Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion On The Impeachment Process And Looking Forward 20240713

Pratt. We are blessed to have our usual camera crew but also to have cspan with us this evening. We are also Live Streaming this on the udc facebook page. For those of you who want to find it later, you can go to our page, i think. We are going to upload it on youtube, as that correct . So, again, i am sharon pratt, the founding director of the institute of politics, policy, housed aty, which is the university of the district of columbia. We were launched in january of last year by mayor bowser and president mason. We have the same focus as other institutes of politics, except a very strong focus on the history of this city, and by so doing the history of this country. Because unlike most other cities we are entirely a creature of the politics of creating a new nation. For those of you who saw the musical hamilton there is a song that says in the room where it happened. We are what happened. Washington, d. C. While we have topics of contemporary interest, we always try to drill down on that topic to talk about the historical origin. That certainly is true for the compelling topic of tonight. We are going to talk this evening about the anatomy of an impeachment. We couldnt have a better panel than what we have this evening. We have with us this evening, and im going to call upon them individually, but just as an introduction, and they really dont need an introduction, but , Michael Steele. [applause] and even though he is here in washington, d. C. , got that thunderous applause even though he was the former chairman of the Republican National mr. Steele there are some things you get forgiven for. An msnbcpratt political analyst, and we are honored he is cochair of our Senior Advisory Committee at the institute of politics, policy, and history. Then we have another individual who is wellknown to anyone who has covered this topic. That is congressman jamie raskin. [applause] there are few personalities who have had such a defining role on this issue and of this moment than congressman jamie raskin. Then we are going to come back to congressman raskin. We have also the cochair of the institute of politics, policy, karen. Karen is one of the few people who have dealt with impeachment up close and personal because she was the deputy chief of staff to president clinton during his impeachment. I know that she played a pivotal role, because i saw him on television once say thank you, karen. Karen since that time has been very involved with ukraine. We will ask her about that tonight. We culminate this panel with an exceptional professor of law from georgetown law center, also well known to us, professor paul butler. [applause] butler, you see him regularly as a legal analyst and contributor on msnbc and npr. His area is criminal law and has some relevance to the topic tonight. I guess i should sit down. In keeping with the cameras. I think we will begin with Michael Steele and ask him , what in the impeachment process as we know it now is over and such, what do you think the implications are for the 2020 election . Do you think it will have any recurring impact on the democratic primary process and conceivably in the general election . Mr. Steele i think the outcome, is a little bit of wait and see what actually happens. We are still sort of assessing how the American People, largely speaking, have processed this, have internalized it. The polling, certainly in the last stages of the trial, particularly on the question of witnesses, showed that 75 of the American People wanted that process to continue with witnesses. They wanted to hear from people who may have something germane to offer with what the president with respect to what the president said, did, the relationship between the white house some of the other players, for example, secretary pompeo, how that played out. So, we dont know whether the arguments that were made, and i think very effectively e, by the democrat democratic managers was one that the people have taken in and will begin to process in the election sphere. On the democratic side in the primary, i think we have seen it hit its stride, crested, and they have moved on to other things. The candidates have moved on beyond impeachment. Whether the voters will ultimately remains to be seen. Director pratt congressmen raskin, as i pointed out earlier, i think you really helped to define the significance of this provision within the constitution. The urgency of the house looking at this provision. What i do want to ask, however, is, Speaker Pelosi has always been perceived as the ultimate strategist and tactician. I mean that in the most complementary way. She almost never does anything unless she has the votes. She consistently stated she would not do this unless there was bipartisan support for it, yet she joined the Party Leadership in saying we need to move forward. Was it because of the evidence was so alarming, or was it the Democratic Caucus was becoming rancorous . Why did she move forward . Rep. Raskin thank you so much for having me. Said the case she would have to be compelling and the support would have to be bipartisan. I think we did have overwhelming evidence. We had a very compelling case. I guess it was bipartisan, strictly speaking, until justin amash got excluded from the republican caucus. But he did say that when he read the Mueller Report he found that the evidence inescapably led to impeachment. That was even before ukraine, at the point at which the whistleblower came forward to describe the basic contours of the ukraine shakedown. There were a lot of republicans in the land who were saying this was intolerable, and they could not abide anymore, and that the the fiction that the president was lawabiding. This was the moment where we had a president who was essentially ungovernable and lawless in his conduct and essentially incorrigible. There was really no going back. What else could we do . The ukraine episode provided a pretty distinct echo of what we saw described in the Mueller Report about the open invitation to russia. Russia, are you listening . Come on in. More than 100 meetings that were documented between the Trump Campaign and russian emissaries. What was different about the ukraine episode was it was taking place in real time. It was not just a high crime and misdemeanor, obviously, but it was a crime in progress. Rudy giuliani was over there in ukraine, still trying to shake them down for the information they wanted to prove it was not russia, but rather ukraine, that had engaged in a sweeping and Systematic Campaign to subvert the american president ial election in 2016. So, i think the pressure built up in the Democratic Caucus to the point where it was overwhelming, and there was really no decent way of turning back from saying the president was engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors. The real challenge was to figure out what to charge him with. Do we go big and go broad with everything we know about, including the nine or 10 episodes of obstruction of justice detailed in the Mueller Report, as well as the Campaign Violations with the payoffs to stormy daniels, as well as the repeated and continuing violations of the foreign domestic alignment clause . Or do we stick with what we had , whistleblower information on, which was the ukraine shakedown, and the subsequent effort to shut down any cooperation with congress . I think ultimately what prevailed was the sense this was discrete, definable, the evidence was overwhelming, and it did not require us going out to try to get more and more evidence about all of these other things when the administration was clearly involved in an embargo of information, and refusing to turn over everything we were asking for. Director pratt karen tramontano, i know you were there with president clinton. But i would like to sort of move on to another topic, area, that you have developed expertise and have expertise since leaving president clinton, and that is ukraine. How is it that this great drama played, so much of it played in played out in ukraine, a country where most people are not familiar, but we find the president involved with it. Certainly, Rudy Giuliani is involved with it. Biden is indirectly involved with it. What is it about ukraine . I know you were there battling on the others of manafort. Can you elaborate on its significance . Ms. Tramontano sure, and thank you for the invitation to be here. So, i think where the stars all lined up, probably against ukraine is we have to go back to President Trump being quite upset before he was president , that his Campaign Chair had been called out, if you will, because of his activities with the former president of ukraine. And i think from that very moment, President Trump blamed ukraine for tarnishing what would have otherwise been, in his words, a great, great campaign. I think what ultimately you had, as you said, you have giuliani, who has a lot of history in ukraine, and i would say with individuals who were more than happy to go down any Conspiracy Theory for compensation. A number of individuals who thought they would do far better if ambassador yovanovitch was out of office. And you had the Russian Secret Service wanting to create and push out the narrative of it was ukraine, not us. So, then you have a brandnew president who really needs the United States. And for somebody like President Trump, at least what i observe, that is too much to walk away from. He has all the leverage because ukraine