual lawyer,
Speaker 1: as opposed to doing it as part of his official duties,
Speaker 1: which he has none, because Rudy Giuliani has no official
Speaker 1: duties in the US government. Correct. And that created just
Speaker 1: enough of a cover that I think it was hard
Speaker 1: for anyone to know what to do about it. But
Speaker 1: then once the call or the fact of the call
Speaker 1: was revealed in the whistleblower complaint and the phone call
Speaker 1: between President Trump and President the Lodimir Zelenski of Ukraine,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. And once that call was was revealed,
Speaker 1: and then the call itself or at least what we
Speaker 1: think is a transcript of the call, semi quasi kind
Speaker 1: of transcript exactly that semi quasi transcript seemed to show
Speaker 1: Trump doing exactly the core of what he's not supposed
Speaker 1: to be doing, the core abuse of power, which is
Speaker 1: essentially using the power of the US government for his
Speaker 1: own personal goals. To me, one of the takeaways from
Speaker 1: this is, if you want to be in the president
Speaker 1: and you want to get away with being the president
Speaker 1: and doing the stuff you want to do, it might
Speaker 1: be fine to be investigated by the former head of
Speaker 1: the FBI, Bob Mueller, but you really don't want to
Speaker 1: be investigated by some CIA desk officer who knows how
Speaker 1: to write a five page memo. It certainly seems that way.
Speaker 1: I mean, the five page memo did so much more
Speaker 1: damage to the president than Mueller's report. And it's more
Speaker 1: happened in five pages of the whistle blower complaint than
Speaker 1: in five hundred of Muller reports. Right, And it's not
Speaker 1: clear to me how much of that is because of
Speaker 1: the sort of boiling of the frog thing that the
Speaker 1: problem with Mueller is that it took so long that
Speaker 1: by the time the report was done. We'd all gotten
Speaker 1: used to all the facts in it. We were the
Speaker 1: frog in the water and it got warmer and warmer,
Speaker 1: and we didn't notice we were boiling, right, And now
Speaker 1: this all came at once. So now it's like you
Speaker 1: suddenly we're thrown into the boiling water. And there's no
Speaker 1: avoiding the fact that this was outrageous. This is the
Speaker 1: core outrageous, not the kind of what Republicans started calling
Speaker 1: the process crimes. So I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: phone call and the outrage because there are at least
Speaker 1: two elements of the phone call, and I'm really interested
Speaker 1: in maybe it's possible to untangle them a little bit.
Speaker 1: Because we're sitting here, we have a little time, we
Speaker 1: can analyze it. So, on the one hand, Trump is
Speaker 1: asking Zelenski to spur an investigation of Joe Biden and
Speaker 1: his son, and that's really clear to me. It's really
Speaker 1: clear that that's an abuse of the president's power in
Speaker 1: office for personal gain, because there's no national security interest
Speaker 1: or national interest of any kind, even plausibly in the
Speaker 1: investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden. And that's also the
Speaker 1: part that Rudy Giuliani seems to have been most directly
Speaker 1: involved in correct On the other hand, Trump is also
Speaker 1: asking on that call. In fact, he asks first for
Speaker 1: Zelenski's help in investigating what's basically a crazy right wing
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory involving the company that first, the security company
Speaker 1: that first looked at the Democratic National Committees hacks right, CrowdStrike, CrowdStrike,
Speaker 1: What the hell is he doing and what does it
Speaker 1: have to do with Ukraine, at least in Trump's mind.
Speaker 1: So it is always very hard to untangle what people
Speaker 1: are thinking about these crazy right wing conspiracy theories, right,
Speaker 1: do Trump and Giuliani actually think it's true or are
Speaker 1: they just trying to? But what's even the thing that
Speaker 1: they're supposed that we're supposed to think, or so they
Speaker 1: want us to think. As I understand it, what we're
Speaker 1: supposed to think is that CrowdStrike was started by someone
Speaker 1: who was born in Russia but is an American citizen.
Speaker 1: That person is connected to a foundation, someone donated to
Speaker 1: the foundation, or a wealthy Ukrainian donated to that foundation,
Speaker 1: and based on that string of evidence, the conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: is that CrowdStrike made up the idea that Russians hacked
Speaker 1: into the DNC servers, and that in fact, it was
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians who are doing it essentially as a false
Speaker 1: flag operation to help Hillary in some way, though it's
Speaker 1: not totally clear how or maybe hurt the Russians, and
Speaker 1: certainly to hurt the Russians, right, and that this is
Speaker 1: a kind of made in Moscow conspiracy theory. It would
Speaker 1: seem that way. Yeah, Okay, So that if it were true,
Speaker 1: and that's an enormous if that we have to like
Speaker 1: put up there in huge bold letters because obviously it's
Speaker 1: not true. But if it were true, would the United
Speaker 1: States have a genuine, legitimate interest in investigating that? As
Speaker 1: part of the overall question that Trump says he's asked
Speaker 1: Attorney General William bar to investigate, namely, if he never
Speaker 1: colluded with the Russians, if there's no evidence that eclid
Speaker 1: with the Russians, I did the world think? So, which
Speaker 1: Trump thinks deserves to be investigated? Does that question deserve
Speaker 1: to be investigated? I think the answer to that is no.
Speaker 1: But it's a lot it's a lot closer, not so
Speaker 1: much as to whether or not it should be investigated,
Speaker 1: because of course it's absurd. So he's asking the Ukrainians
Speaker 1: to investigate something, and I think we should be not
Speaker 1: quick to use the president's word. It's not clear to
Speaker 1: me that he really means investigate. When he says investigate,
Speaker 1: he means find dirt on. Investigate implies that some proper
Speaker 1: thing is going to happen, some search for the truth.
Speaker 1: I don't actually think the President was asking them to
Speaker 1: search for the truth of this. He was saying, find
Speaker 1: me evidence that suggests the thing I want to find,
Speaker 1: because that's a really important and fascinating things. If that's right,
Speaker 1: then they are really at least two things wrong with
Speaker 1: the phone call with Zelenski. One the request to find
Speaker 1: dirt on Biden, and two just the request at all
Speaker 1: and the pressure to find evidence to support this conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory or to make up evidence to support this conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: Because that part actually involves the attorney general. And although
Speaker 1: the Attorney General denies he knew anything, I don't know
Speaker 1: it's plausible or not, but he denies he knew anything
Speaker 1: about the Biden investigation, he can't deny that he knows
Speaker 1: about this other investigation because he says he's performing it.
Speaker 1: And this is relevant to an issue that I'm kind
Speaker 1: of fascinated by, which I sort of think is going
Speaker 1: to become significant in these impeachment inquiry proceedings eventually. And
Speaker 1: that is just how careful, legal and rational as the
Speaker 1: Attorney General of the United States has he as he's
Speaker 1: done so far, been very careful to act in a
Speaker 1: way that a reasonable lawyer could always defend in court,
Speaker 1: or under Trump's sort of consistent pressure that he cross
Speaker 1: over into wacko land by asking various countries to investigate
Speaker 1: this conspiracy theory. I'm actually going to expand that idea
Speaker 1: even further because I think that the same question could
Speaker 1: essentially be asked in a slightly different way of the
Speaker 1: Secretary of State, right, who essentially also got involved in this.
