During the last days the conditions of detention of alexander make amount to cruel and inhuman treatment which is a form of torture as we all know alexander is being denied the right to go outside his. Hospital room hes been hospitalized during the last 12 months more than 12 months actually and today his mother who came to visit him from russia was the 9 the right to see her son. Thanks for joining us here on c. N. N. National were back in 30 minutes with the latest headlines for you then. Americas built a prison called the world and its the prison is the right it runs the prison and the cost of building that prison is 0 because its all based on everyone in the world is still willing to accept dollars trade in dollars clear through the new york fed and worship the u. S. Dollar wherever you go youll find a. T. M. s and countries where the local currency dollars dollar is god no matter what religion you say you are around the world the fact is you pray to the u. S. Dollar every day. Most people think to stand out in this business you need to be the 1st one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice of the biggest read. Truth to stand down the News Business you just need the right questions and demand the right answer. The. Question. Hello and welcome to cross talk where all Things Considered im Peter Lavelle well its finally begun the impeachment of donald trump the president and his supporters say the process is nothing more than a political witch the democrats and the liberal Corporate Media say trump is a National Security threat and must be removed but in the end it would seem to mock or see itself as being impeached. Talking impeachment im joined by my guest in washington shes a former g. O. P. Strategist as well as cofounder of womens Public Leadership Network also in washington we have a bell he is a g. O. P. Strategist and in monterey we crossed to Spencer Critchley he is a former Communications Adviser to obama for america 20082012 as well as managing partner of the Communications Consulting firm road group all right cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate im only going to go to you 1st in washington ok the whole process has started weve been waiting for 3 years because theyve been planning to find a way to impeach the president and they finally got in there theyve crossed the rubicon and the senate will pursue its proceedings but as i said in my introduction im im im im a politico i like politics im a political junkie i follow a lot of stuff ok i really cant get my hands around this one ok i get i dont know what the crime is ok i do know that theres a lot of animosity and hatred towards this president 5 and everyone can have has their taste in their opinions here but the way i look at it is this whole process in is impeaching democracy itself i mean this is such a severe remedy particularly when we have an election a couple 100 days from now how do you react to this go ahead in washington. You know its absolutely worth acknowledging that the democrats planned not since trumps actually inauguration but since he was elected in november of 2016 their goal was to make him a one term president so what were seeing now from democrats its really an extension of that you know the what we heard from nancy pelosi and democrats is that you know the president actually represented a. Threat to our democracy and so they carried out these impeachment hearings which ones are in articles of impeachment which interestingly enough none of them were actually criminal and the obstruction of congress charge i think people kind of confuse that obstruction of congress charge with an obstruction of justice charge well thats not what happened and i think that its probably you know what the unfortunate thing that for me is that when there is a democrat in the white house which is that will happen you know it didnt know if ands and buts about that but when there is a democrat in the white house the republicans are going to do the same thing that democrats are doing now with this president and i dont think that its something thats ultimately good for our country well spencer would would you wait on that here because it is an extension of what we just heard here i mean it just ends up being a Political Tool not a remedy and i think thats the danger that we all face here and you know im a conservative and i thought the impeachment process again against clinton was wrong ok but it was for the wrong reasons and hes a immoral person yes but he didnt reach the stature of impeachment and i think it was wrong to do that to him in this case as we just heard theres no crime here and it seems to me this is just a political. Match against the man the in the oval office that you just dont like and i understand why people dont like donald trump how do you react to that spencer. I feel like its a rhetorical shift thats being made not necessarily just by republicans because i dont really feel this is a partisan issue but certainly by pro trump people to say that this is a question of democrats just not liking president from what they dont like is the assault on democracy and of course they feel passionately about that as do you know many leading conservatives people like george will for example who. Feel exactly the same way as so Many Democrats do. I hope if we have a democratic president in the future who behaves in the same way that President Trump has i certainly hope theyre impeached and ill be at the head of the line demanding their impeachment just like we. Just used a word or the havior