And political strategists talked about the impeachment inquiry against President Trump and their predictions for the 2020 president ial election at an event hosted by the Texas Tribune festival in austin. Heres part of the event with the Texas Tribune president and c. E. O. You can watch all of our coverage of the Texas Tribune festival online at cspan. Org. Justin amash is the only nondemocrat signed on here. When president clinton wased, there was a bipartisan impeachment. Right. There were members of both arties who did it. Can this go forward . Barely. [indiscernible] i would make both a principled argument and a political argument related to this. Impeachment is a very difficult thing to do. Ot difficult for the country the problem we have today, when we look at this, is between two elections, between the president ial election and the next president ial election, the only manner that exists right now to hold the president accountable is impeachment. Because we have now accepted or people have accepted, i would i think is ridiculous, the fact that a president cant be indicted, which has only been created by people who wanted to protect president. It was written for nixon, rewritten for clinton, bush revised it, and it was all and then Trumps White House has again reiterated it. So if a president cant be indicted, and a president can claim expect teve privilege on almost just about anything now, and a Republican Party which refuses to put guard rails on this president , the only way0 td this president accountable, there is no other way other than impeachment. So to me thats the principled argument. Thatou senate. Theres no way. I dont think Richard Nixon would have been impeached or would have resigned if the republicans had held the United States senate in 1974. Or he would not have he would have survived. He never would have resigned or gotten impeached. The same thing would have taken place because you can go back and look at the transcripts, republicans stuck with him for a lengthy period of time. Is there n. G. O. Not somebody in the senate, a republican, who can step up and cause the avalanche to happen . Is the idea that there could possibly be somebody . If theres one or theres two Lamar Alexander or mitt romney. Your theory is correct, the theory is correct. In reality no. No. Even mitt romney, who has said certain things, will high tail it back to a safe harbor somewhere and start claiming that we cant do this to a president. But i want to talk about something thats been politically. So i think one could easily make a principled argument, and i agree with david, he will be impeached, i think its likely to happen this year. Fairly quickly. This calendar year. I dont think hell be convicted. But politically theres this idea that somehow the democrats suffered that the republicans suffered during the last impeachment when they didnt do when they impeached the president but didnt convict the president. That isnt true. Look at the one in 2000. Thats one example. The other example is president president clinton in 1998 had a 65 job approval when he got impeached. Donald trump has a 40 job approval today. President bill clintons job approval didnt go up, it stayed roughly the same throughout the impeachment. Stayed at 60 , 65 . The republicans didnt win as many seats, which wasnt that unusual for them, they won five seats in the 1998 election. Thats not unusual when a president has a job approval like that. I dont think theres any down side politically at all for the democrats, even if its partisan, which it likely will be in the house because almost every republican will stand by the president , so from a principled argument and a political argument, theres no in my view, theres no reason why not to hold this president accountable. You want to make it five out of five. You think impeachment will happen . I think impeachment will absolutely happen. I dont think that theres any scenario where Mitch Mcconnell lets it see the light of day as a trial in the senate. I dont think theres any chance of that happening. Mitch mcconnell is so vastly more skilled in the senate as a legislative operator than anybody on the democratic side. There is no pelosi in the senate. Chuck schumer is like hes the guy you bring to the party because you feel sorry for him. [laughter] he doesnt have the skill to post up against Mitch Mcconnell and he proves it every day. Thats not like loving on Mitch Mcconnell. Thats just pure is humanner is not an agile operator politically. He doesnt have the votes. He doesnt have the votes. Its a math problem. And the Political Landscape of the 2020 senate races isnt advantageous enough for schumer to go out and say, im going to hold all of you republicans that are up this time at risk. Its just not going to be there. Matthew said he thinks they should go forward with this regardless of what the political consequences are. There is legitimately a concern out there, not only the head of the trumppence campaign saying this is going to benefit us politically, but there are democrats who say this is going to hurt us politically, at a time when were trying to retain control of our house or gain majority. The democrats should pay brads salary. To keep him in place. [laughter] heres the thing i think where the democrats there is an advantage that trump is going to have. He is going to raise a quarter billion dollars off of impeachment. Hes raised 15 million in three days. Theyre going to milk every grannys Social Security check because its going to go out on emails every day and say, unless you give me 5 right now, nancy pelosi will impeachment me and replace me with george soros. Now, all reelections in the president ial side are a referendum on the incumbent. All of them. O doubt about it ever. This is a referendum on donald trump. If part of your referendum becomes a compelling, wellargued, consistent case that goes at donald trump and takes apart the corruption and the malfeasance and the craziness and all the other things inside