Speaker 1: I suspect what's going on is that as the presidency
Speaker 1: now revolves around Trump's crazy whim of the moment, right,
Speaker 1: every senior official is out there trying to tamp down
Speaker 1: whatever that is, and they make certain compromises necessary to
Speaker 1: do so, which is every so often they just give
Speaker 1: into the whim. They go investigate the latest crazy idea,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Probably they convince themselves that that's just
Speaker 1: a side thing they're doing. But you do wonder whether
Speaker 1: or not does bar actually believe this crazy conspiracy theory also,
Speaker 1: or is he making a big show of investigating it
Speaker 1: so as to keep the President happy on the theory
Speaker 1: that there's nothing illegal or unconstitutional about the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice engaging in a pointless investigation. The President says, investigate.
Speaker 1: It's perfectly permissible to investigate as long as you don't
Speaker 1: harm anybody. And if it's a crazy thing, like the
Speaker 1: presidents would like to us to investigate whether the UFOs
Speaker 1: landed in Roswell, so you investigate whe the UFOs landed
Speaker 1: and Roswell, no harm, no foul. That would be the
Speaker 1: kind of if we had bar here and truly off
Speaker 1: the record, maybe that's what he would say about the investigation.
Speaker 1: I assume that's what Baro two you're saying, correct. I
Speaker 1: think that's probably what Barr would say. It is also
Speaker 1: possible that Barr actually believes this, and I think that's
Speaker 1: where it becomes a little bit hard to untangle what's
Speaker 1: going on. Have some of the folks in the administration
Speaker 1: reached the point of imbibing so much right wing news
Speaker 1: that they've come around to believing theories that, on their
Speaker 1: face are just absurd. So let's turn out to the
Speaker 1: actual phone call, and I want to begin with this
Speaker 1: question of whether there was just pressure, which is obvious
Speaker 1: on the face of the phone call, or whether there
Speaker 1: was some kind of a quid pro quo associated with
Speaker 1: the fact that just a few days before the call,
Speaker 1: the President had suspended three hundred ninety one million dollars
Speaker 1: of military aid to Ukraine. He did it without telling
Speaker 1: anyone the reason within we know from the whistleblower complaint
Speaker 1: within the National Security Council. At the meetings where it
Speaker 1: was announced, people wondered why the President was doing this,
Speaker 1: and there was no answer. They just were told the
Speaker 1: President wants to do that. So that's the setup. Then
Speaker 1: the President comes into the call and he asks Zelenski
Speaker 1: for quote a favor, and then Zelenski brings up Giuliani
Speaker 1: immediately before the President brings up Juliani, and then the
Speaker 1: President says, oh, and another thing and talks about the
Speaker 1: Biden matter. So, first of all, do you think there
Speaker 1: was a quid pro quo here? Put on your prosecutor's hat,
Speaker 1: Was there, in fact some exchange between Trump and Zelenski
Speaker 1: being proposed? I think the answer is clearly yes, for
Speaker 1: anyone who's looking at the call fairly. I'll come back
Speaker 1: to why I think people have the other interpretation. But
Speaker 1: the quid pro quo is I think there may actually
Speaker 1: be two quid pro quos in the call. The first
Speaker 1: one is about the money, or at least the supply
Speaker 1: of military aid, the fact that Trump had suspended the aid.
Speaker 1: We don't yet know whether or not the Ukrainians knew that.
Speaker 1: They certainly knew that they hadn't yet gotten it, and
Speaker 1: they knew that it was held up. But whether or
Speaker 1: not they understood that this call was a way to
Speaker 1: break that through, we don't know because it's not on
Speaker 1: the call. So let's put that aside for the moment.
Speaker 1: Although and I just adds MS maybe it's just a footnote.
Speaker 1: We know from the whistleplower complaint that after the call,
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian President website actually said something along the lines
Speaker 1: of we had a good call with the president. Investigations
Speaker 1: will get started that will remove the obstacles to our
Speaker 1: good relationship. So we do know that within a few
Speaker 1: moments after the call they were interpreting it this way.
Speaker 1: But go back to your point, Well, we know they
Speaker 1: were interpreting about the good relationship. And I think that's
Speaker 1: where the other interpretation will get to in a minute
Speaker 1: comes from. The Ukrainian president didn't say and we're expecting
Speaker 1: to get our money soon, right, He said something that
Speaker 1: no doubt was code for that, but he didn't actually
Speaker 1: say that. He said that there had been something that
Speaker 1: was obstructing the relationship, and that was obviously the freezing
Speaker 1: of the money. Anyway, go on. So I think that
Speaker 1: is the broader context. But focus just for a moment
Speaker 1: on the call itself and forget the broader context, which
Speaker 1: isn't the right thing to do, but at least it's
Speaker 1: a place to start on the call itself. The comment
Speaker 1: about I need you to do me a favor, and
Speaker 1: look at Joe Biden and his son comes immediately after,
Speaker 1: literally like the sentence after Zelenski asks for anti tank
Speaker 1: weapons and Trump says, okay, I need you to do
Speaker 1: me a favor. So in that sense, there was a
Speaker 1: literal ask the response to which is I need you
Speaker 1: to do me a favor. So it is definitely true
Speaker 1: that nobody used the words unless you do me this favor,
Speaker 1: I will not give you what I asked for. But
Speaker 1: in the real world. Literally, nobody talks that way. You
Speaker 1: don't have to start espousing that this is a moblike
Speaker 1: conversation to understand that people often do exchanges without actually
Speaker 1: spelling out the if versus. You know, if then part
Speaker 1: of the conversation. Right, I point my gun at you.
Speaker 1: I don't have to say your money or your life.
Speaker 1: I expect that you're going to give me your wallet.
Speaker 1: Would you, as a prosecutor, have gone into court to
Speaker 1: prosecute a public corruption case with a phone call tape
Speaker 1: of a phone call with about as much connection to
Speaker 1: the quidd pro quo as this phone call has. I
Speaker 1: think that there's no question. Yes, everyone, every prosecutor I
Speaker 1: know would do that. The connection between the ask and
Speaker 1: the other ask, right, they ask for the for the weapons,
Speaker 1: and the quote yes are right there. Usually these cases
Speaker 1: fall apart because there's much less connection between the quid
Speaker 1: and the quo then there is on this call. Correct, right,
Speaker 1: This is one you you'd go in as a prosecutor.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't just go into the court. You think you'd
Speaker 1: be like, I'm going to win this one knowing that
Speaker 1: I think you would walk into court and say this
Speaker 1: tape has a very clear quid pro quo on it. Wow,
Speaker 1: he asked for one thing, and his response is you
Speaker 1: need to do this instead, and is that why? So,
Speaker 1: just to give a word of background to listeners. When
Speaker 1: the complaint arose and we heard about it, I immediately
Speaker 1: grabbed my phone and I texted you immediately, and I said,
Speaker 1: what's the crime? And you immediately texted me back public corruption.
Speaker 1: In fact, you just use a number you wrote back
Speaker 1: section eight seventy two. So I'm embarrassed to say I
Speaker 1: had to look that up to that was public corruption?
Speaker 1: And is that why you thought it was a public
Speaker 1: corruption right away? Because it resembled those kinds of cases. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's the Normally these kinds of cases come up where
Speaker 1: Congressman says, oh, we'd like to help you. I'd love
Speaker 1: to be able to help you. I also need to
Speaker 1: get reelected. It's much vaguer. Usually you don't say I
Speaker 1: need your vote on this bill, all right, I need
Speaker 1: you to do me a favor. Okay, So now talk
Speaker 1: about the other interpretation, which is presentally the interpretation. Before
Speaker 1: I get to that, there's one other quid pro quo.