used the word behavior is that impeachable is bad behavior impeachable you know that a crime had spencer and theres a few of those in terms behavior the definition of whats and p. H. Well so another rhetorical shift thats going on here among the pro term folks is to say but its not a crime and of course thats not relevant its like claiming you do you just dont like him no thats not the case here its certainly there are many people who dont like him on the left and the right but of course i cannot grounds for impeachment. And its the same here that this is just another one of these rhetorical shifts on fortunately his behavior is impeachable as it would if if. And madison were to arise from the grave and look at this they would say this is what we were talking about just the simple i mean confession on on paper and on camera so what hes going to do with ukraine is impeachable and theres a long list of things before them but i mean that shes ok well you know thats it thats a good point a long list a way for that ok let me go to reno ok and thats exactly it here ok the Stormy Daniels thing didnt work out and then they had rush a gate that didnt work out now you have ukraine gate which is not make any sense at all this is just an extension its a continuum and it is about you hate this guy in the white house which is dan is turning ugly fine ok but is that grounds for in pietschmann go ahead rein in washington. Peter may think it may not make sense to you but the reality is this impeachment has always been a political process and people really need to see this for what it is this is democracy working we have 3 branches of government that share equal power and what theyre doing right now is exercising that power and the president now that the impeachment articles have made their way to the senate the president can defend himself this trial is going to be democracy in action because we have representatives of the people essential able to be that impartial jury now i know that senator Mitch Mcconnell says hes not a part im going to reveal which arent really sad if we didnt publish you acting on american its going to be impartial another vote on how is that ever going to be impartial not going to riddle me this 1st of all you already defined yourself by saying that you dont understand this ukraine situation do a little bit or reading under a candidate right now and i know i know i have got your letter a let me finish ive been to ukraine it doesnt times also i understand the language i understand the politics i understand the political figures let me finish my i actually. Thought i saw that panel. Talking about ukraine and none of them really knew what they were talking about whatsoever so dont lecture me or i would have already in my right panel dont i mean america you know were going by our own im going to entertain showing up here and they were very tired of the finish my day on every part well dont you know i didnt tell you let me get my point across go ahead yeah im going to insult your intelligence when you say it doesnt make sense that its not going to be an objective journalist need to be objective listen heres the reality of an american president should not be asking a Foreign Government to look into their political rival thats unamerican ok if you let me but i did and we were there you would understand did this on the right and finish your point lets share time with everyone else on the panel here. In washington when we did when im in the other is because the thing is weve all are youre saying well ok dont filibuster please ok go ahead and watch. Im very good at that so lets yeah lets be clear on the ukraine situation here according to the ambassador all of the really all of the ambassadors and even our Intelligence Community the ukraine this situation that was happening in ukraine that was an actual that was an actual valid point of investigation that the everyone knows that there is and there were problems and there have been problems with the resume over the years now the question is whether or not donald trump should have asked for that favor now we can make the assumption that of course in my opinion i actually think that whether joe biden was running for president or not donald trump would have asked for that same investigation now if youre going to make the argument that well this is i dont i dont necessarily agree with the argument that this is really democracy in art and in action i think its actually an attack on our democracy because what we have if we get to the point where we decide to act on it we wanted to the appoint where they decide if. Well if we get to the point where we decide that the behavior of a president is a reason for impeachment because thats essentially what were talking about here is the president s actions now people say well it really has nothing to do with whether or not you dislike the president this is really about saving our democracy well if thats the case then please explain to me why is it that every essentially everyone who is affiliated with donald trump whether its his family whether its a cabinet officials theyve been attacked in public theyve been attacked in public theyve been attacked online and everyone says that this is just about well were trying to save our democracy i actually disagree with that what we have we have 2 articles of impeachment that as we all acknowledge that are not criminal if we get to the point where we say that you do not have to have committed a crime you can Say Something we dont like you can ask and in fact we can actually