needs the United States, and he was going to exercise that leverage to get this narrative, you know, restarted, regenerated, that it wasnt the russians. And what also fell in his lap was hunter biden being on burismas board. And Vice President biden calling for the removal of shoken. Of the those facts, none president s accusations are factual. When shulkin left, the subsequent prosecutor general actually brought cases against the burisma company, and shulkin never did. They lay dormant for years. But those facts did not matter. In fact, the president didnt even want an investigation. He just wanted a call. But i think you have a lot of activity in a country that is known for conspiracy theories, known for a lot of payments being made for, lets just say, not all that legal activity, and you have a new president that really, really needs the United States backing. And you have a president who is willing to exercise that leverage. Director pratt paul butler, we have with the two articles of impeachment, abuse of power, contempt of congress. Did you see in any of what was presented by the house what could have been perceived as a criminal offense . And do you think it might have had more power had they framed it as a criminal offense, even though i know impeachment doesnt require it being a criminal offense . And as a followup to that, do you think President Trump has any exposure to being criminally prosecuted upon leaving office . Prof. Butler thank you for this invitation, and thank you for your warm introduction. Oh. [laughter] thank you for that gracious introduction, but now, in the words of jayz, let me reintroduce myself. My name is paul butler and i represent the people. That is how i used to start my opening statement. I was a prosecutor right here in the district of columbia. I represented the government in criminal court. During the time i did that work i learned some things. Among the things i learned were how to prove a case. When we look at the allegations against President Trump, he was charged, the articles were about abuse of Congress Abuse of office and obstruction of congress. The standard for impeachment in the constitution is high crimes and misdemeanors. That is a term of art. Now as a prosecutor i was very familiar, you are familiar with the idea of misdemeanors being a crime for which the punishment is less than a year. We also understand crimes to be statutory, that is written down. Back in the day when the constitution was written, statutory crimes did not exist. Misdemeanors were quite different from what they are now. In fact, the term high crimes and misdemeanors was a term of art that specifically referred to abuse of the public trust. While it was not required that there be a neat linkage between specific statutory crimes and what President Trump was accused of doing in fact, those linkages do exist. If we look at the criminal statutes for bribery, for extortion, they map on quite well to i need you to do me a favor, though. As karen suggested, ukraine is in a vulnerable position. They are at war with russia. Without the United States assistance, their survival as a nationstate is in jeopardy. When you look at the record , President Trump made clear that a, military assistance was contingent on political favors. So, if the United States was to provide military assistance to ukraine, they needed to start the investigation. By start the investigation i mean announce it. President trump actually didnt want an investigation in good faith. Because, of course, that would have proven how ludicrous his conspiracy theories were about the bidens, the email server, and all of that. All he wanted was the announcement to do the same kind of damage to the Biden Campaign that fbi director comeys announcement into hillary of an investigation into Hillary Clinton had done to her campaign. Goodtor pratt that is a point. I had some written questions but i talked with representative raskin and he brought up what we should really be talking about. Let me put it in context. This, by chance, everybody was available february 18, the day after president s day. And here we are. There are a few holidays we have in this country other than the fourth of july that more underscores the significance of our country more than president s day. Really it is designed to president in first particular, george washington, who was clearly without his leadership there would not be a United States of america. And to some extent president whom welincoln, without would not have kept it as the United States of america. They have got a Great Program on the History Channel about president george washington. When you observe his career, and for that matter almost any of the founding fathers, they were obsessed with creating a country where there would not be any authoritarian power. They were obsessed with this. There would not be another king george iii. When you look at the constitution, every opportunity they have they checkmate a branch of government. So, he may have article one, you can legislate, but article two says, i can veto it. Or you in article two may be the commanderinchief, but article one says i am the one who must declare war. Every effort is made to checkmate an abuse of power. We have used the one significant instrument one has in an environment when you have what some perceived to be a very authoritarian persona. Where do we go from here . We have given it our best shot. Where are we as a country in terms of check mating the prerogatives of one branch over the other . We can also talk eventually about the third branch of government, but where are we . Congressman raskin, i will begin with you. Rep. Raskin i wanted to pick up on that point, which is crucial to the Current Crisis we are in. Lets start with this. We had a revolution against a king, against monarchy. The three most critical words of the constitution are the three first words of the constitution. It is we the people. In order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and preserve the blessings of liberty, do hereby ordain and establish the constitution of the United States. That one actionpacked sentence is a whole preamble of the constitution, but it defines the american experiment. It is popular government against monarchal government. Where did r power . From god. How do we know that . They told us so. Our framers turned that upside down and said we will not accept kings and queens declaring their power from god. Said all power as madison will arise from the fountain of the people themselves. You are saying we have three equal branches, we dont have three will branches. The sovereign power of the government and to launch the country flowed immediately through the preamble of the constitution into article one to congress. You get 37 paragraph the layout the powers of the peoples representatives. The power to declare war, regulate commerce internationally and mystically. The power to raise taxes and levies. The power to govern the seat of governance here in the district of columbia. The power over piracy, on and on and then article one section eight clause 18, the necessary proper clause. That do youll of get article two, the executive branch. You get four short sections. The fourth is all about impeachment. How do you impeach a president who commits treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors against the people. What is the main job of the president . To be commanderinchief not of the country, not even the armed forces, the arm army and navy and state militias in times of insurrection and conflict. And then to take care the laws are faithfully executed. Thats the job of the president. To execute the laws that have been adopted by the peoples representatives but the job of the Supreme Court is to pronounce what the law actually is as chief Justice Marshall put it. You see we are a Representative Democracy under a constitutional form of government. Thats why i think this impeachment is a necessary episode in the reassertion of the sovereign power of the people through congress against a runaway imperial executive. Donald trump is the cartoon manifestation of a process thats been taking place through many presidencies of president ial irrigation of power , the declaration of unilateral wars and so on. We have to clawback the legitimate powers of the people and i hope we can do that on a bipartisan basis in congress and through an uprising of the people through elections to say this is not what people fought for and died for. Its not what people have struggled for in the country. Wase, the ukraine episode all about the stealing of democracy. Bringing foreign powers in through the use of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money as leverage. Bringing foreign powers in to distort in fort democratic selfgoverning. To get Foreign Governments to sabotage the campaign of a president ial rival. Somebody who is running against the president. If we allow that to happen, we have given democracy up. America ishink inclined to move in that direction because from where i sit, it appears americans are drawn now to some of that paternalistic authoritarian figure. , butnt necessarily trump are we drawn to that kind of ansonality that we have incomparable kind of cult following on the democratic side . Do you see there have said a lot that was very important and you have one of these moments. I do agree with a lot of what the congressman said, but i do think the branches of government are equal in the sense that as you noted, there are checks. There are appropriate checks between them. So