Speaker 1: I think that's in the call that's gotten a lot
Speaker 1: less attention, which is at the very end of the
Speaker 1: call again they're talking about the favor, and Zelenski says,
Speaker 1: I'd really like to come visit the White House, which
Speaker 1: is its own kind of favor that the president could grant.
Speaker 1: It is extremely important to the Ukraine president to be
Speaker 1: seen as being a close ally of the president, and
Speaker 1: they had been trying to get a meeting with the
Speaker 1: president in the White House for a while. And Trump's
Speaker 1: response is something like, all right, you know, We'll look
Speaker 1: at that. And it's clear that he's dangling yet another
Speaker 1: favor in front of him, not just the money and
Speaker 1: not just the weapon, but also this other favor of
Speaker 1: the White House visit. Now, if that were all that
Speaker 1: was there, I think it's a touch mushier because the
Speaker 1: White House visit is arguably not an official act of
Speaker 1: the president, although I think I think it is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's also in there and really hasn't gotten I
Speaker 1: think the attention it probably deserves. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: important to note in this context before we turn to
Speaker 1: the alternative viewpoint, that this kind of dangling and pressure
Speaker 1: is completely normal for a president if he's not seeking
Speaker 1: personal gain for his own political reelection, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is what governments due to each other all the time. Presumably,
Speaker 1: if we had a hundred tapes of one hundred phone
Speaker 1: calls by American presidents to foreign officials, maybe it's more
Speaker 1: polite and more subtle. But we're always trading and making
Speaker 1: demands and pressuring them to do stuff. It's just supposed
Speaker 1: to be stuff in the national interest, not for the
Speaker 1: personal gain of the president. Correct. And that's almost certainly
Speaker 1: what Joe Biden had actually done here, which is that
Speaker 1: Biden also told the Ukrainians that they couldn't get American
Speaker 1: money unless they dealt with corruption. It appears, by all
Speaker 1: accounts of what happened back then, that Biden and virtually
Speaker 1: every other Western government was pressuring for the firing of
Speaker 1: a prosecutor who was famously corrupt and who was not
Speaker 1: in fact investigating Hunter Biden or anyone else. And we're
Speaker 1: going to come to him later. This is the prosecutor Lutzenko,
Speaker 1: who is going to be a non trivial player. He's
Speaker 1: not yet a household name, but the guy's on the
Speaker 1: edge of becoming a household name. Is this inquiry proceeds,
Speaker 1: But we're going to come to him in a little while. So, okay,
Speaker 1: with all that build up, let's imagine now you know
Speaker 1: you were a prosecutor. Now you defend people for a living,
Speaker 1: alleged criminals. President calls you and says, take the case
Speaker 1: and leave it aside. Whether you would take the case,
Speaker 1: imagine you've taken the case. What's the defense that you
Speaker 1: would raise for the president? What's the interpretation you would
Speaker 1: offer to get him off the hook here? Well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to answer that a slightly different way. The interpretation
Speaker 1: that Republicans have been offering. I'm not sure it's the
Speaker 1: one I would offer, but that they have been offering
Speaker 1: is that, well, there's no literal quid pro quo when
Speaker 1: you look in this conversation. Never once does someone say
Speaker 1: if then that's a bad defense because in court those
Speaker 1: defenses fail. I think that's a bad defense because it
Speaker 1: will fail. Yes, But what is clever about it, I guess,
Speaker 1: is that ultimately this is a political not a legal argument,
Speaker 1: and it sort of has the veneer of believability to it.
Speaker 1: What's I think plausible deniability? Sort of, Yeah, it's somewhat plausible.
Speaker 1: It sounds legalistic, right, And they're going down the road
Speaker 1: of well, if this isn't a crime, then you can't impeach,
Speaker 1: which is also not true. Also not true, but but
Speaker 1: something that is probably their best argument here. What would
Speaker 1: you do if it were up to you, if you
Speaker 1: could design the defense from scratch, I think you'd want
Speaker 1: to start going down the path of this was a
Speaker 1: misunderstanding and that's not what he meant. The problem here
Speaker 1: is that the President has made a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other statements that support the idea that this is in
Speaker 1: fact what he meant, and Giuliani is running around making
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of statements that also make it clear
Speaker 1: this is what he meant. So they're a little far
Speaker 1: down that road to try to reframe what this conversation
Speaker 1: was about. I had thought that one thing they could
Speaker 1: try to say about this misunderstanding, and maybe this is
Speaker 1: a little bit too inside the weeds of the phone
Speaker 1: call is that all Trump intended to do in the
Speaker 1: call was to bring up the investigation of CrowdStrike, and
Speaker 1: he never intended to bring up the Hunter Biden investigation.
Speaker 1: And he only did because when he brought up the CrowdStrike,
Speaker 1: which is the thing that he brings up right after
Speaker 1: the javelin missiles are mentioned. Zelenski then misunderstood and immediately
Speaker 1: brought up Juliani, who was primarily working on the Biden thing,
Speaker 1: and then Trump kind of went with it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that may not be a great defense that I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to commit a crime, but then he offered me
Speaker 1: the opportunity, because if you think about it, in the
Speaker 1: call with the Australian Leader which has come up subsequently,
Speaker 1: it seems like they only talked about investigation of the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen collusion investigation. They didn't talk about Biden, which
Speaker 1: I guess is partly because Biden did everything to do
Speaker 1: with US Rail. So the problem I have with that
Speaker 1: defense is that whether or not he intended to bring
Speaker 1: up the Giuliani thing, the core problem with having brought
Speaker 1: up the Giuliani thing is that it blew apart the
Speaker 1: plausible deniability that they sort of had about what Giuliani
Speaker 1: was doing, which is that Giuliani was freelancing. Hearing suddenly
Speaker 1: that the President one hundred percent knows what Giuliani is
Speaker 1: doing and is telling Zelenski to follow it is actually
Speaker 1: the worst possible thing he could say, whether it was
Speaker 1: on purpose or not, because It essentially brings Giuliani's activities
Speaker 1: and numerous statements into the picture and makes it almost
Speaker 1: impossible to deny that he was doing it at the
Speaker 1: direction of the president. It's a fantastically good point, and
Speaker 1: it reminds me of something that I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about about Giuliani. So I had the intuition somewhere
Speaker 1: over the last few months that Rudy Giuliani had become
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's new Michael Cohen. Like when he was just
Speaker 1: a the Trump organization, not the president, Donald Trump used
Speaker 1: Michael Cohen as his quote unquote lawyer. We now know
Speaker 1: that a lot of what they did wasn't exactly legal,
Speaker 1: but used Michael Cohen to be his fixer, to go
Speaker 1: around doing the stuff that he didn't want to have
Speaker 1: his hands on himself. And then he lost Michael Cohen
Speaker 1: after Cohen was convicted of a crime, and he needed
Speaker 1: someone to play this role, and it's like Giuliani stepped
Speaker 1: into the role. So first, I want to know, do
Speaker 1: you think that analogy makes some sense here? And second,
Speaker 1: is it different insofar as by owning all what Giuliani
Speaker 1: has done, Trump has broken the benefit of using your
Speaker 1: lawyer to go around and do your dirty work for you.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot to that analogy. So I
Speaker 1: like that. I think that yes, he has broken it,
Speaker 1: and he's actually broken it in two ways. One has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Giuliani being a lawyer. Right, Every
Speaker 1: politician has someone whose job is to some extend or
Speaker 1: another smooth things over. Most politicians, I think, are smart
Speaker 1: enough to know that they and that person should have
Speaker 1: a certain distance between them so that they can not
Speaker 1: just plausibly deny, but actually be able to that they
Speaker 1: know what that person did. Trump doesn't operate that way, right.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have that level of subtlety even to be
Speaker 1: able to say the sort of you know, who will
Speaker 1: rid me of this troublesome priest and then let someone
Speaker 1: do it without actually ordering someone to do it. I
Speaker 1: feel confident that Trump would probably just order someone to
Speaker 1: get rid of the troublesome priest, right He's instead of saying,
Speaker 1: who will rid me the troublesome priests, He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that Beckett guy, someone shoot him because that's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So, okay, let's turn now to what's about
Speaker 1: to happen, to the full dress impeachment inquiry. Followed by
Speaker 1: it seems very likely to me a full dress impeachment
Speaker 1: vote in the House, and then something will turn to
Speaker 1: the question in a moment of what in the Senate?