bring up the end up struction of congress charge which is about the president. Agreeing with subpoenas sending over documents you know those are process arguments so the abstraction of congress charge which ironically is the very same thing that republicans could have leveled against barack obama when barack obama decided to not cooperate in the fast and furious investigation and with that fast and furious investigation he did not comply with congressional subpoenas and that went to court what democrats could have done they could have gone to court they chose not to do that because they said that donald trump was an ex that exists into a strip through. The central threat and then they sat on it for what a month or so again thats kind of you know playing politics here spencer i mean at this point in time you know we dont have to get all get our hair on fire here i mean it looks like you know that its going to go to trial and. Acquitted i mean so whats the whole point of the process if we know what the outcome is going to be go ahead in monterey. And really it comes down to just a question of constitutional duty nancy pelosi as Everybody Knows was extremely reluctant to go ahead with this despite many voices do you think i really love her to go ahead do you think their reluctance she asked the staff of the was she had to impose a great deal of discipline over her caucus to quiet some of the voices because she was so reluctant to do it again we have the rhetorical shift its not a crime its about behavior of course its about behavior how can anything be inoffensive it doesnt involve some kind of behavior unless its some one of the rare examples of speech that isnt allowed. And of course its and teachable to solicit help from a foreign power to interfere in a u. S. Election this is was at the top of the founders minds when they were discussing impeachment they were most concerned as a brand new country that angle and would interfere with the government of the United States and they were concerned that other countries like france might do that even though france had been their ally during the revolution alliances are always shifting this is one of the core reasons we have impeachment is to protect our democracy from foreign interference and certainly to protect our democracy from a president acting like a king another of their top concerns by using the Public Resources for his personal benefit a good mental activity and just imagine i have to jump in here and say sorry added rock to jump in here we have to go to a hard break and after that hard break well continue our discussion on him pietschmann stay. On a space flight you literally leave all your problems behind you fly high and above everyone and everything and then you see any and all boat aligned on us disappear you see that up planet is not as we are taught in schools with Different Countries monckton different colors separate from one another you see that our planet earth is just another will be a Big International space station. On a mission in the vastness of space just like the i s s. Welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered. To remind you were discussing impeachment. Ok lets go back to reno in washington in the election is coming up here why go through all this process why dont you just ask the voters to decide what they want dont you think that would be a more democratic way of doing it go ahead. Well its going to come up anyway and i think this is this is what our founders wanted if it any point in time if anybody in an elected body such as the house of representatives has a problem with the president s actions with his behavior yes then we should be able to bring it up in the process should play out so it doesnt matter when the election is frankly it just matters more so that the house of representatives have voiced their concern and the democrats have the majority so of course those articles were voted on and and approved and now its over to the senate and listen heres the reality behavior matters it was the same thing with clinton it really gets under my skin when people are like what clinton did was not impeachable 1st of all if we dont ask our president s to act in a proper manner which is again do not engage Foreign Governments in our business i find that to be treasonous in a way and i mean thats defined different everybody and then also acting improperly sexually which is what clinton did i know that this is not make a lot of people happy this is the 3rd time in u. S. History weve done this nixon of course didnt count but we need to let the process play out this president needs to be on trial he said so a month ago he wants us to go to this that he wants witnesses in the senate whats so wrong with that nothing well ok. Fine but you know why go through the process let me go go to molly q again you know im kind of dumbfounded why do you have to go through the process of you know what the outcome is going to be and how its not going to affect governance afterwards ok i mean are these are the democrats going to look for another Impeachable Offense and just do it over and over and over again i mean its seems to me that you have a very weak case in talk about election meddling i mean the Democratic Party the d. N. C. Was all over ukraine when it came to trump ok i mean you make it sound like its a one way street everybody was doing it if you look at it that way go ahead. In washington so. To that question about why not wait until the election while theyre not comfortable that they confident that they can actually