Permanently citing the risk of further incitement of violence. The company adds in a statement plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off twitter including a proposed secondary attack on the u. S. Capitol and State Capitol buildings on january 17, 2021. Thats actually an emerging threat. We have two experts standing by later in this hour to brief us on that very threat. It turns out all it took to get trump banned from twitter and facebook and instagram was his role in inciting the looting and desecration of our u. S. Capitol. Other protrump groups gathered at state houses across the country threatening state officials along the way. Meanwhile, the momentum is gaining speed to make trump the first president to be impeached twice. Such a thing would settle any argument about historys worst president. Speaker nancy pelosi has thrown down the gauntlet in this area telling trump to resign or face a second impeachment or removal via the 25th amendment. She drew that line in the sand after meeting with her caucus for nearly four hours, and after talking with joint chiefs of staff chairman general mark milley about making sure steps are in place to keep trump from launching military hostilities including but not limited to a nuclear strike. The speaker made the case for action against trump in an interview with 60 minutes. The person thats running the executive branch is a deranged, unhinged, dangerous president of the United States, and its only a nucmber of days until we can e protected from him, but he has done something so serious that there should be prosecution against him. Three house democrats, members of the Speakers Team have already drafted the impeachment titled incitement of insurrection. Nbc news reporting it could be introduced as early as monday. The wording here includes this, quote, the president threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperilled a coordinate branch of government. He thereby betrayed his trust as president. The white house had this response today, quote, as President Trump said yesterday, this is a time for healing and unity as one nation. A politically motivated impeachment against a president with 12 days remaining in his term will only serve to further divide our great country. Well, this afternoon president elect joe biden was asked if he backed this push for impeachment. Ive thought for a long, long time that President Trump wasnt fit to hold the job. Thats why i ran. Im focused on the virus, the vaccine, and economic growth. What the congress decides to do is for them to decide. Meanwhile, republican senator ben sasse of nebraska and since this may happen again, lets not pause to lets pause to point out he has been a loyal trump vote in the u. S. Senate all these years. He now says hes open to looking at impeaching donald trump. The house, if they come together and have a process, i will definitely consider whatever articles they might move. I believe the president has disregarded his oath of office. Lisa murkowski of alaska now the first republican senator officially to call on trump to step down in an interview with her hometown anchorage daily news, she said quote. I want him to resign. I want him out. He has caused enough damage. He doesnt want it to stay ther. He only wants to stay there for the title. He only wants to stay there for his ego. She went on to question her own membership in what has become the party of trump. Meanwhile, with the inauguration 12 days away, trump today announced he will not be attending the inauguration. Joe biden seemed to be fine with that decision. One of the few things he and i have ever agreed on. Its a good thing im not showing up. Earlier youd said you hoped that he would show up only in the sense it was valuable to send a signal to the world about the transfer of power. Youve clearly changed your perspective on that. Because he has clearly demonstrated, exceeded even my worst notions about him. Hes been an embarrassment to the country. What about the Vice President , mike pence . Hes welcome. And with that, lets bring in our leadoff guests on this friday night, susan page, veteran journalist best selling author, peter baker chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times and jon meacham, Pulitzer Prize winning author, president ial historian. Hes professor on the american presidency at vanderbilt, unofficial adviser to the president elect, and once again relevant to this conversation, both peter and john are among the authors of the book impeachment an american history. Here we are again. Well, susan, you get the big starting question tonight. The task of summing up as a longtime washingtonoian, as a citizen of this country how it felt to watch what transpired in the capitol this week and further, and this may call for speculation. Whats the real chance this guy not serving out his term . You know, ive covered six president s. Ive seen assassination attempts, launches of war, disputed elections, impeachments, two of them already, but ive never seen anything as shocking as what we saw on wednesday. Marauders rushing through the congress, some of them armed carrying ties apparently to take hostages while members of congress fled and cowered. It was ive just never seen anything like it. It was distressing and historic and it will have ramifications for, i think, a very long time for our democracy. I think at this point its going to be hard to keep the house of representatives from impeaching President Trump probably toward the end of next week. I think theres a feeling that its not just to remove him from office. Hes only got 12 more days left. Its to make a point that his role in this was simply unacceptable and deserves historys rebuke. Peter baker, there are real nixonian concerns about the president s mental state, about the numbers of departures from the circle immediately around him. Whos going to be left around him to watch him in the west wing . Yeah, its a great question. There