of this administration and the selfdealing and the idea that the president is going to leverage and extort a foreign power to help him in the campaign, if you make your impeachment case that way, i dont think that that hurts you on the down ballot races. I think that actually helps you. Motivates your people. The other thing is it will hurt trump in a way because, look, ump is what i call a fecal iceberg. Its stinky. There theory that theres always worse below the water line is proven true time and time and time again with this guy. Until you have the impeachment inquiry you lack tools to go underwater and stare at the orror. Rick always puts extraordinary effort into i agree. A precondition of what rick is saying is that democrats for a change would have to not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Right . Your party has trouble often operating a twocar motorcade. Do you think the democrats are capable of the message discipline and of the focus on the message that rick is articulating about trump and count on that to be the only thing that you need . Matter, k that in this i think you can i think generally you cannot count on house democrats, democrats at large, to be to stay on message. And that is because we care a lot about policy, we care a lot about outcomes, we have different views of how we get there and were going to fight about it. I think thats a healthy thing in the party. Republican party, we saw what happened. I tolerate a lot of discourse in our party. I think on this matter, there will be i think theres a lot of fear about the impact of impeachment on people like joe cunningham. Hes a congressman from south carolina. Hes got the worst district, hes got the biggest support of trump in hits district. People like that in his district. People like that. Theres going to be concern i think they can stay targeted on message. But and im not sure i dont think its going hurt senate races either. I think that it can be a motivating factor in that. And my other experience about this from where im sober about the impact is the lifeblood of the Clinton White house and i think the day that bill clinton was impeached he was at his highest Approval Rating ever, is that he was seen as doing the peoples business, economy was good. Our lifeblood was we were focused like a laser to quote another president on the economy. And i worked in the press office so i was focused on impeachment. But 75 , 80 of the staff were focused on policy. The one place where people were not talking about impeachment was the Clinton White house. The lifeblood of this presidency is grievance and controversy. Right . So this is not actually impeachment is not a distraction for them. Impeachment is their ballgame. Its gasoline on the bon fire. I understand that its going to help them in some ways. But it helps them in the ways thats like 40 of the country. To jens point, theres two ways to think about the senate races particularly. One is that it makes it harder for the democrats to win back the senate. The other is that you put Susan Collins on the spot, you put cory gardner on the spot, you put marketa mcsally on the spot and you say you are now going to be forced to do something you havent done before and that is choose this guy or choose not this guy. The political consequences of the clinton impeachment in 1998 were that following o or on the eve of republicans impeaching president clinton, they won the popular vote for the congress across the nation. They got more votes than the democrats. I realize congress doesnt work on popular vote. But they still got the vote. The same happened in 2000, the popular votes for the congress and they won the bush presidency. They lost two speakers. In Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston and thats how we got denny hastert. In the senate they did lose about four seats. And i think this could go either way. But ive got to say this to all of the rangeling over the political consequences of impeachment and i mean this. Who cares . About the political consequences . Who cares . This isnt in disagreement with everybody, because this is an insightful panel, but i know as leaders have wrestled over the summer with how to make the political calculus around impeachment, and the notion, which is true, that it is hard for the country to go through, imagine what it would do to the country if we dont go through impeachment with this president. [applause] i really, really mean. That the founders gave the house a singular tool. Only one tool. An this is to bring charges of impeachment. It is not to contemplate what the senate will choose as a punishment. And if we have a house that does not stand up in this moment, as we expect the senate will not stand up, it is not just the white house and the presidency thats been tarnished, its the congress that has been tarnished for generations. Can i ask you, i mean, i have Great Respect for your point of view. Love hearing what you say. Would you be saying this if you were in congress . Everybody is the tom brady of is the tom brady of monday morning quarterback, right . I dont waste peoples time by defending my record in congress. The one thing i will point out is within 24 hours of donald trump calling for a complete and total shutdown of muslims entering the United States, i became then and remain today the only republican to take to the house floor and call on him to drop out of the president ial race and completely denounce donald trump as a candidate, as a man and as a future president. Maybe you would be [indiscernible] i did it. [applause] should we be talking about Rudy Giulianis role in this . [laughter] and bill barrs role in this . [indiscernible] i tried at one point. Seriously. I think it would be interesting to have the conversation focus for them at least at the moment, because they seem to be not bit players but stars of this drama. Ive been not so shocked by rudy giuliani. Though still shocked just cause his behavior is so off the chart. Hes even yelling at