Gamesmanship about the scheduling of the state of the union at a time like this particularly given the house of representatives led by nancy pelosi just formally recommended to the senate that the senate should remove President Trump from office and make him no longer president. I mean you might imagine that the state of the union and its scheduling could be a source of controversy at a time like this, at a fraught moment like this. In fact, actually seems to have gone off without a hitch. Nancy pelosi sent this brief letter to the white house today inviting President Trump to deliver his state of the union on february 4th. And what do you know, no muss, no fuss, the white house responded immediately, yes, the president will accept. Ding. Now, theres still the possibility that that means the president will be delivering his state of the Union Address in the middle of his Senate Impeachment trial. We dont know. The uncertainty around the logistics of the Senate Impeachment trial is one of the most interesting things going on in the news right now and will continue to be over the holidays. Were going to have more on that to come. But whether or not the state of the Union Address is in the middle of the impeachment trial or not which again remains to be seen, thats all still very much up and down, theres no doubt that that state of the union will definitely be the day after the Iowa Caucuses. The beginning of february this year is going to go super bowl sunday on february 2nd, then the next day iowa caucus, monday, february 3rd. And then the next day state of the union tuesday, february 4th. Super bowl sunday, Iowa Caucuses, state of the union, three days in a row. And recognizing that now tonight i find myself simultaneously tempted to write those things in my calendar for 2020, and also i am simultaneously reluctant to write anything on my calendar for anything in the future because i do think its still worth being humble about how things are going to go in u. S. Politics in particular. In the wake of the impeachment of President Trump this week i have realized now that i have basically four main outstanding questions in terms of what happens next and how this impeachment drama is all going to resolve. Got it winnowed down to about four questions now. The first one is about the impeachment trial and what the senate process is going to be like now that the senate has to take up their part of the constitutional responsibility of impeachment, which is to hold a trial at which u. S. Senators should decide if this president should be removed from office. This question of how the Senate Impeachment trial should be run is very much an open question. Everybody i think agrees that the senate does have to hold a trial. Its not optional. But beyond that what that means, well, the fight over that is on. And it looks like it may very well extend through any holiday break. There were bipartisan rules that were unanimously agreed to for the last Senate Impeachment trial which was president bill clintons impeachment in the 1990s, rules that allowed for witnesses and documents and a certain number of hours of debate. The vote to adopt those rules in the u. S. Senate for the clinton impeachment was 1000 because the democrats and republicans worked it out together. Those rules was the least controversial part of the bill clinton impeachment. Thats not what its going to be like this time. Senator Mitch Mcconnell is not yet conceding that there should be any witnesses, any factual review whatsoever in this thing he wants to call a trial. His recall transsy his recall transsy so far his refusal to engage with the democrats in terms of whether there might be any sort of bipartisan agreement about process for this trial, i mean at that point thats why we dont know when the senate is even going to receive the articles of impeachment from nancy pelosi and the house. I mean, House Democrats and Speaker Pelosi are saying theyre going to wait until mcconnell announces the senate rules for this trial before they send over the articles and announce their impeachment managers who will act as prosecutors in that trial. The top democrat in the senate, Chuck Schumer here last night on this program said he and his fellow democrats in the senate really believed they can get a handful of republican senators to side with them and against Mitch Mcconnell to form a majority that will vote in the senate for more typical impeachment trial rules that look more like how the senate proceeded in bill clintons case. So nancy pelosi and the democrats in the house are really in the seat. They can hold onto the articles of impeachment as long as they want. Theres no time limit on that in the constitution. President trump is impeached and he remains impeached. He basically refused to engage in the Senate Impeachment process excuse me, in the house impeachment process, and so he hasnt mounted a defense in this process yet. He has said he wants to mount a defense in the senate. If he wants to do so theres going to have to be some sort of trial. Senate democrats are actively courting their republican colleagues to agree to bipartisan, this is all an open question. In terms of a white house role in this theres conflicting reporting and now lots of speculation about what the president and what the white house more broadly might really want from the senate. Might they actually want witnesses and documents and a real trial where trump gets to mount his defense . Or would they prefer some sort of miniaturized