that sort of establishes the relationship. You have a lot of work to do, we get it, but i can veto that work. And we can override that veto. That is true. But youve got to go work to get those numbers to override the veto. Actually is aary check on both the legislative and the executive branches and i think to your question where we find ourselves now for me and i was so happy to hear you start the way you did, the most important word in all of our founding documents is those first three words, we the people. My approach to all of this is very simply and straight up, we are where we are right now because this is where you want us to be. And we will be here for however long you want us to be here. So all the handwringing and all the noisemaking and all the clambering and all the haranguing and all of that, you can end it. That the fact that this president right now after everything we know and everything weve seen is at 49 approval in the United States of america tonight. His reelected number is 45 . In 16 with 47, how hard will it be to get 2 . We are where we are. We can sit here and talk about a Representative Government and this gentleman here is representing the people but at the end of the day, we are the government. They dont exist unless we say they do. He doesnt have a job unless the people of maryland in his district say he does. Thats how. He doesnt get to make them so they congressman and he doesnt get to keep the job. For all the browbeating and how much, congress is lower than a cockroach but guess what you are going to do, youre going to reelect the vast majority this november. So recognize the power you have as the people and ask yourself what youre willing to put up with. You are not upset come outraged, guess what, the status quo is working fine for me. My 401 k is great. I got a tax cut. You can rationalize and make whatever excuse you want. With the president s behavior reminds me of and this is the disassociation we make, imagine your neighborhood your child is a bully. Your child is beating up every other kid, calling them names, just acting up. Parents in the neighborhood come to you and say you have to do something about your kid. In your response is he bring some straight as. At least he gets good grades. So while he is checking every box you wanting to check, tax cuts, Supreme Court justices, deregulation, you are letting Everything Else he does undermine the very thing you talked about. Neighborhood the or broadly speaking the country and its founding principles. So that check, that ultimate check is not the Supreme Court, its not congress, its not donald trump, it is you. [applause] karen, what are your thoughts . I want to do a yes ,but. Because i do believe in the constitution and i do believe in we the people and i will go back to when president clinton was impeached and the way senator lott and senator daschle decided to handle it. But. His is the yes, it is up to us, but Leadership Matters. And the profound lack of leadership that we have experienced in the United States unparallel. Is we were not all that happy when to daschle called and said myself and john podesta, i know you guys want to make this partisan, thats not my job. Is to preserve and protect the neutrality of the institution of the United States senate. What happened then that did not daschle wasas tom the minority leader distanced himself from the white house. There was no coordination and collaboration. The coordination and collaboration happened between tom daschle and trent lott. And the other thing that happened was that the senate as , figuredt offcamera out what the rules were going to be and felt it was their job to do a number of things. One was to lower the temperature of the partisan nature of the house, because while everyone wasntbout how this bipartisan. Let me tell you, it wasnt bipartisan there in the house. There was a complete partisan agenda and what the managers wanted to do, they wanted 17 witnesses and Monica Lewinsky in the well of the senate floor. Daschle didnt allow that to happen but didnt properlyto happen by respecting the institution. We did not have that here. So yes it is we the people, it is on us, but Leadership Matters and the failure of leadership in the United States senate shouldve never happened. Nothing,l about risk collaborate with the white house, get him off and move on to win. And that is it. The truth didnt matter, the facts did not matter, in the institute of the senate, in the role of the senate did not matter to the majority leader because if it has mattered a would have handled the situation differently. I dont know if this is an article three comment or not because youve got to have u. S. Attorneys pursuant, but is there a role for the courts in a runaway situation. Memo the just as Legal Counsel memo says you cant indict a sitting president but in the watergate hearing, nixon was an unindicted coconspirator and that was sustained by the courts. So what is your thinking about whether you sever appropriate or would it ever be appropriate for a president to be criminally indicted or criminally implicated and have the courts play a role in the process . Michael said he got a tax break [laughter]. My accountant told me that i dont make enough money to qualify for the trump tax break so i need to find out your contract with cable tv and get one. Impeachment of bill clinton, chief justice who summed up his role chief Justice Rehnquist some up his role later by saying during the trial he did nothing and he did it perfectly. Future ofegard to the the president of the United States, that is a fairly accurate description of the role. There are some thoughts of the Mueller Investigation uncovered criminality by President Trump that there might be he might be charged as an unindicted coconspirator as nixon was or there might be an indictment that was held until after he left office. We know neither of those happened because Robert Mueller put in his report that he did not think he had the authority because of the Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted. That policy is the same authority as an employee handbook. Its not the law, it is simply the policy of the people who ran the Justice Department at the time. , ishat could be overturned it likely to be overturned . Who knows. One question would be would president sanders or warren or biden, any of the democratic candidates, would there attorney general do an independent investigation and consider whether to bring charges against to of the folks involved ukraine and russia. I think that would be problematic from any democratic president coming in. It would look like sour grapes, payback, retaliation. So it might be easier for them not to do that. And for that reason i think you actually understated the risk to our country as a result of this moment. When i was a prosecutor, i made aboutnts in hearings something legal scholars call specific deterrent. What that means is i tell the to sentence this person to a term of years so that he learns there are consequences for his actions. Aboutth i have misgivings many of the young black men who i sent to prison for minor crimes on the basis of that kind of argument. Entirely welllies to the president of the United States. So when there are consequences for actions, people learn. They also learn when there are not consequences for actions. So when people say President Trump did not learn anything from impeachment, dont believe the hype. He learned he could get away with anything. The room thatto he has for mischief, he is a quick study. Many of you might remember that day, it seemed so long ago but it was this past summer when finally special counsel mueller testified before the United States congress. Was the report can be released, was it going to be discussed in anyway and finally he appeared before congress. Mind that day, when in my he kind of crashed and burned, he did not make a compelling defense of his report. His main idea seemed to be that impeachment was the remedy, it was clear though that the president was not going to be impeached for what he tried to do with russia and that there wouldnt be any other type of consequences for the president with regards to russian scandal. The very next day, President Trump picked up the phone, called president zelensky, i need you to do me a favor though. , and when thened senate failed to remove him from week, he firedry not just Lieutenant Colonel ,indman, but his twin brother theres this ancient concept. Believes y after thehe went out prosecutors in the roger stone case. Said he has the authority to direct political prosecutions by the department of justice. He claims he hasnt done it yet. But he can if he wants. What will he do not just next week, but what will he do if the people dont rise up and he is reelected . I am going to ask one last question and then those of you want to ask questions, i urge you to stand by the microphone so we can hear you and respond to your questions. Karen, you talked about leadership in the senate and while that was a very divisive moment in American History, it appeared though there were still there was still some level of Common Ground we had in this country. We had so it would appear become and wepolarized country almost live in two worlds, there is one world where people watch fox and another where they watch cnn or msnbc and we just dont seem to find that Common Ground and if you dont have that Common Ground, how do we get to where congressman is talking about where we as a collective, we the people perceive ourselves to have that shared interest