people on fox now. Crazy. I mean, just insane. This is literally your Foreign Policy has turned into pizzagate info wars. What i find so amazing about the whole episode is just what pot of gold did they think they were really going to find at the end of the rainbow in ukraine . [laughter] its just an absolute he really from reading the transcript, donald trump thinks that a wealthy ukrainian has Hillary Clintons server. [laughter] really. This is the level that were operating in. We arent dealing with trying to actually get peace in ukraine. We arent dealing with anything of actual substance. Were dealing with donald trump trying to extort a foreign power. If we dismiss rudy as a side show, bill barr, the attorney general of the United States. Bill barr is the most dangerous human being walking on two legs in america right no. Ill tell you why right now. Ill tell you why. He has put himself in service not to the law, not to justice, not to norms and institutions, but to being Donald Trumps inhouse personal lawyer. And he is using the power of the d. O. J. To protect this man in a way that is unprecedented since nixon. Frankly, he just hasnt been caught yet is why its not unprecedented. To that point, i do make the case and i know the speakers chose an different route, why i think the house should pass an authorization of an impeachment inquiry on the floor, because i think it should articulate that the investigation includes the office of the presidency, the Vice President sy, the attorney general, the secretary of state and the office of management and budget. And you defined the investigation that way and you move forward. I think it is notable that all of this happened after don mcgahn exited the white house. You have the white House Counsel who you may completely disagree with him, but he was saving trump from himself. He was actually following the law. He was adult supervision. Then you look at just in this whistleblower complaint, the charges leveled against the white House Counsel, i mean, i would be lawyering up and hoping that i had some spare cash because this is not going to end well for a lot of people. This is the question i want to ask you. If you unwind the events of this week, the problem with the events of this week is that every holy shit moment is superseded by another holy shit moment. Right . [laughter] thats been the problem since the escalator ride. Its very difficult to keep focused on anything. In the old days, something would happen and it would have hang time for a day, god forbid. Now its like five minutes and moving on to something else. Go back to the beginning of this. What happened . A whistleblower complaint was not turned over to congress. The law on this is black and white. Shall. The word is shall. And now we found out, who kept the whistleblower complaint from being turned over to congress . It was office of legal counsel, d. O. J. , presumably the attorney general. Im going to go back to something in violation of the law. Unless im just not understanding what the word shall means. I think its important im going to go back to something that david said. I completely agree with. This is the only mechanism that we have in place to hold the president accountable that has become lawless. I think they believe in and bill barr is one of them, they believe the president is above the law. The president believes hes they actually believe that. By virtue of everything theyve done, they believe that. But i dont think part of whats happened, and ill give criticize republicans for being complete enablers of this president , and lacking the courage, i criticize democrats for not waking up fast enough to the threat that donald trump and his administration has posed and not using every means necessary to throw themselves in front of this, to try to stop it. I dont think they have done as good a job as republicans would have been doing in this exact reverse circumstances. But i think part of where we are today is weve given them a pass. Weve i mean, as a country they have not been held accountable. Every step of the way that donald trump has done something, he has not been held accountable. Every step of the way that a staff person, unless donald trump gets sick of them and then theyre jettisoned, then they suffer their own consequences on their own, we have not so we arrive here today, its like, well, why wouldnt he call up the head of ukraine and say, i want some dirt, because he has nothing to be worried about. He feels like hes unbeatable. A part of this thats a 30,000foot problem is over the last two decades Decades Congress has given away more and more of its power. They have not taken the actions to exercise their power as a coequal branch of government. So the executive, of course, ecreates those powers. Thats why the theory that bill barr and others have in the white house, the president s above the law, just the other day when the d. N. I. Was testifying, he laid out without saying it explicitly that, well, we dont view that the president is part of the Intelligence Community because hes above any and all part parts of government. Essentially describing it as a fourth graverage of government thats immune to any influence by any other branch. The administration could be held [talking simultaneously] and because congress didnt blow the whistle right that minute and say, timeout, constitution, you have read it . And because guys like cory went before them and did everything but go and take a leak on Jerry Nadlers desk, and just goes at them like an insult comic and lies to them, and they did nothing. The correct answer was for jerry nadler to lean back and go, sergeant at arms, take that man into custody, you are in contempt, sir. If we were in charge, if the republicans did that and jen had the same sass that cory did, they would have dragged her out in handcuffs and strip searched her in the rotunda. I will say your twitter feed on the day of the lewandowski hearing should go in the smithsonian. It was excellent. Bu