was such an exodus this week of top aides and Administration Officials and cabinet officers in the immediate aftermath of the mob that you began to wonder who would be left. The white house seemed to be emptying out. That caused a lot of consternation among republicans and even some democrats who were worried that maybe, in fact, as tempting as it was for these people to leave in protest to say they didnt want to work there anymore, there was a value in sticking it out for these final two weeks just to watch the store, if you will, to make sure the governments simply running if nothing else and perhaps to serve as some sort of a break on any further erratic action by the president. You had people like i talked this week to former secretary of state of conde rice. She was very concerned, who knows what mischief could be caused by our adversaries overseas thinking were in a period of instability. Youre in a really extraordinary moment where not only as susan aptly described it as we have this devastating, unprecedented attack on the symbol of our democracy, you also have sort of a meltdown on the other end of pennsylvania at the white house where nobodys sure whos running the government and who will happen in these last 12 days. Jon meacham, weve been looking to talk to you this week, though. Theres no joy in asking this next question, and that is i want to measure your level of sadness, your level of worry for our country as you along with the rest of us watched these rioters in, you know, cabelas bass pro shops, camo, red hats. A lot of them armed with zip ties said to be on the lookout for the sitting Vice President and the speaker hoisting the Confederate Flag inside the u. S. Capitol, having set up a noose on Capitol Grounds in the parking lot. The social contract is if not broken frayed, and this is the fullest manifestation of that over the last five years. It has been unspooling. You have done this every day for x number of days telling the story, chronicling this flight from fact, this flight from evidence, a flight from truth however inconvenient to a selfserving vision of reality where power is more important than principle, and the mob, which was figurative until wednesday has become the literal Guiding Force in the republic. And you know, one way to think about civilizational structures is we have a state of nature, thomas hobbs wrote about that, the state of nature is the war of all against all. The point of civilization is to enter into a social contract where we cede certain rights in exchange for certain protections. The entire notion of how we organize ourselves as nonhobbsian entities is really under assault. And thats not hyperbolic, right . Theres nothing were beyond hyperbole if thats possible, and it was, again, without being too sent mimental it was heartbreaking to watch that, and it was particularly heartbreaking because its there seemed to be so little resistance. It seemed that they felt entitled to do what they did. They felt empowered to do what they did. Soldiers have died, protesters have bled in search of a more perfect union, in search of a democratic world where the values of faith, hope, and charity would have at least a fighting chance against our appetites and our ambitions. Thats one of the points of america, and its as disheartening and disspiriting and disturbing a moment in my lifetime with exception of the attacks and the murder of innocents on september 11th. Well, susan, having heard jon lay out the stakes, can you explain the remaining trumpers in the house and senate . When you look at this presidency one way, he leaves office, the democrats control the white house, the house and the senate. What explains the lingering allure of trumpism and trump loyalty . Well, one factor is that he has simply remade the Republican Party in his image. This is a different Republican Party than it was five years ago before he came on the scene, and even now in the wake of this weeks terrible news, 77 of republicans say they approve of the job that President Trump is doing. Thats in a new pbs marist poll that came out today. In the aftermath, 77 still approve, 83 do not want him removed from office. He continues to have standing in the gop, even though weve seen some erosion from some members, republican members of congress and some Business Leaders and others. You know, i think that the supporters of President Trump continue to believe that he speaks for them. He stands up for them, and hes selli telling them the truth when everybody else is lying to them. That is perhaps the biggest challenge or one of the Biggest Challenges that joe biden is going to face when he takes office in just 12 days. Peter baker, your colleagues at the paper report this tonight. Behind closed doors, he, donald trump, made clear that he would not resign, and he expressed regret about releasing that video on thursday committing to a peaceful transition of power and condemning the violence at the capitol that he had egged on a day before. In fact, in his last video he called the rioters special and expressed his love for them. So peter, lay out how you view the remainder of his presidency and when those cannons sound at the conclusion of the oath on the 20th of january a few minutes past noon. Theyre usually audible throughout washington. Is this guy going to be on a golf course in florida . Well, he will not be here to hear the cannons, thats for sure. Hes already told us as you showed earlier that he doesnt plan to attend the inauguration of joe biden, and joe biden obviously as you showed is not all that upset about it. Its the first time, by the way, that any sitting president has boycotted in effect or skipped the swearing in of his successor since Andrew Johnson who jon meacham wrote about in our book on impeachment. Thats not quite the parallel you might have wanted. Hes an impeached president , took into consideration and i suppose theres a certain synergy there. Weve learned at