Speaker 1: So what are your bookmaker's odds that Donald Trump will
Speaker 1: be impeached by the House of Representatives, that a majority
Speaker 1: of members of the House of Representatives will vote to
Speaker 1: impeach him and send the case to the Senate. I
Speaker 1: think we're on a glide path where that is all
Speaker 1: but certain at this point. Okay, And what quirks or
Speaker 1: surprises do you expect along the way to that vote?
Speaker 1: I mean, could they vote on that, you know, in
Speaker 1: a matter of weeks? Does it necessarily have to take
Speaker 1: months where they work through lots of details. Will the
Speaker 1: Republicans in the House try to push back at all
Speaker 1: since they don't have the votes? How do you imagine
Speaker 1: that playing itself out? Well? I think Republicans in the
Speaker 1: House have very little power because the majority in the
Speaker 1: House has all the power. So aside from making outrageous
Speaker 1: statements or asking a bunch of questions that are self
Speaker 1: serving in some way, there's not a whole lot Republicans
Speaker 1: can do in the House. So I don't think that
Speaker 1: they will throw in a bunch of roadblocks. I think
Speaker 1: the Trump administration at some point will realize that releasing
Speaker 1: the tape and being as open as they've ever been
Speaker 1: was a terrible mistake, and that they will attempt to
Speaker 1: close the door and stop cooperating. We're already starting to
Speaker 1: see this happening. So then, on this theory, on your theory,
Speaker 1: the Trump administration can start being obstructionists. They can, and
Speaker 1: that runs the clock, right, That runs the clock as
Speaker 1: we get closer and closer and closer to November twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Why does that benefit them? Isn't it better for them
Speaker 1: to get this all over with quickly? I think that
Speaker 1: there are two ways to look at that. So one
Speaker 1: is get it over with quickly and then they can
Speaker 1: move on right, and that is an advantage, But I
Speaker 1: think it also becomes harder and harder for this process
Speaker 1: to be maintained the closer it gets to the election,
Speaker 1: because it begins to seem absurd that you're trying to
Speaker 1: throw out a president who's about to be voted on
Speaker 1: and may be reelected. Correct. So that's one answer. I
Speaker 1: think the second answer is, look, their concern is not
Speaker 1: ultimately that they're going to get impeached by the House.
Speaker 1: The concern is that ultimately some senators, enough senators turn
Speaker 1: on them that he either gets thrown out of office
Speaker 1: or it becomes impossible to maintain that this is entirely
Speaker 1: a democratic thing. So even if he doesn't get thrown
Speaker 1: out of office, if ten senators, ten Republican senators vote
Speaker 1: with the Democrats, it's a lot harder to paint this
Speaker 1: as only a Democrat could think he did anything wrong? Right,
Speaker 1: so how do you prevent that? And it could be
Speaker 1: that the answer to how you prevent that is you
Speaker 1: make sure where stuff doesn't come out. But it also
Speaker 1: might be that if you look like you're blocking everything,
Speaker 1: that gives some reason for Republicans in the Senate to say, well, gee,
Speaker 1: we think he did obstruct justice or obstruct the inquiries
Speaker 1: of Congress, and that's a reason to vote against him too.
Speaker 1: But to me, it feels like that ship sailed long ago.
Speaker 1: The President's been obstructing Congress for the last year, and
Speaker 1: not a single Republican has complained about it. Right, Is
Speaker 1: there anything you said, We're on a glide path to
Speaker 1: almost certain impeachment. Can you imagine anything that would cause
Speaker 1: the Democrats to say, you know what, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: we shouldn't do this. Let's imagine that polls come in
Speaker 1: that tell the Democrats that a lot of their base
Speaker 1: thinks impeachment is a mistake, because you know, in the
Speaker 1: end it's going to distract the country from the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election. I don't anticipate that happening. I think there's
Speaker 1: a different set of polls that might create a problem.
Speaker 1: My guess is the Democrat take voters in polls will
Speaker 1: kind of come around on impeachment if they haven't already. Right.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think that voters are going to vote
Speaker 1: against Trump anyway, impeachment or no impeachment, correct, So it
Speaker 1: almost doesn't matter what they think. I think a bigger
Speaker 1: problem is they do rely on certain moderate or Democrats
Speaker 1: from moderate districts, and if those Democrats get cold feet
Speaker 1: about whether or not this is a good idea, then
Speaker 1: I think the impeachment process could run into some rocky waters.
Speaker 1: Can Nancy Pelosi effectively stop the whole thing herself or
Speaker 1: does she need a vote? I mean, is she in
Speaker 1: a situation where Donald Trump says she is no longer
Speaker 1: the Speaker of the House by which she doesn't literally
Speaker 1: means she's not the Speaker of the House. He means
Speaker 1: she doesn't really have the center of power in the
Speaker 1: House anymore. Of the power has shifted to the part
Speaker 1: of the party that's been demanding impeachment, like a lot
Speaker 1: of the presidential candidates have been doing. That is to say,
Speaker 1: to Pelosi's left, is it realistic for her to stop
Speaker 1: it at some point? Could she do it? I think
Speaker 1: it will at this moment. Probably not, But is it
Speaker 1: possible that some set of circumstances or polls could come
Speaker 1: out later. Maybe. But the other option she has is
Speaker 1: she could bring it to a vote and he could lose,
Speaker 1: but that it would only lose if a significant number
Speaker 1: of Democrats voted against impeachment. And it seems to me
Speaker 1: that even a Democrat in a moderate district can't get
Speaker 1: away with voting against impeachment at this point. I mean,
Speaker 1: how can you get up in the House of Representatives
Speaker 1: as a Democrat and cast any vote that is perceived
Speaker 1: as a vote for Donald Trump. You'll be primaried and
Speaker 1: it'll be all over for you, no matter where you're from.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, and thus it's a little hard
Speaker 1: to understand how So bottom line, impeachment is coming. Okay,
Speaker 1: So once impeachment comes, according to the Constitution, we're supposed
Speaker 1: to move to a trial in the Senate. And miss
Speaker 1: McConnell has said, don't worry, I will hold a trial
Speaker 1: in the Senate. But as for how long it's going
Speaker 1: to last, he said, that's another matter altogether. What's the
Speaker 1: fastest and the most minimalistic proceeding that McConnell think can
Speaker 1: get away with in the Senate. And remember, Chief Justice
Speaker 1: John Roberts will be there presiding, but he's just one guy.