enough that we rise up together as again saying i would still like you said that sort of he still get straight as mindset. Think that there is a way to find that Common Ground today . I do. Let me start though by the difficulty we are in because i do think we have to be honest about what happened in the senate and i agree completed with karen about this. We had the republican majority in the senate with the honorable exception of mitt romney, at least with respect to that first count behaving not like a disinterested jurors, but members of a religious cult. And the chair of the Senate Judiciary committee, Lindsey Graham thomas said he was not interested in the facts or the evidence. He clearly was not interested in the law. He was interested in the identity of the defendant. Paul butler is a great expert on the history of jury nullification. This is jury nullification. Its not the episodic one you find with some progressive juries in drug cases, it is oldfashioned jury nullification when somebody is prosecutor for a crime against afferent american bread thats basically what we saw. And so thats a very serious problem when one party has gone off the rails that certainly. But i think there is grounds for a lot of hope, the first thing i want to say about this is the division and polarization that we see in America Today is a strategy and you can read a book about it because i just did over the weekend. I cant tell you the title because its unpronounceable in public but the subtitle is Cambridge Analytic and the plot to break america. It was written by christopher wiley, the whistleblower and he tells the story of steve bannon, Cambridge Analytic a, the russian putin team and how they used for the first time in American History all of the data that facebook has about you and me and everybody on the stage and everybody across america, used that data to figure out the psyche of america and then to figure out how to win in the Electoral College, use that information that way, but more in a more sinister fashion, to inject poison into the bloodstream of america through facebook and twitter and social media and they went out looking for what they called the devil triad with the dark triad of three psychological inputs, narcissism, machiavellianism and psychopathy. Sound familiar . Currentsee emotional would be the key to driving a wedge right to the heart of america by creating ethnic, racial, partisan conflicts. Find the faultlines for preexisting preexisting in the country and exacerbating them and inflating them to the point where you get what we see in america over the last several years which is klansmen and neonazis marching even without masks on their faces in the cities of the country. People showing up with assault weapons and churches and synagogues at walmarts in movie theaters across the country and assassinating people. Why is that something that actually could be good news . I dont think we are a racist country, i dont and we are an antisemitic country. I dont thing we are misogynistic country. I think there has been an activation of the most violently unstable people in the country and we have to figure out how to deal with that, but we can of the the momentum democratic cohesion and progress in america. I want to close on this thought. Alwayscy is either expanding and growing order shrinking and contracting. We have been shrinking and contracting. Thats what we have seen with american politicians making deals with Foreign Governments and foreign powers to interfere in our elections. What weve seen with citizens united, what weve seen with Voter Suppression and voter we have to move in the other direction. Its always meant structural form. Who is left out . Who is left out in America Today in the impeachment trial in the senate. People in washington dc were left out. Werent two senators there in washington dc. Thats a scandal in 2020. The people of puerto rico were not represented in the senate, thats a scandal in 2020. Weve had two popular vote losers in the last five elections take office because of the weakness of this artifact called the Electoral College. We need to get to a National Popular vote for president of the United States. The Electoral College is a threat to democracy. We have to get the engines of democracy moving again to bring in everybody who is left out. This senate is obviously a flawed institution. Of the peopleity represented by senators who voted to convict. A minority of the people represented by the other senators but they voted to acquit will of the very least lets get everybody in the senate including people in washington dc and puerto rico. Lets pass statehood. Lets deal with the Electoral College. Lets create a constitutional amendment on the right to vote so we dont continue voter purges like we saw in georgia where six or thousand people, Stacey Abrams reminds us they were driven off the rolls, creating an unfair election in that state. If i could pick up on where he left off and say there is also nothing worse than unmet expectations. The reality of what you have just described, i can tell you what a significant portion of the population of this country heard when you said when the commerce and said what he said was like, thats the problem burden that is what we have got to get at. We have got to get at how people hear and perceive and read the narratives that are out there. Because right now, we are all creating our own. My tribe is better than your tribe. What you just said is an offense to my tribe. Instead of saying, where is their linkage where we can begin to move to some level of Common Ground to address some of these issues. Its not like we done this before. We forget, in the midst of the impeachment of bill clinton, bill clinton and Newt Gingrich reformed welfare, balanced the nations budget, got a whole host of very good, some progressive and somber some conservative things done on behalf of the country. Whats different . Why couldnt barack obama do that with john boehner . Why cant a donald trump do that with a Chuck Schumer nancy or pelosi . There is Something Else that we have got to get at that goes speaks to and it kind of goes back to where, i have kind of planted my seeds on this and that is how we want to go about beginning to address a lot of these issues. You talk about some of the systemic issues that touch on impeachment and move that narrative. This conversation started a long time ago. These issues have been there for a long time. A significant portion of this country has felt that their concerns have not been addressed for a long time, long before donald trump showed up. Donald trump, the ultimate showman, knew how to do the pt barnum thing. And turn it into a reality tv moment. People connect to that. Why else would a single mother of two living in New Hampshire divorced, when asked a question , in 2016 why she was supporting donald trump, and she said, because he is just like me. If you dont understand the why of that, you will never get to any of the things you talked about. Because we have to understand why someone sees these things the way they see them and why they hear what they hear, so when they hear themselves being called deplorables or when they hear themselves talking about clinging to their gods and their guns, that is when the president gets into the beast and drives around the nascar track. If you dont understand why he did that, and why that was a big deal. That sent a huge message. What you just said, deaf ears. You need to understand this not in the conventional way. We are not in the conventional moment anymore. We have long left kansas. We are not there anymore. We have even passed oz. We are in a space now where asymmetrical politics is the order of the day because you have the quintessential asymmetrical player calling the plays, and that is donald trump. The democrats looking at this november, they need to ask themselves not just who can beat trump, but who can beat him in an asymmetrical way. Who is not afraid to step out there. We saw what happened to marco rubio when he went there in the last election. When you try to get in the mud with trump, you are going to get up real muddy. There are ways in which you have some people who have already done this. Watch what nancy pelosi has done. She is the only player in this town that can get under his skin on a consistent basis. She knows how. That image of her standing in the cabinet room looking at him, looking down at him and all of the men sitting like this. She knows how to make that moment. Now, you have got to translate that to begin to address those issues for a lot of people out there who feel that their expectations have largely been unmet. Very good points. Can i quickly disrupt just to the we the people . Since we are sitting at this beautiful hbcu in the district of columbia, i think we have to talk about race, and we have to make it part of the text, not the subtext. The reality is that donald trump has won the white vote. In november, the majority of white folks are going to vote for donald trump. In fact, that is true for every republican candidate since the election of john kennedy. White people have voted majority for the republican candidate. While its true that trump is exceptional in some ways, his overtly racist rhetoric has corruption. If you look at his policies, he is not that different from any other republican. Other republican president s would have been happy to nominate justices gorsuch and brett kavanaugh. Other republicans are all behind building the wall. One more fundamental question to kind of piggyback