process where Mitch Mcconnell essentially accepts the articles of impeachment and then makes the whole thing go away with a swift gavel and no discussion . All right, so this is very, very much open. We sort of knew this was going to be an interesting question at the time the house passed the articles of impeachment. We didnt know it would still be a very open question two days after the impeachment. Thats for me the very pressing first set of questions that weve got. We dont know when itll be resolved. We know its being fought out now. Revelations, breakthroughs, announcement could pop at any time. Which means none of us get to turn off our phones when we go home this weekend. We all have to watch the news. Thats sort of a comfort but also kind of annoying at christmas time, i know, but thats where we are. Thats question one. Now theres question two. Its about the substance of the allegations against President Trump. The substance of the articles of impeachment against him that were just passed in the house, right . The house has made clear even though they passed those articles of impeachment against the president , their investigation is ongoing. For example, weve got the Intelligence Committee chasing Vice President mike pences office about a piece of classified evidence that apparently pertains to mike pences own communications with the Ukrainian Government during the time period thats at the center of a scrutiny in this scheme. Theres also, of course, still open sourced journalistic reporting thats happening on the core issue at the heart of the impeachment scandal including the Washington Post reporting last night that white house officials believe President Trump may have been advised directly by russian president Vladimir Putin on this Conspiracy TheoryPresident Trump has been pushing that it was ukraine that interfered in the 2016 election and not russia. President trump reportedly told at least one senior white house official that he believed the Conspiracy Theory about ukraine because, quote, putin told me. And thats just coming out now. So thats like the second big question following this impeachment wednesday night. What happens to salient new information and new evidence that turns up in this scandal . How will that information get aired . Is it just aired to the public and it affects Public Opinion . Is the senate going to have any way to process any new Important Information and evidence that crops up between now and whatever trial theyre going to put on for President Trump . Does the prospect of additional news Additional Information and evidence affect these discussions and this fight about what the process will be in the senate as they manage this part of their impeachment . So number one, hows the Senate Impeachment going to be run. Number two, what happens to additional evidence in the impeachment scandal . The third question about what happens next in the impeachment process has to do with the president himself. And this is not very comfortable territory for me i will admit. For dont pay a lot of attention to the president s, you know, apparent frame of mind. I dont pay that much attention to his statements, and therefore im not sort of, like, tracking his perceived wellbeing. I know a lot of people do that. Its just not my bag. That said, he hasnt seemed particularly even keeled or in control even for him in the lead up to this weeks impeachment. Itd be stressful for anybody. But given his history of behavior as president , one of the outstanding and potentially important questions now that hes been impeached is how he personally might react to this punishment, to being held accountable for this behavior. Thats not something thats happened a lot in his life. Do we know how he reacts to adversity like this . Last night i interviewed barbara res. She worked for years at the trump organization. She has a lot of personal experience working alongside President Trump in his real estate before before he even got involved in politics. I wanted to ask her if based on all the years she spent working with mr. Trump and all the different circumstances shes seen him in, can she give us any advice . Is there anything that we the country should watch out for in terms of how he might react being in trouble, how he might react to an accountability moment like this. And her advice on that front was kind of a showstopper. I mean, ill tell you from my own purposes at that point i kind of thought the interview was going to go on, but when she said that the only thing i could think to do was to say good night, lets go to commercial, i have to think about this. Heres what she told me. Is there anything you would say to people who have never dealt with him personally but the country is all sort of dealing with him personally right now in terms of what to expect or how to mitigate any negative consequences in how he might act out in response . The days for mitigation seem to be gone, but i will say he will once he gets through this and he probably will he will exact revenge on a lot of people, a lot of people. Former executive Vice President at the trump organization. He will exact revenge. He will exact revenge on a lot of people. I was like okay, good night. I have to think about that. I mean, that seems like a potential consequence of impeachment that we should start thinking about. We should at least be talking about, wondering about, starting to make plans for how the president might behave in the circumstances. But then heres my last question