Speaker 1: The rest of the Supreme Court doesn't come with him.
Speaker 1: I remember actually watching the Clinton impeachments when I was
Speaker 1: a law crook at the Supreme Court. That so I
Speaker 1: got a ticket, and you know, Chief Justice Ranquist was
Speaker 1: just sort of sitting there in his fancy robe and
Speaker 1: he was like an ornament to the room. But he
Speaker 1: didn't really get to say or do almost anything. So
Speaker 1: I think this is probably more in your area than mine.
Speaker 1: But my understanding is that they could just go ahead
Speaker 1: and have a vote on day one should we impeach
Speaker 1: the president. I don't think they could get away with that.
Speaker 1: I mean to my mind, the Constitution clearly imagines a
Speaker 1: process in which the impeachment is recommended, like an indictment,
Speaker 1: and then there's some kind of proceeding or discussion or
Speaker 1: trial in front of the Senate. And you know, historically
Speaker 1: trials in Britain in parliament, trials for impeachment were a
Speaker 1: serious undertaking and they went on for years. You know.
Speaker 1: The most famous and influential impeachment that the Framers knew
Speaker 1: about was the impeachment of Warren Hastings, who had been
Speaker 1: the governor in India effectively, and he was impeached in
Speaker 1: the seventeen seventies, and that trial went on for I
Speaker 1: want to say seven years, you know. I mean it
Speaker 1: was like you know, front page news for a lot
Speaker 1: of that time too, And the Framers knew all about
Speaker 1: it because it was in the newspapers. They contemplated some
Speaker 1: kind of a trial like process, but couldn't they decide
Speaker 1: that they're going to let the the house managers of
Speaker 1: the impeachment come in, make their presentation, put the call
Speaker 1: into evidence, and then vote on whether or not that
Speaker 1: is sufficient grounds for impeachment. And a bunch of Republican
Speaker 1: senators come out and say, even if we assume this
Speaker 1: is all true, I don't think it's grounds for impeachment.
Speaker 1: They vote and it's over right, sort of like a
Speaker 1: directed verdict process correct in a courtroom. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: they might be able to get away with that. They
Speaker 1: won't want to go down in history. I think as
Speaker 1: the people who made the impeachment process look like a sham,
Speaker 1: they may not have to hear lots of witnesses. I
Speaker 1: get you there, I don't know. I think there's going
Speaker 1: to be tremendous pressure on them to hold something that
Speaker 1: looks a little bit like a trial for at least
Speaker 1: a few days. I mean, you know, when we go
Speaker 1: after a Supreme Court nominee that already takes a week
Speaker 1: of hearings. I have a hard time imagining them spending
Speaker 1: less time on it than they would would on that maybe.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think formally, I guess they could do it,
Speaker 1: but I doubt if they would really think they could
Speaker 1: get away with it. But so what difference does that make?
Speaker 1: So they have a sham trial of one to five
Speaker 1: days at the end of which they vote any of
Speaker 1: they acquitment and either a bunch of those senators from
Speaker 1: states that are purple, I guess, or blue decide to
Speaker 1: vote with the president or they vote against, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because there still are enough enough numbers to
Speaker 1: get to an actual removal. So that's assuming that the
Speaker 1: tide doesn't break. Like there's also the possibility that the
Speaker 1: tide breaks and at some point Republicans say we'd be
Speaker 1: better off with Pens. So let's talk about that. What
Speaker 1: does it take for the tide to break? And then
Speaker 1: we'll come to the question of what are the odds
Speaker 1: of the tide breaking? But what would it take. What
Speaker 1: are the kinds of facts that would have to enter
Speaker 1: into the mix in your view that would lead enough
Speaker 1: Republicans to say we're better off with pens. I'm actually
Speaker 1: of the view that the answer to that has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the facts. I think the answer to
Speaker 1: that probably has something to do with the polls. Well,
Speaker 1: what we'll move the polls? That is the question. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, say the President called a dozen countries
Speaker 1: and put pressure on them, and maybe doesn't this too much,
Speaker 1: but three or four other countries, and we as a
Speaker 1: gradual drip, drip drip, we find out that the President
Speaker 1: has been going around pressuring lots of countries, essentially to
Speaker 1: make up evidence to help him in his political campaign.
Speaker 1: My general view of the moment we're in is that
Speaker 1: as people say, nothing matters, and what that seems to
Speaker 1: mean is that no matter what happens, the polls are
Speaker 1: basically steady. Somewhere between fifty to fifty three percent of
Speaker 1: Americans think the president is disapprove of his performance performance
Speaker 1: and something between, you know, around forty one to forty
Speaker 1: three percent approve. My guess is that no matter what
Speaker 1: comes out, that will basically be true. Now, what happens
Speaker 1: if some of the people in that gap, right the
Speaker 1: five to whatever percent it is in that gap, you
Speaker 1: know what happens if they come around and say, you
Speaker 1: know what, I don't like this either. So I don't
Speaker 1: know what the answer to that is, but I'm not
Speaker 1: sure it would matter. So if you're right about that,
Speaker 1: I mean, I hear everything you're saying, and it seems
Speaker 1: logically correct. If that's the case, there's almost no chance
Speaker 1: of the tide breaking and Republicans voting to remove It's
Speaker 1: close to a zero chance because as you say that, core,
Speaker 1: you know they could hear, I mean, may not be
Speaker 1: quite the Trump position that they could hear that he
Speaker 1: shot someone at Fifth Avenue, but it's pretty close to
Speaker 1: saying that they wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't abandon him.
Speaker 1: And if that's the case, if you're a Republican, there's
Speaker 1: no way you're better off going into the election with Pence,
Speaker 1: because we know that that forty one percent base of
Speaker 1: Republicans like Trump, but we have no idea if they
Speaker 1: feel as strongly about Pence, and Pence certainly can't rally
Speaker 1: the base the way Trump can, especially if the Republicans
Speaker 1: have somehow admitted via removal that there's something wrong with Trump.
Speaker 1: So in that scenario, you're actually saying this is a
Speaker 1: kind of for ordained conclusion, like Trump is going to
Speaker 1: be acquitted by the Senate full stop. Well I'm not
Speaker 1: quite saying that, because I think there's one exception I'll
Speaker 1: come to in a second. But I want to respond
Speaker 1: to your point about Pence first, which is I actually
Speaker 1: agree with you that if they Republicans vote to impeach Trump,
Speaker 1: they are all but conceding the next election. The reason
Speaker 1: to do that might be that they're better off letting
Speaker 1: the next election happen and not as a landslide and
Speaker 1: then regrouping over the cot of the next four years,
Speaker 1: essentially fast forwarding the post Trump era. One interesting about
Speaker 1: this is it shows you that the timing really matters.