off of what michael and the congressman have said, is where do black people go to be safe . What does it mean with regard to a president as corrupt and racist as donald trump that the majority of white people are going to vote for him in november. How should people of color understand that . For all of the majesty of our constitution and all the talk that i and everyone did about the wisdom of the framers during the impeachment hearing, folks of color are very vulnerable, and that is not just because of donald trump. Just before you go over to the audience, i want to add one more thing. We tend to look at this dialectic as 2016 and 2020, and we are ignoring what happened in 17, 18, and 19. We, the people, have said a lot in those three years. State legislatures have changed. Many, many seats in the house have changed. Many gubernatorial races have happened and the power structure has changed in governors. Why . I think because we, the people, have got his number and especially women. You are absolutely right, white people keep doing this trend, and its all about how much of a majority because there are still some of us who are not following that trend, especially women. I just do not think that we can say, 2016, and now, 2020, he is going to play the same game and he is going to do the same thing and we have to respond to that. No, we cannot ignore the three years that have happened and what people have said in have and have changed in those three years because it is significant. Right. It is a powerful point. We are going to call on the audience now and jump right here. I am a banking consultant and i have a question primarily for mr. Raskin, but others might want to jump in. Over the recent decades, congress has delegated an enormous amount of authority to the president not just in warmaking, but to give you another recent example, and that is the ability to change tariffs. Levy tariffs, take them off, take them down, move them around. My question, to what extent is congress maybe starting to get ready to pull back some of those powers or at least to stop granting additional powers to the executive branch and trying to start leveling the Playing Field . Excellent point. It is going on right now. We invoked the war powers act for the first time after the assassination of solemani to say we have not declared war and given statutory authorization for war and unless , we are attacked by iran or armed forces are attacked, the president cannot initiate war or military action against iran without congressional action. It is the first time we have done the under the war powers act and that is precisely reclaiming powers that have been given away. You are right with respect of trade, you are right with respect to Emergency Powers and emergency authorities, and all of a sudden, these things are looking like very dangerous concessions and delegations to the executive branch. We are in the process of trying to reposition and reallocate the power, and i am hoping that will happen on a bipartisan basis. I just want to add one quick thing to what karen and paul just ended up there, but what paul said is true. There is a very clear racial dimension to our politics now, but it is also true that hillary beat trump by 3 million votes in 2016. [applause] not in the white community, its true, but when you add up americans, she beat him by 3 million votes. In 2018, when he reclaimed the when we reclaimed the house of representatives, we beat them by 9 million votes across the country. All of these kids that are turning 18 and registering to vote are not registering for donald trump nor are the new americans who are registering to vote. It is a question of whether we can get all of the votes cast and counted in 2020, that is our job. That is our historical assignment. [applause] then we can move on to the other Institutional Reforms that we need to make democracy real in the 21st century. And i am not oblivious to the cultural politics that michael is talking about. I am aware that we have to play at that level, but we also have got to deal with the real problems of the country, including the fact that there are 700,000 people in this city tonight who are not represented in congress. That is unacceptable in a democracy in the 21st century. We are the only nation on earth where the residents of the capital city are disenfranchised. If you try to disenfranchise people who lived in paris tonight, you would have another french revolution on your hands. We have to reclaim that level of political vision in 2020. This has to be the year of Perfect Vision and politics. You know i like that. [laughter] good evening, my name is mike smith and i am a local businessman. Professor butler, you spoke about consequences of your actions. I was interested in your opinion about the possible consequences that trump could perhaps experience in other jurisdictions, say new york, possibly florida. That is a great question. I think a lot of people understand the president s pardoning power is exclusive to federal crimes. If President Trump were to be charged by a state prosecutor with a state crime, or if anyone were to be charged with a state prosecutor or crime, President Trump would not have the authority to pardon that person. One of the things that was going on with regard to corruption and bad Business Practices in new york state is that there local, they are local criminal investigations of people in trumps world. There would be an interesting issue were the president indicted while he is in office. We do not know where the Supreme Court would end up on that, but we know that trump has packed the courts with justices who share his view about the power of the executive. There is not reason to be really optimistic if that happens about how the court would rule, but you dont know. The president , it is possible, he could be charged while in office. An easier case would be charged after he leaves office, but there are any number of things he could be charged with including possibly violating state tax laws. There, he would not be able to use any of the prerogative of the presidency to defend himself. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Paul manafort was a bad actor when he took over the campaign in 2016, 2015, and the rnc changed their platform to include language that was more favorable to ukraine all the way back then. We know the events that led up to the impeachment were largely about a coverup for the russian hack to give putin plausible deniability and pin it on ukraine. Other than saying that all roads lead to putin, how come democrats seem to consistently fail to draw the larger narrative of connecting all of these events into the one big scandal that it actually is instead of these narrow focused things that the republicans seem to be able to take down very deliberately . Thanks. Thank you for the question. You will get your fair ups. The question is not only important, but it is urgent because it relates to this election, too. We already know that putin and his team have come back at us. It is about not just the lost integrity of the 2016 election but the imperiled integrity of the 2020 election. One thing that happens, and obviously, it will take a story to sort it all out, but one historians to sorted out, but thathing that happened was attorney general barr confiscated the Mueller Report for three and a half weeks. He got up before everybody else, he held onto it may deliberately misled the public about its contents, prompting not one, but two letters of protest from special counsel mueller about how he was deceiving the public essentially and misleading people about what it said. And then pulled the wool over every buddys eyes, remember the day before easter and passover was about to happen. He has to be republican of the year for the way he was acting what he did for donald trump. He wasnt acting like attorney general of the United States. But still i have republican colleagues to this day who robotically repeat the words, no obstruction, no collusion. Collusion, mueller starts out by saying we dont look at the question of collusion, it is not a legal concept except in the antitrust field. There was lots of evidence of collusion in the vernacular sense with more than 100 contacts between trump family members in Trump Campaign people with various russian emissaries. With obstruction, there was overwhelming evidence of obstruction that was put in there, and they just got the mantra going, no obstruction, no collusion. We could not recover from that, so when the ukraine shakedown came to light through a whistleblower and lots of honest, decent, wonderful, civil servants, republicans, democrats, independents coming forward to talk about what the president had done, that was in real time. So we immediately said, lets do that before barr can pull the wool over everybodys eyes. That was the genesis of the impeachment over that. We found overwhelming evidence that the president had dragged a Foreign Government into our elections in order to sabotage and smear joe biden and the Biden Campaign. This is a story that is coming out in a lot of different ways. It is coming out through media, through books, and it is coming out by us talking about it. I think that your voting choices are very clear in 2020, and you can vote the d for democracy or r for russia. Thats basically whats on the ballot. Tell your kids. Everything you need to know about voting is everything you need to know about driving. If you want to go forward, you put it in d, if you want to go backwards, he put it inr. R. [laughter] i