this point to leave the white house on january 19th, the day before the inauguration. He wont even be here when the bidens are moving in, and i think that between now and then we dont know exactly whats going to happen. Theres talk of him going to texas in this coming week to the border to highlight his immigration policies. Hes making another video to promote the accomplishments of his administration as he sees them. If you talk to people who work there both currently and who have left in recent days, theres such a demoralized spirit. People who gave years of their life to this president and feel completely betrayed. The accomplishments feel like theyve all been wiped out, this is such a defining failure on the part of this president. No matter what you thought of him before, and no matter what good things you might have thought he did, they seem to have been overwhelmed and overshadowed and wiped out for the sake of history by this event this week. This is how hes going to be going down in history. I think people who worked for him as well as people who never liked him to begin with, its been a crushing week. One consistent note you hear from most people in washington except for blood relatives for the most part is theyre waiting and cant wait for january 20th for this to be over. Yeah, this was a legacy event no question about it. Hey, jon, David Leonhardt of the the New York Times as i like to say pulled a meacham, in the four months between Franklin Roosevelts election and his 1933 inauguration, much of the world descended into chaos. Adolf hitler took power in germany and the Parliament Building burned. Japan quit the league of nations. In the u. S. , hundreds of banks shuts down, lynchings surged in the south. The country numb and nearly broken anxiously awaited deliverance as David Kennedy wrote in his Pulitzer Prize winning in the history of the era. This is usually your role on this broadcast and the others on this network to tell us to reassure us, to remind us only that things have been worse in the past. Is that still your view . Well, not necessarily that theyve been worse but that theyve been bad and weve come through it, and weve come through it because just enough of us were devoted to this notion that, in fact, we are stronger together as a whole as opposed to seeing politics as this perpetual clash of interests. You know, Franklin Roosevelt the night he took the oath on the east front of the capitol, he went back to the white house and like a good e pis coe pail yan he was having a glass of whiskey a and going to bad. If you succeed in solving the depression youll go down as the greatest president and if you fail youll go down as the worst. Fdr said if i fail ill be the the last. I dont feel that level of existential crisis for president elect biden. I think that the reaction is a good sign in terms of the horror that the country seems to be addressing at this moment, but heres the thing with all respect to my lane, which i love. To some extent, the more important question tonight and in the coming season is less about how history will view whats happened this week and more about the unfolding story of what do people who decided to make their peace with donald trump, not once but twice in two national elections, millions upon millions of people, what do they do now . Do are we so desensitized to genuinely transformative Public Events that somehow or another in the span of a couple of days, a couple of weeks, this is going to be, well, maybe the liberals were exaggerating or you can just see how sort of that part of the political swamp and forest will try to change the perception of this. But this was a fundamental reality, and if the country does not begin again to see that politics is about the mediation of differences and the resolution of problems for a given period of time and not a shermanesque arena for total constant warfarwarfare, then th just a chapter in an unfolding story. Its not the last chapter, and i think thats what all of us as citizens and not as journalists, not as historians as citizens we have to think about is do we want to live in a world where politics is so consuming and so divisive and so ultimately depleting that it keeps us from addressing things like, oh, i dont know, a Global Pandemic that killed 4,000 people today in america. This isnt, you know, this is not an academic conversation. This isnt something youre doing to fill your broadcast. We are facing a deadly virus, a rise in political violence. There are people who are suffering who like the Great Depression are seeing their futures slip away, the inability to provide for their families. This isnt paintball. This isnt pro wrestling. This isnt fundraising text. These are people breaking into the capitol with guns killing a Police Officer and distracting the republic from addressing fundamental questions about the health, safety, and security of millions of people. Jon, thank you for that. Thank you for setting our thinking right as we say farewell to what was a pretty awful week. Susan page, peter baker, jon meacham were in your debt for helping us start out our broadcast on this friday night. Thank you. Coming up, well go behind the curtain. We will sadly dive into the murk of the dark web and find out what the rioters who stormed the capitol are saying now and what they could do next. And later, they were once the president s greatest defenders, some of them outright sold their souls and their seats in congress to donald trump, but now begins the great migration as they start to distance themselves from their president. The 11th hour is just getting underway on this friday night as we bring this consequential week to an end. See every delivery. Every yikes. And even every awwwwwwww. Wait, where was i . Introducing self protection from xfinity. Designed to put you in control. With realtime notifications and a week of uninterrupted recording. 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