Speaker 1: So when Republicans signaled that they were going to abandon
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon and he therefore stepped down rather than been
Speaker 1: removed from office, it was still early enough for them
Speaker 1: to think that once Gerald Ford became president they would
Speaker 1: have a shot at the nineteen seventy six election. It
Speaker 1: was still wasn't clear at that point. It was still
Speaker 1: really late seventy four by the time that happened, and
Speaker 1: we still didn't know who the Democratic nominee was going
Speaker 1: to be, and it was still conceivable that Ford could win.
Speaker 1: And Ford didn't beat Carter, but he put up a
Speaker 1: reasonable show considering that a Republican president had just been impeached.
Speaker 1: Now the timing is different because we're so much later
Speaker 1: in the cycle. So it seems very, as you say,
Speaker 1: hard to imagine the Republicans thinking we removed Trump and
Speaker 1: then we go on to win the election. So what's
Speaker 1: the scenario where things could genuinely So this isn't probably
Speaker 1: a somewhat unsatisfying answer, but I do think that when
Speaker 1: these kinds of regimes, if I may say that, crumble,
Speaker 1: they crumble instantly. They don't crumble bit by bit. So
Speaker 1: what I don't think we're going to see happen is
Speaker 1: Republican senators coming out in onesie twosies saying, you know,
Speaker 1: other than maybe Mitt Romney, you know, saying I disapprove
Speaker 1: of this. I think that there would have to be
Speaker 1: in one fell swoop, in one fell swoop, But what's
Speaker 1: the swoop? What do we need to hear? I mean,
Speaker 1: let's imagine that one of these calls, or maybe on
Speaker 1: this tape, we find out that the president literally said,
Speaker 1: quid pro quo, you do this, I do this? Would
Speaker 1: that do it? I would like to think the answer
Speaker 1: to that is yes. But I honestly don't know what
Speaker 1: else could what else could could bring us to that
Speaker 1: point of collapse, just some out of the blue new
Speaker 1: factory that comes out. I mean, you know one thing
Speaker 1: that makes me think there could be something like this
Speaker 1: out there is looking at how Donald Trump is reacting
Speaker 1: in real time to this inquiry. He doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: he's unrattled. Of course, he's escalating his rhetoric. You would
Speaker 1: have expected that under all circumstances. But he seems unhinges
Speaker 1: in a word we can really use because he's often
Speaker 1: rhetoric like this. But the way he's kind of lashing
Speaker 1: out in this non planned instinctive and it seems to
Speaker 1: me kind of threatened way, does make me wonder if
Speaker 1: he thinks that he's in trouble here. I agree, and
Speaker 1: maybe maybe that what causes the damn to break is
Speaker 1: a sense that he's out of control. I mean, is
Speaker 1: there something that he could do, maybe not even an
Speaker 1: unknown fact, but a thing yet to happen, you know,
Speaker 1: he launches a war against Iran or something. He's not
Speaker 1: going to do that in what seems like a transparent
Speaker 1: effort to change the subject that horrifies people. I mean,
Speaker 1: we think of the Wag the Dog, Snarah. That's a
Speaker 1: movie called Wag the Dog. And then Bill Clinton, in
Speaker 1: the middle of his impeachment, actually did commence the bombing
Speaker 1: of Serbia over a Cusso bombing of Serbia over a
Speaker 1: cussovo and that wasn't enough to get him removed from office.
Speaker 1: So I don't I don't think that a war would
Speaker 1: would do it. And I also don't think don Trump
Speaker 1: wants to go to war, and it's nothing. On Twitter.
Speaker 1: He could tweet literally anything and it will not suffice
Speaker 1: to get him removed by Republicans. It does seem that way, Okay,
Speaker 1: So we think that we're hard pressed to come up
Speaker 1: with a scenario where Trump would appear to be so
Speaker 1: far over the edge that he would be removed. I
Speaker 1: just want to add a little footnote here before I
Speaker 1: turn to the grand question of what history is going
Speaker 1: to say about all of this, And that little footnote
Speaker 1: is it's quirky, but it's kind of interesting. In principle,
Speaker 1: there is a scenario where Trump could be impeached and
Speaker 1: removed and still run for reelection and win and become
Speaker 1: president again. And the reason for that is a constitutional quirk.
Speaker 1: So in the clause of the Constitution that says what
Speaker 1: happens if you're impeached, it says there's two things that
Speaker 1: can happen to you. You can be removed and you
Speaker 1: can be disqualified from holding any office of trust under
Speaker 1: the United States. Now, under traditional interpretation of impeachment, it's
Speaker 1: not enough to be removed for the disqualification principle to
Speaker 1: kick in. Rather, Congress has to do two things. That's
Speaker 1: to the Senate has to both vote to remove you
Speaker 1: and separately vote to disqualify you, and almost all cases
Speaker 1: of impeachment they only do the former. There actually are
Speaker 1: a few cases where they've done both, but if they don't,
Speaker 1: you can get back involved, and so, in fact there
Speaker 1: is I was amazed to discover this. A sitting representative
Speaker 1: in Congress right now, a member of the House of
Speaker 1: Representatives who was a federal judge, was impeached and removed
Speaker 1: by the Senate, ran for Congress, got elected to Congress,
Speaker 1: and has been serving in Congress ever since. So Donald
Speaker 1: Trump could, in theory, be impeached and removed, run and win.
Speaker 1: I know that's a kind of far out scenario, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem out of bounds to me. I have
Speaker 1: to think that if we reach the point where Republicans
Speaker 1: in the Senate are willing to vote to remove him
Speaker 1: from office, the last thing they'll want is the nightmare
Speaker 1: of him turning around and running again. So you think
Speaker 1: they would actually then put in the disqualification thing for
Speaker 1: their own sake, for their own sake, so he doesn't
Speaker 1: come back after them. Yeah, I guess, I guess that's right. Okay,
Speaker 1: the view of history for a long time. In this presidency,
Speaker 1: there's been a debate why, a debate among Democrats saying,
Speaker 1: you know, should we impeach or should we not impeach?
Speaker 1: We've got enough evidence to impeach. It might be a
Speaker 1: political mistakes. Weighed on Muller, a lot of shilly shalling
Speaker 1: around this issue. Now things seem to have changed, and
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi's answer, at least when she's spoken about it publicly,
Speaker 1: is it's not that this is so much worse than
Speaker 1: what Trump has done before. This is just clear and explainable.
Speaker 1: When historians look back on this period and ask why
Speaker 1: didn impeachment happen? Now, is that going to be a
Speaker 1: sufficient answer for them. I suspect that the answer to
Speaker 1: that will depend a lot on what happens in the
Speaker 1: next year if Donald Trump is reelected, assuming he survives
Speaker 1: this impeachment scandal and he gets reelected, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: still the upshot of our conversation is that the most
Speaker 1: probable event is that he survives by far, and that
Speaker 1: there's a reasonable chance. I think we both agree that
Speaker 1: he'll get reelected, correct, and if those things happen, I
Speaker 1: think that this will be seen as you know, one
Speaker 1: step in the process of the dismantling of the constitution,
Speaker 1: But all of that will end on what he does
Speaker 1: in his second term. I assume that it will be
Speaker 1: even more outrageous things than he did in his first term,
Speaker 1: because they'll have even fewer constraints then if however, because
Speaker 1: he will have been impeached and it'll be like, I mean,
Speaker 1: we know that the day after the Moll investigation was over,
Speaker 1: he called Zelenski, So what's it going to be like
Speaker 1: if he's been impeached and not removed, he's really going
Speaker 1: to feel like and one reelection and one relection. Maybe
Speaker 1: isn't hoping to serve another term after that, although who knows, right,
Speaker 1: I think that at that point all bets are off,
Speaker 1: and I think it will then become a step in
Speaker 1: the process of the dismantling of what had been our
Speaker 1: system of constitutional government. Maybe maybe on a path to
Speaker 1: some other system, but it's not gonna be the same system.