will just let that one go for now. [laughter] if i could dovetail on the end of that. Your question really goes to the heart of where i think, as we start the conversation about how the American People will process this. It will speak to how good a job the democrats did in making the case. That is sort of a mixed, muddled results at this point. Just listening to you, you started with mueller, which is like snooze ville and that is how the American People kind of look at this thing. And a lot of us want to know a lot of that has to do with what republicans did to obstruct that process and further confuse the narrative. This is oneand thing i do give nancy pelosi place for was putting in impeachment managers who were not just competent in their capacity to present the case but , were damn effective in tying almost emotionally to our coreness as americans, the outrageousness of it all. When adam schiff in his closing, even as a partisan i went damn, that was good. That was good. So what i think, i think the back end story is what nancy did by putting in place these players and the way they presented that that narrative now can be unpacked but whoever the democratic nominee is when it comes to this broader question about what impeachment was and what this president has done, and there is rhetoric there that they can rely on to further make that case to the American People, because it struck such a chord. I was going to answer these other questions, but part of ask these other questions what the last question spoke to was what congressman raskin talked about in this book he read, which is we are not just it is not just americans playing anymore, we are dealing with outside parties. If i can add to that, it is not just russia. Authoritarianism, racism, and fascism are on the march all over the world. We have putin in russia, we have hungry, egypt erdogan in turkey, duterte in the philippines, we have the homicidal crown prince of saudi arabia. That was Donald Trumps first visit was to saudi arabia. We have north korea, china, so on. We are talking about the future of democracy on earth. It is what lincoln talked about on the battlefield at gettysburg. Will government of the people, by the people, for the people perish from the earth . Or not . That is not a rhetorical question, its a serious question. We have to look at all the threats to democracy in america and at the same time, we got a lot of organic domestic threats, and historically, that is where the struggle has been. With the disenfranchisement in the voter purges and the ku klux klan. Right now it works for one party and not necessarily the other. The question is will it come back to bite everybody. I am a masters candidate at udc in the Homeland Security program. My question revolves around narratives, and i know we have talked a lot about narratives a lot today and narratives have been a big thing in regards to these past four years. My question is how do we go about combating misinformation as it applies to these narratives and do you believe that there is a process in which the government can sort of vet sources better or provide something for a lot of people who dont have access to information or only are accessing information that is inherently biased or incorrect in skew of a particular ideology . I will just real quick, i give one word, facebook. At the end of the day, if you do not see the Corporate Responsibility to check your own operation, and not allow people to freely engage in misinformation and disinformation tactics, it makes it harder, which requires your team and my team and the house and the senate to get in front of this and begin to put in place the checks on this process. We know what the issues are and we know what the russians and all involved are doing. So the question becomes, from that side, how do we begin to put up the required census walls fences or walls to prevent those folks from really infecting our political discourse with a lot of disinformation. On the other side of that, we have to take better responsibility for the information we take in. In other words, do not believe everything you are reading and seeing. Let me be clear. If you get a text, email, or notice that says that Hillary Clinton is running a child pornography ring outside in the back of a pizza parlor on some street in washington, d. C. , you may want to ask yourself is that really true. The reality of it is we participate in this as much as those we are now asking to protect us from it. That to me it is a twoway , street. As we get into this election, the congress is right, our opponents are already engaging. The stuff you could probably tell, if you could, legally that we have already stopped in this process, but there is a whole lot more and it does not help when we are just sitting there taking it all in and spewing it back out. And it does not help when the leader of the free world is one of the biggest perpetrators of fostering and pushing out these kinds of narratives. Rep. Raskin and let me pick up on that. The opposite of disinformation is evidence and what is it that the senate rejected in the impeachment trial . Evidence. They did not want witnesses. They did not want facts. That means that there is a large part of the population that just get propaganda, conspiracy theories and so on. That is the public side. We have to redouble our commitment to facts and truth. If for no other reason in our politics because the state of fate of our species is at stake with Climate Change and we have an ideology and machinery of climate denialism, which is all based on propaganda and will impair our ability to take the actions we need in order to save ourselves. I just want to add, because it seems like we shy away from this, but it should be regulated. The federal Communications Act holds commercial stations, commercial venues responsible for what is on the airwaves and it used to be, there are certain things you cannot say and the words that you cannot say, and we have become a talk shop just to let it all happen because it benefits political candidates. We need to regulate. If facebook does not want to take responsibility, lets have a Regulatory Framework that just like we make television stations and radio stations to take stations and Public Utilities take responsibility and to make sure there is a Public Benefit, we should be damn sure there is a Public Benefit right now, because there is right now a public harm. We talk about big issues but the analytica, i read the same book, it is scary as hell, can manipulate the data so you actually believe something is going on at a pizza station. You actually believe that because when it is put out there are several other people saying yes and this is what i know, that is criminal. Call it for what it is and the government yes should take thosesibility and hold private entities who are making a fortune harming the public. We should not allow entities behind to harm the public. The government should step in. Ruth important concerns about the role of technology and social media and spreading falsehoods. I also agree with you about the power of stories. At the same time, there is a lot of really important social science that you could sum up as helping us understand, people are going to believe what they want to believe. To that extent, the problem is not so much getting the right story, but it is getting people to listen. When trump says, no collusion, no obstruction, when he says, it is a witchhunt, there are plenty of facts out there right now that dispute that. But the problem is not that people do not get the facts, the problem is that the facts do not matter. Thank you. Good evening, my name is josh lopez. I am also a masters candidate in the Homeland Security program. Thank you for this wonderful event. My question is for congressman raskin. In retrospect, was it a mistake to impeach the president over ukraine . I asked that question because i ask that question because as someone who follows politics every single day, i read multiple news outlets and articles, i found myself having to do more research to figure out the Historical Context with ukraine and how it connects to what is going on now, but the average person, i fear, doesnt understand that. We have two people running for president on the democratic side who could not even named the mexican president. We talk about ukraine, and it becomes a bit more complicated. Klobuchar and stier. [laughter] and my followup question, how fearful should we become a should we be. We look at President Trump who is never really been held accountable for anything throughout his life. Lets say the American Public does rise up and vote about and he is alluded to this multiple times of not giving up power. Should we be worried about President Trump doubling down and refusing to concede the race . Thank you for the great question. I do not think it was a mistake to impeach the president. I think we had absolutely no choice in terms of his high crimes and misdemeanors against the democracy. Your question seems to suggest that maybe we should have gone broader. That, i happen to agree with. I think that there were campaignfinance violations that which were far more serious than anything bill clinton was accused of. They impeached bill clinton for low crimes and misdemeanors. These were high crimes and misdemeanors in the Campaign Finance field with hundreds of thousands of dollars being laundered and spent as conduit contributions and expenditures all of it being concealed and so , on. There are also repeated and continuing valuations