win an election without that stain on the president s history the. Speaker pelosi has it has said that you have Many Democrats who are now in effect they were cheering the fact that the president will now have an asterisk but by by its name so lets not confuse lets not fool around and just act as if that this but the Political Part of this is not calculated democrats cannot win if they dont believe that they can actually take down they could have very well waited until the election again i go back to and ive asked many people this over and over again the Obama Administration obstructed congress period thats what they did they obstructed congress in the Republican Party republicans did not decide then to file articles of impeachment against barack obama for ups truck being congress now are there implication in that mallinckrodt was shame on the republicans than ok but but it did not have i thought we were talking about press that and it did not happen it did not happen and i have one all right that we have not meant to day at all one where we have not mentioned today and you have not heard it in weeks is quid pro quo that is where we started the whistleblower said that the trumpet minister ation was at engage in a quid pro quo with the you with the ukrainian president there that did not happen apparently because there is not and neither one of the articles of impeachment deals with the initial claim that this was a quid pro quo so now weve morphed this into protecting our democracy and other things and i do believe that all of this is really designed to take donald trump down because of a personal dislike of the president of the United States it has very little to do with protecting our democracy it is about protecting attacking the president of the United States because you dont like it and there are valid reasons to dislike plenty of them do any of them to dislike any of them absolutely but whether or not you should take our country through an impeachment is another story and i just v. T. Mutely disagree with that you know spencer and we you know have the ass trick there. To his name thats a very interesting way of putting it but if you look at the polls it just galvanizes trumps base and recent polls have shown that independents which are very many independents in the United States theyre not keen on this as well i mean we all agree impeachment is a political process is this good politics as you go into the election cycle go ahead and. I think also mentally the politics of course are they always have to be considered and always will be considered but i think the politics have to take a distant 2nd by this point a constitutional duty so really politics one where the other i just dont see how there is any choice here if we are thinking about politics one lesson i think the Democratic Party could stand to learn is the value of simply being seen to be standing up for what you believe in instead of looking like your web side this way and that way by polls i also want to counter a few just outright incorrect assertions that have been made and remind people that theres a very big difference between an assertion and an argument that supported by facts and logic an assertion is just whatever we want to believe this is not just because people dont like donald trump and i agree there are endless reasons not to like him but its because yes his behavior is clearly impeachable as far as the claim that other people have done the same thing and with the claim that obama supposedly obstructed congress 1st of all if we go by this a lot about ism standard then any behavior sellout as long as you can find some malefactor whos done it and say well he did it and so therefore your true argument when youre using the word about as an argument is im fine behavior i just wanted to be done by my guy and obama did not obstruct congress they released untold documents in the fast and Furious Scandal which turned so called scandal which turned out to be nothing as did so many of those made up scandals and you can look it up on and see the results of the multiple investigations of fast and furious which completely collapsed and where attorney general holder disagreed and it was attorney general holder who was at the center of that not president obama where the attorney general disagreed with their demands for some documents he thought at the legitimate way through the Legal Process he didnt simply deny the authority of congress that the denial that congress has any Oversight Authority over the president rests on the assumption the president is essentially a monarch and it is one of these attacks on democracy where. Talking about we are who we will branch of government absolutely fundamental to design if we dont we have a. And in america the whole point is we dont have to be. Ok you know rina theyre talking about democracy here i mean i was watching the last democratic debate and i was watching bernie and i was wondering if he his primary is going to be stolen from him again i mean you prize democracy so much but within the Democratic Party they dont have it is a very high priority if we look what happened in 2016 and if you look at the the antics of c n n i mean that was just absolutely atrocious their behavior in dealing with and im a conservative im defending bernie because you know hes out there peddling his ideas good for him thats what we need to do we need ideas i mean is the Democratic Party so wedded well democracy then i mean they really dont want to come to terms what happened in 2016 and thats why they want