Speaker 1: So here's a big question in that story, that incredibly
Speaker 1: depressing story. Is it good or bad that the Democrats
Speaker 1: tried via impeachments only put a hypothesis to you. The
Speaker 1: hypothesis would be this, you know, someday we're going to
Speaker 1: die and go to Valhalla and you know, meet James
Speaker 1: Madison and Alexander Hamilton, or at least in my fantasy world,
Speaker 1: that's where I go, and that's my first meeting I
Speaker 1: take when I get to Valhalla, and you know, they're
Speaker 1: going to say, we told you this could happen. You know,
Speaker 1: we told you that foreign powers would seek to be
Speaker 1: in the ascendant, and we told you that we created
Speaker 1: the impeachment proceeding for this circumstance. What did you do?
Speaker 1: You know, what did you take action? And I have
Speaker 1: the hypothesis that even if the Democrats can't remove Trump,
Speaker 1: that they might be justified in going forward now, just
Speaker 1: so that they can say, in front of the judgment
Speaker 1: of history, we tried. We tried to save the republic.
Speaker 1: We had a present who openly abused power. We tried
Speaker 1: to vote him out. Okay, the people weren't with us,
Speaker 1: and as the founding fathers should be the first to acknowledge,
Speaker 1: if the people lack political virtue, it is the end
Speaker 1: of the republic. But can't there's no fix to that one.
Speaker 1: The alternati view would be, no, you know, don't do something.
Speaker 1: It's going to make it worse for the Republic. We're
Speaker 1: better off not trying, because then we'll have a Trump
Speaker 1: who's empowered by the failure of impeachment. And we shouldn't
Speaker 1: have even done that. We should think only about practical consequences,
Speaker 1: not about the judgment of history. Where do you come
Speaker 1: down on that debate. I think we reached the judgment
Speaker 1: of history point. But I also think that part of
Speaker 1: what informed Pelosi up till now was fear of the
Speaker 1: Clinton situation, which is that he gets impeached and gets
Speaker 1: more popular. At least that's how it's remembered. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's perfectly clear that's what actually happened, but that's
Speaker 1: certainly how it's remembered. I think for a bunch of
Speaker 1: reasons that position became untenable, mostly because this was such
Speaker 1: a clear slap in the face, and it particularly what
Speaker 1: he's accused of doing is attempting to influence the next election.
Speaker 1: If you thought the only way to get him out
Speaker 1: of office is by voting him out of office, you
Speaker 1: can't then let him try to put his finger on
Speaker 1: the scales to prevent that very thing from happening. So
Speaker 1: it's really the perfect storm on that view. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a good answer. It says, it's not just that
Speaker 1: this is clearer, it's that everything else had happened in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, and that election was over because although the
Speaker 1: Democrats won, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, Trump won
Speaker 1: the election. But if you're talking about twenty twenty, if
Speaker 1: the conduct that's alleged is trying to subvert the twenty election,
Speaker 1: the Democrats had to act because it's forward looking, and
Speaker 1: what's the alternative if you don't act now. I don't
Speaker 1: know that it will make that much difference in terms
Speaker 1: of empowering Trump once it comes out that he's trying
Speaker 1: to influence the twenty twenty election, which it has come
Speaker 1: out of this correct for the Democrats to do nothing
Speaker 1: also says the field is yours, do whatever you want,
Speaker 1: Although the other thing it could be saying is we've
Speaker 1: told the public about this, The public knows about it,
Speaker 1: and now we're going to vote it out. You know,
Speaker 1: now we're going to actually see who wins the election.
Speaker 1: And you could see that argument, you know, put that
Speaker 1: was the Polosi argument up until a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Put all the eggs in the twenty twenty basket. Say
Speaker 1: to the electorate, the president's trying to con you, The
Speaker 1: president's trying to play you. The president's trying to get
Speaker 1: help from Ukraine to influence you. You know, resist that influence.
Speaker 1: And I suppose you can do that va impeachment, But
Speaker 1: you could also do that not via impeachment. Yes, but
Speaker 1: we don't know what we don't know, So what else
Speaker 1: is he doing? Right? What if he's also making a
Speaker 1: side deal with the Russians to actually hack the electoral
Speaker 1: equipment and change the votes. Not everything can be resisted.
Speaker 1: But now, I mean, you're right, but that to me
Speaker 1: heads off in the direction of conspiracy. Not that the
Speaker 1: Russians might not try to do that, that's improbable, but
Speaker 1: not totally conspiratorial, but rather that the Trump emmustician would
Speaker 1: collude in that, because as we know, when it came
Speaker 1: to the last election, they came very close to the
Speaker 1: line of colluding with the Russians, but they didn't. No, no,
Speaker 1: we don't know that. What we know is that there
Speaker 1: was never evidence that they actually colluded. What we have
Speaker 1: this time that's different is actual evidence of collusion, direct
Speaker 1: evidence of collusion. Right, we still don't know what we
Speaker 1: don't know, and I'm not saying we have now as
Speaker 1: evidence of attempted collusion, all right, but in a much
Speaker 1: clearer way than we had with the last election. Right.
Speaker 1: If a phone call like this had come up about
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen with Putin, where would we be. I think
Speaker 1: that Muller's report would read very differently if there were
Speaker 1: the transcript of a phone call in which Trump laid
Speaker 1: out this same type of deal with Putin. So when
Speaker 1: we meet Madison in Hamilton, they're going to say what
Speaker 1: they're going to say. Okay, good that you tried. But
Speaker 1: in the end it's all about the people, you know,
Speaker 1: will the people be convinced? And in the end, I
Speaker 1: think that measurement will come less from the impeachment process
Speaker 1: than from the twenty twenty election. I mean, in some sense,
Speaker 1: what I hear you saying, and I think maybe I
Speaker 1: agree with this, is that the twenty twenty election is
Speaker 1: one of the most important in the history of the Republic,
Speaker 1: not so much because of Republican versus Democrat, or because
Speaker 1: of the future of the country with respect any given policy,
Speaker 1: as because it will be the judgment of history on
Speaker 1: how much a president can subvert the Constitution openly and
Speaker 1: still have a shot at getting reelected. I believe that's true.
Speaker 1: But let's assume for the moment that the Democrats win
Speaker 1: the next election. I think there's another way in which
Speaker 1: this fight may yet reverberate back that is worth at
Speaker 1: least pondering. Which is the moment that happens. Let's assume
Speaker 1: that two years later, as has become the pattern, Republicans
Speaker 1: regain control of the House or the Senate. If they
Speaker 1: don't already have control, do they immediately turn around and
Speaker 1: impeach the Democratic president? And I think the answer to
Speaker 1: that may end up being yes, because this will be
Speaker 1: seen on the right as the coup that Trump says
Speaker 1: it is, and I worry that. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: a way around this problem. But I think that we
Speaker 1: have to be mindful of the fact that this is
Speaker 1: going to feel like we are now normalizing. To some
Speaker 1: we are normalizing the impeachment process to throw out a
Speaker 1: president we do not like that. Already Republicans flirted with
Speaker 1: that with Obama but never actually got there. They talked
Speaker 1: about impeaching Obama, though they didn't have any grounds and
Speaker 1: were never able to produce any. I wonder whether or
Speaker 1: not they will be as restrained, if I could even
Speaker 1: use that word, as they were with Obama, with the
Speaker 1: next Democratic president. So in that sense, we didn't dodge
Speaker 1: the bullet when after Bill Clinton's impeachment, when many people
Speaker 1: said the same thing, you know, next the Democrats are
Speaker 1: going to do it, and then the Republicans will do it.