of the violations of the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses. This goes to the heart of our constitution. None of us in the federal office, under article one, can section nine, clause can eight, without the consent of congress, can receive a payment emoluments, and officer title or any kind of whatever from foreign princes, kings and states. Yet, this president has collected millions of dollars from saudi arabia, united arab emirates, turkey, philippines, and so on. In fact, he has admitted it. He has paid 350,000 to the u. S. Government for what he describes as profits from business he has done with Foreign Governments. There is a couple of problems with that. Number one, he does not show us any accounting. Which means we have to take him at his word. Secondly, the constitution doesnt say you cant take profits and Foreign Governments it says you cannot take any , payments of any kind from any Foreign Governments, and you cannot take any of it without the consent of congress and he never came to congress. Abraham lincoln came to congress when he got some elephant antlers that he loved in the middle of the civil war, and Congress Says hey, you are doing a great job in the war, but no, you cannot keep those. Turn them over to the department of the interior. Every president has abided by the clauses, but not donald trump. This president is a oneman crime wave. It is a problem to figure out what to charge him with and when, especially when they are rejecting all of the subpoenas and lawful demands for information. I do think the one problem with the ukraine episode is it makes it look like it is some kind of unique, eccentric episode when in fact, it has been the whole heart and the substance of the Trump Administration. We have never seen in our lifetime an administration this corrupt and is criminal as the Trump Administration. Mr. Butler in regards to what happens if the president doesnt leave office, sometimes we have this parade of horribles. We speculate about some things that are already going on. With regard to attorney general barr, now some people have warned that if things go in the same direction, we will have political investigations and prosecutions. My friends, we have political investigations and prosecutions right now under attorney general barr. We dont, thankfully, have evidence that President Trump has the military so in his command that they would disobey the rule of law. The day after inauguration or the day of inauguration of a democratic president , if trump does not leave the white house, then the new president should dial 911 and call the metropolitan police, who should arrest the president , the former president , for trespass. They should remove him from the white house. The only scenario by which that would not happen is if trump in fact has the military or significant other Law Enforcement apparatus in his command. And so, there is a fight. Thankfully, there is no evidence that we are yet at that point. I am kathy, retired now but i spent 42 years on the hill. I am not naive about what is going on. But i am really scared about what is going on. One of the things i am worried i am really scared about is the lessons federal workers have learned from this process and that is, if you see something wrong, you better keep your mouth shut. If you speak out and you act according to your oath, and you are a whistleblower, not only can you be removed from your post, you can have republican senators and congressmen putting your name out there, getting your house on the internet, and getting threats, having your name thankfully, chief Justice Rogers didnt do it, but named into the record on the senate floor. We used to have bipartisan support for federal workers and for their ability to come to congress and blow the whistle. Congress demanded the information, which we are not getting now, brought the whistleblowers up and protected them, and they are not getting that done. How do we change that . If we have this guy in the white house, we want people feeling free to report wrongdoing and i am afraid right now, particularly because of the republican congresspeople, they do not feel safe in doing that. How do we change that . Not only are you right and josh in right in everything that we know publicly, but the senate, judiciary, Homeland Security, and finance committee is continuing investigation of the investigation of former appointees in the state department and in various departments asking questions about ukraine and about meetings and so on. There is a whole side joke going on in the senate right now and nobody is stopping it. We keep going, we keep going back to, we the people, and it is our power to change it. And what should we do if, again, this is a point that i keep emphasizing, there is such a lack of leadership, on the one hand, for the republicans, but also, there is not a platform for true leaders that are trying to make a difference in the way that you are talking about or the managers that you referred to. They had one moment during impeachment. So you hear that, it happens over a couple of days and the media is forced to give it a platform, and then that is it. We are not going to hear from the from the managers ever again. Now somebody in a campaign uses those words, but part of the problem that i see like the leaders like congressman raskin and others who want to protect and want to put a framework out there for employees, the media is not giving them a platform to do that. There is not a counter narrative. The democrats will, when we have a nominee, have the space a counter narrative, but right now, it is a oneman tweet show. Unless we read, as one of the masters student said, every single newspaper that you can get your hands on, there is a paragraph here and a paragraph there that says, we need to do something about this or we need to do something about that. The media is not allowing the voice of the people in the true leaders in congress to be heard. And once the campaign happens in earnest, we will have as that ads that speak to this or speak to that, but we are not really having a policy debate about what can happen. We are saturated by one persons voice. Mr. Butler although, a lot of us who have spent time on msnbc, the media is not a monolith. It is fox news, cnn, it is also the internet sources, and msnbc. Again, i dont want us to underestimate what we are up against in terms of the future of our democracy. It is not that the information, the facts, the truth is not out there for people to discover. It is presented 24 7. It is just that many people dont want to know. Let me just say this because i have 70,000 federal workers and tens of thousands of federal retirees that i present i represent in the eighth consecutive district in maryland. This issue is very important to me and i talked to federal workers i talk to federal workers all the time about this. It is not new but it goes back to the beginning of the administration when they began a crackdown on climate scientists, and they shut down the government and there has been a war on federal Government Health insurance benefits, and salary and so on, but it has reached a fever pitch with the president s recent rampage of retaliation against people that he perceives to be his political enemies, including colonel vinman, who is a decorated war hero who served our country, who responded to a subpoena, came, and testify truthfully, and then gets bounced out of his job with the National Security council, sent back to the military, where the president says he cannot promise that there will not be military discipline. Against him. This is Banana Republic stuff. We have got to demand not just that democrats speak out about it, but republican speak out about it, and we are obviously not going to hear anything from the Banana Republicans, the one ones who just follow the Trump Administration and link up every day with him, but this is very scary to be in a situation where you have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who feel intimidated into doing their work and being able to testify about criminality. I was very disappointed with senator Chuck Grassley in iowa, a champion of the whistleblower, and nowhere to be found to stand up against these whistleblowers from all of the threats and constant efforts to out the original ukraine whistleblower. So that person could be exposed to more hatred and more threats, and real problems, but there are unions for the federal workers and the federal workers have allies, but it will be very important for people to stand up for them just like standing up for the press, i think is just an obligation of citizenship today. The media are not the enemies of the people. The media are the peoples best friend in getting the truth out. Jefferson said, if you asked me to choose between having a government without the newspaper or the newspaper without a government, i would not pause a moment to choose the latter. Freedom of the press is essential to get the information that we need. We have one last question for this panel. I think senator grassley didnt support because and my question is, how do we get a congress that votes its contents votes on its conscious and votes on what is right, and not vote to save their job . And were determining limitation help us in that light . Do we need a guy spending 20, 30, 40 years and does not apply to local elections as well . When i was county chairman, and Prince George has spearheaded putting term limits on our local offices and i have kind of come around a little bit on that because