to impeach trump because they miscalculated in this guy got in the white house and they can never forgive that thats what this is all about go ahead you know its not surprising that you say that youre defending bernie i have the the mag of folks that ive hung around with and love bernie why because these are 2 extremes are strong over here theres bernie over here its no surprise that both the trump and bernie camps always scream that everybody is being unfair to them that the system is rigged its real that how our country is so polarized these days and people are so quick to rush to the fringes people do not want to look at things and say let me take off my part of the glasses for a moment you know i mean my career in the Republican Party and im ashamed to say affiliate with this party today because that thing is that the mob rule seems to make its way on both sides and make you know basically games with both sides republicans but i dont think theyre going to want to say all the time does that impeachment make this worse this polarization. I you know what i dont think so because theyre some polling out there right now that the shows a and there has been for many months as shows the countrys really split now do i really believe all the polls not quite because twentys 16 taught as out less in if you really hard to capture this sentiment in various demographics these david who are but the reality is this is that impeachment has to play out and its incumbent upon a parrot americans to look at things in say you know what look at the democrats right now theyre very fractured does nancy pelosi really think they can win in november with such your fracture party would so many people during their hats in the primary i think theyre not serving themselves well and similarly i dont thing republicans whether theyre on capitol hill are living out the heartland of america serve themselves well when they say we shouldnt have witnesses at this than it trial i mean theres and resurface to video nowadays playing on loop on twitter of center or call ins of Center Graham talking about how we need witnesses back when president clinton was on trial so i just hope that most american start to do this educate themselves on the issues vote for the but the candidates are not vote for the party because the ideal voter in a democracy right votes on the issues not along party lines ok well again it let me good and im only she didnt and i cant get away from the point that its was all about one person it for has nothing to do with ideas and ideals ok its called revenge in its blind hatred and thats what it looks like you watch the media its exactly what it is go ahead in washington its absolutely what it is and now bring up the point that i made earlier when people make the argument that somehow this is just protecting our democracy or were you know this really about policies when secretary divorce was booed at but the when university her very 1st year in office that was about donald trump it wasnt necessarily about you secretary it was about donald trump when you see all of these politicians all of the members of the cabinet you see you know senators who are pretty much accosted harassed in public this is about donald trump and i just want to correct something on the point that i made about the obstruction of congress charge with well actually it wasnt a charge but the obstruction of congress with barack obama with the fast and furious case absolutely right that case went to court and it wasnt until after the court ruled that the Obama Administration had to turn those documents over from the justice of from the department of justice is thats when they did that so i want to push back on this notion that somehow that its not the same thing because in this way is it i wouldnt lie about anything stop what the what about is them what what what about what the what what about is are matters my friend and what a bouncer did and its well over what about it doesnt matter now im sorry but what about his im if if if if what about isms did not matter you would not have mentioned the tapes of politicians in the ninetys making a separate different argument than what they make now so what about arguments matter when it benefits your politics ok hes done so there and i think that theres a lot of areas youre going to dramatically miss the reason youre out there you know what about it telling it how dumb and. Ok we. Got 10 seconds lawyer ok thats what i do ok when i want if i were talking about your eyes let me talk i dont want to know all about is this ok all right were bringing weve chewed up all the time you thats all the time we have here many thanks to my guests in washington and in monterey and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r. T. C. A next time remember rolls. Im going to fulfill repeated promises ok politics to the people you know weve all but the truth. Is if you really really really look. Like. You want to work. You know. All the. Coming. Out. Of. Friday marks the 75th anniversary of the soviet union flipper ration of warsaw from nazi germany thousands were sent to death camps all lost their lives in a city that suffered years of occupation during the 2nd world war. The pentagon reacts to accusations that washington has routinely lied about americas longest war made by the top u. S. Official overseeing afghanistans reconstruction. To wrong bronzes for my e. U. Partners washingtons puppets also germany confounded caved into trumps threat to impose tariffs on european states if they dont quit the 2015 nuclear deal