Speaker 1: But it didn't happen right away. But the argument would
Speaker 1: be that an historical perspective, twenty years later we did
Speaker 1: have another impeachment, and since it had been since eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight when they came around to it in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, it's a long stretch of time, one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty years. This time it only took twenty and
Speaker 1: then you can imagine that it'll take ten and five
Speaker 1: and then we could enter into a world of constant impeachments.
Speaker 1: And that is not the world that the Framers anticipated. Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to find all that out, and in
Speaker 1: this extremely fascinating and challenging period of time, all we
Speaker 1: can do is try to understand what the Constitution requires,
Speaker 1: try to live in some accordance with its dictates, and
Speaker 1: keep on watching our news feeds and find out what
Speaker 1: extraordinary revelations will come next set. Thank you for clarifying
Speaker 1: all this and talking it through with me. I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm a little more pessimistic about the inevitability of
Speaker 1: certain events after talking to than I was when I started.
Speaker 1: But I feel like I'm enlightened with respect of what
Speaker 1: may happen. So thank you very much. And now our
Speaker 1: sound of the week, Why that was the sound of
Speaker 1: chaos in Hong Kong, a sound that heralds a genuine
Speaker 1: split screen for the government of the People's Republic of China.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, as you just heard, Hong Kong
Speaker 1: is in the midst of the worst protests that it's
Speaker 1: seen in the modern historical era, direct challenges to the
Speaker 1: authority of mainland China on the island. And yet at
Speaker 1: the same exact time in Beijing, the government of China
Speaker 1: celebrated the seventieth anniversary of the People's Republic and in effect,
Speaker 1: the victory of the Communist Party in the long historical
Speaker 1: process of bringing China into the modern era and turning
Speaker 1: it into a major global power. A centerpiece of that
Speaker 1: celebration was a rather extraordinary military parade. Underwater vehicle after
Speaker 1: underwater vehicle innovative unmanned drone after unmanneddrone paraded through the
Speaker 1: streets of Beijing, signaling to the world that China was
Speaker 1: not merely one of the most significant economies in the world,
Speaker 1: not merely enmeshed in an increasing and extending set of
Speaker 1: relationships with economic partners, but increasingly is emerging as the
Speaker 1: world's second genuine superpower, not yet directly competing with the
Speaker 1: United States globally, but increasingly capable of doing so, and
Speaker 1: certainly capable of competing with the United States in the
Speaker 1: region around China itself in Asia. So what are we
Speaker 1: to make of this extraordinary split screen that faces China.
Speaker 1: One way to think of it is that the Hong
Speaker 1: Kong protests are in fact, in historical terms, more of
Speaker 1: a blip in the rise of China than they are
Speaker 1: what most people in the West have taken them to be,
Speaker 1: a reminder that China is fundamentally an autocracy. Seen from
Speaker 1: the perspective of the longer swath of history, China's rise
Speaker 1: is now an accomplished fact. There's no going back. Any
Speaker 1: goal by the United States to limit, cabin or contain
Speaker 1: China is going to have to take place against the
Speaker 1: backdrop of China's tremendous economic growth and China's tremendous military improvements.
Speaker 1: That means that we're increasingly moving to a world that
Speaker 1: is not unipolar, in which there is a single superpower,
Speaker 1: as the French would sometimes put it hyperpower in the
Speaker 1: United States, but rather something a little bit closer to
Speaker 1: what we saw in the Cold War when there were
Speaker 1: two competing powers. Indeed, that's what made me, already almost
Speaker 1: a decade ago, think that we're entering a period not
Speaker 1: of Cold War but of cool war between the United
Speaker 1: States and China. The Hong Kong protests, though they symbolize
Speaker 1: and remind us the China's government is autocratic, don't fundamentally
Speaker 1: undercut that geopolitical analysis. The island of Hong Kong may
Speaker 1: be full of unrest, but that is not sufficient to
Speaker 1: derail China. I think that when historians look back on
Speaker 1: the seb anniversary, that's the take they're more likely to have. Yet,
Speaker 1: there is an important message associated with the realities of
Speaker 1: what's happening in Hong Kong, and it is the reminder
Speaker 1: to China's leaders, and particular to Shijinping, that just because
Speaker 1: you're a superpower doesn't mean every part of your increasing
Speaker 1: empire will do what you want. That's a lesson that
Speaker 1: you don't really have to think about when you're in
Speaker 1: the process of rising, but you do have to think
Speaker 1: about when you're in the process of expanding. There will
Speaker 1: be global actors, including actors who are just a bunch
Speaker 1: of teenagers in a place like Hong Kong, the no
Speaker 1: geopolitical significance, who nevertheless are capable of interfering and blocking
Speaker 1: you from doing what you want, and who can enable
Speaker 1: you not to have the global feel good story that
Speaker 1: you're trying to accomplish. That is a message that we
Speaker 1: need to remember because it's a reminder that China's rise
Speaker 1: is interwoven with the question of how China governs itself.
Speaker 1: Through much of the period of its rise, China was
Speaker 1: governed by a broad elite of Chinese communist power elders
Speaker 1: who shared power amongst themselves and indeed alternated power in
Speaker 1: ten year cycles. They do not have that structure anymore today.
Speaker 1: Shijunping has emerged as the single dominant leader of China,
Speaker 1: more on the model of Mao than on the model
Speaker 1: of those who immediately preceded him. If you run the
Speaker 1: world that way, there's no guarantee that you can sustain
Speaker 1: and pass along the structures of authority over the long term.
Speaker 1: Dictatorship is smoother in a ten or twenty or even
Speaker 1: thirty year way, but dictatorship is not smoother when it
Speaker 1: comes to moments of transition, because again, the unruly public
Speaker 1: may get in the way of the transitions that you want.
Speaker 1: The genuine challenge that faces China going forward is to
Speaker 1: consolidate and stabilize its form of government. Shijinping has actually
Speaker 1: moved China backwards with respect to transitions from one generation
Speaker 1: of government to another. Sure, he's got the capacity to
Speaker 1: reduce corruption, which is a genuine systemic risk to the
Speaker 1: People's Republic, Yet in doing so, by consolidating power, he's
Speaker 1: opened himself to the possibility that the small voices at
Speaker 1: the periphery of his empire, and it is increasingly an empire,
Speaker 1: can interfere with the smooth operation that he actually wants.
Speaker 1: And to me, that's the takeaway of the split screen.
Speaker 1: Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Lydia Jane Coott, with engineering by Jason Gambrell.
Speaker 1: And Jason Rostkowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme
Speaker 1: music is composed by Luis Gera special thanks to the
Speaker 1: Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg and Mia Lobel. I'm
Speaker 1: Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman.
Speaker 1: This is deep background