that is not the beall, endall. That does not necessarily solve all of your problems if you are electing stupid people. [laughter] so all you have done is just turned the term down from four or five terms to two, it is still stupid. You have got to look at who you are electing. You have to check with the congressman does. Not just every two years when he is asking for your vote, but just take any congressman. Take any political leader, the mayor of the city. I know as a former elected official, i was accountable every single day to the voters. That weighed heavily, and i remember having a conversation with governor ehrlich and we were talking about doing the job and i said, my view is very straightforward. Im going to do this job and as though it is the last opportunity i have to do it. Which means i have to do it with the mindset that there is not a second or third term. That was my energy and that is what motivated me. A lot of that was brought about by talking to people who kind of looked at basically said, you are a republican in maryland, so you only get one shot at this, so you better get it right. The reality of this is it comes back to us. We can dance around this all day long and put it out there and a whole lot of other things, but at the end of the day, you are going to put them in office. They are in office for 30 years because he put them in there for 30 years. You have now a new generation of voters and elected officials who have a different mindset, so we will see if there is a different outcome, but until they establish their political power, in this system, where they get to actually sway the way the elections go, because right now, you still have a high propensity of older voters who really do set the course of a lot of these elections around the country. You have got to check who you are putting in the space. You actually do what you said you were going to do and then you tell the people, that as opposed to thinking fundamentally that people are either too busy or too stupid, and i can convince them and of anything as long as i put enough money behind it, and that is the biggest destruction in our system right now. Mrs. Pratt this has been an extraordinary panel. Alas im to close out. I forgot this microphone. We began the conversation with we the people, what do they think we are the people will do in 2020 . Do we think that we will as the people or the democrat they think will defeat donald trump . That was easy. Mrs. Tramontano i am the ultimate optimist. I said this earlier, i look at the trends. I think more people voted in 2018, which is the midterm election, van than we have had since 1914. So the people are fired up. I operate from the premise that if you give people enough time and enough information and access to that information, they will always vote in their best interest, and they will do the right thing. I think if i were on President Trumps team, i would be worried in a statebystate numbers, because we still have the Electoral College, and some of those key states that he has to win, he is not doing so well in. Hillary clinton, the democrat won by over 3 million votes, and as congressman raskin said, there were 9 million more votes for democrats in 2018. I think that matters and i think that people have taken this seriously. He is not an unknown as he was in 2016. It all depends on who is going to be on the ballot. I have no idea who is going to be on the ballot for the democrats, and i dont even want to hesitate, i do not want to even venture a guess. I do think that if we are about the issues and if we are about holding him accountable for what he has done and more importantly, what he actually has not done, i think that the democrat candidate will do well and i think we will have a democratic presidency. Paul, what are your thoughts . With regard to what the president will do, i think we should take him at his word. I think he has already called china and asked for their help in getting him reelected. I think he is on the phone with putin, and on the phone with any number of u. S. Enemies and allies to see what they can do to support his reelection since the Republican Controlled Senate has sent him the message that that is perfectly all right. I am also concerned if what karen said is true, and i think it is true, i am concerned about what that means. What karen said is that people vote their interests. 43 is the magic number. If a democratic candidate gets 43 of the white vote, then she wins. It is unrealistic, historically unprecedented, to expect more than that. I am concerned about that 53 . The 53 of white folks who should understand that we have a person in office that is a stooge of vladimir putin, and not only that, but a racist, a misogynist, a person who puts his own interests above the interest of the United States, and 43 of white people are going to vote for him. I will ask you michael, and then ask congressman raskin to close out. If the election were held today, donald trump would win. Fortunately for you, the election is not until november. Get busy. [laughter] rep. Raskin these guys, i am not a practicing academic, or expert, so i am not in the prognosis business. Im a political representative, i am in the organizing business. To my mind, we go out in the Democratic Party every two years and four years and we say to people, this is the most important election for our lifetime. Forget all of that, this is the most important election of our this really is the most important election of our lifetime and there is nothing like it in terms of the future of the country, and what is at stake here. It is not a question of who he is, we know who he is. We know exactly who he is but its a question of who we are we. Who are we . Are we going to be up the call able to call on the political muscle memory of the American People to remember that we are the country that led the world in fighting fascism and naziism and we had no confusion about which side we should be on when the nazis were marching in the streets of europe and america. We knew exactly which side we should be on. Our party was the party that took on the racist in our own ranks in order to side with the Civil Rights Movement and to pass the civil rights act. Ours is the party of the womens movement, the environmental movement, it is the party that gave us the clean air act, and the party of the human rights movement, we are the party of the civilizing movements of our lifetime. Do we surrender all of that, or do we recapture it . Do we really translate it to the new century and connect with all of these wonderful young people who are out there getting energized and who created the movement after parkland for gun safety and are so energized and activated about Climate Change. That is our historical assignment. We get to leave the bandagery and high crimes and misdemeanors behind us, that is up to us, and i hope that does not sound too partisan. Maybe it does. Let me say this about partisanship because michael correctly invokes partisanship in response to the last question. First of all, partisanship is a good thing. It is a sign of a healthy democratic society. That is because of the first amendment, people can form their own associations. They can speak and they can talk. The alternative to partisan competition is a one person dictatorship, which some people would like and we see it around the world. So it is a healthy thing that parties articulate in programs and giving people a signal as to what the candidate stands for. At the same time, to get elected we have to remember what the great president s have said in the past. George washington said that the word party comes from the french word partie. You get in, you have to serve the whole. If you call my office in rockville, maryland, youve a problem getting your v. A. Benefits or medicare or medicaid, we do not ask if you are a democrat or republican or independent. We ask if you live in the eighth Congressional District because those are the people we are allowed to serve, and then we go to work for you, regardless of what your party is. That is the mentality i try to bring to the legislative process. When i introduced the legislative solution to get the era to the floor, i was not just doing that for the Democratic Women in america, i was doing it for everybody because i think the e. R. A. Is a very important step forward constitutionally for us to do. I was trying to think about the whole and everybody. We are a time where we have to be strong partisans in the elections, but when we get in, we have to remember that we are serving the common good for everybody. The government must be the instrument for the public interest, and not the specific groups that catch up a little capture political power, but for all of the people. That is our assignment. [applause] mrs. Pratt ladies and gentlemen, if you were confused or dispirited by this grueling, painful process we call impeachment, we have heard passion and enlightenment and Clear Thinking from these wonderful, wonderful leaders. We, the people still prevail. [applause] [indistinct conversations] coming up this afternoon on cspan, secretaries of the army, navy, and air force, on the president ss budget proposal. We take you to Long Island University where winners of the annual polk award and journalism were announced. Later, in conversation with governors on Public Health concerns with vaping and teens using ecigarettes. We also hear from gavin newsom, as he gives the state of the state address. First, a discussion on. Echnology with military good morning, everybody