about impeachment and what happens next. Throughout the debate over whether or not to impeach trump in the house, democrats argued consistently that while it is unusual to bring impeachment proceedings against a president in his first term, right, a year away from his facing the voters at first potential reelection, democrats argued there is good reason to do that in this case because of what they are impeaching him for, right . What about foreign interference in 2020 . What they caught him doing was trying to corrupt the next election. No, not just inviting but trying to extort and force foreign interference in that next election on his behalf. Democrats said because of that thats got to be kind of the propulsive force for why this impeachment has to happen now, why it has to happen quickly, why we cant just wait for the next election, because this is about the next election. We need to act now to head off the damage that he got caught trying to cause the next president ial election in the United States. And i dont know if that argument was more persuasive than any other argument, but the democrats did impeach him. He is now impeached. Unless the senate convicts him and votes to remove him from office, though, he will still be in office, and he will still be the republican partys candidate in the next president ial election. Having invited and even tried to extort and force foreign intervention in that next election to help him win. And so how does that dynamic change now . I mean, do we know if impeaching him over him trying to get ukraine involved in the next election on his side, do we know if that impeachment is going to have any impact on the threat of foreign intervention in the next election on his side or any side . To me those are the four main outstanding questions following the impeachment of President Trump last week. Hows that senate trial going to be run, whats going to happen if theres any new important evidence . Whats trump going to do, whats his next move . And also what about this question of foreign interference . On that last point we have some news tonight. And for this news lets turn to mr. Banana. I said mr. Banana. Go ahead. Mr. Banana, take it away. History of russia like youve never heard it before. Mr. Banana wants to know what you think about when when you hear the word russia. Do you think of a bear and a bottle of vodka or maybe you think about president putin in the red square in moscow. Look how excited mr. Banana is to see mr. Putin. Oh, my god, look at him hes so dreamy. And hes right there in the youtube frame with me, and mr. Banana can barely contain himself. Hes going to unpeel right in front of us. This slighty idiomatically incorrect but access free english video is not a very good history of russia even though thats what it says it is. But it is sort of slickly produced, a slick youtube production. It is designed to seem like at least as far as you can trust mr. Banana you ought to be able to trust this telling of russian history. Its a 12minute long video. Im not going to show you the whole thing, but let me show you a little piece of it being not idiomatically correct as well as not good history. Come along with me. Its also the time of the creation of the russian crillic alphabet by two brothers who are christian missionaries. Yeah, yeah, its exactly the symbols you see in russian cuisine menus. Oh, those are the strange symbols you see in russian cuisine menus. Oh, yeah, yeah, its exactly the same symbols you see in russian cuisine menus, conrad. Mr. Banana goes on for quite some time in somewhat painful detail but it really picks up when we get to Joseph Stalin. The second leader after lenins death was Joseph Stalin. He started to recover the country after the revolution. He reformed the country, he took the wealth from rich people and united all the poor ones. Russian robin hood, bang, hitler attacked the soviet union in june of 1941. And then were onto world war ii. Thats pretty much what Joseph Stalin is remembered for, being like robin hood, bang. Yeah, Joseph Stalin he was known as a reformer who was kind to the poor. I mean, its weird, right . If you scroll a couple more minutes into it you get to a part where they explain that the way alaska became a part of the United States was that Nikita Kruschev gave alaska to the United States in 1957 as a present, as a gift which a really weird take on alaska, which the United States actually bought from russia in the 1860s. But it you want to call it a gift in the 1950s, then yeah youve been getting your history from mr. Banana. So heres the thing, the company that makes that mr. Banana let me tell you how awesome stalin was, oh, my god its putin, history of russia, right . The company that makes that turns out to be inexplicably massive online. Theyre called the sole publishing. Theyre the subject of a fascinating report that came out at law fair by lisa kaplan where, quote, measured in terms of view and subscribers the soul publishing outranked only by disney and warner media. It goes disney, warner media and then the mr. Banana people. The soul media company. As of november this year Third Largest on youtube. Quote, it is run by russian nationals based in and managed from cyprus. Funds itself from ad revenues worth tens of millions of dollars. And last year in 2018 it purchased a small suite of facebook advertisements and made those purchases in rubles. The weird revisionist history Joseph Stalin robin hood theyre promoting online is a tiny little sliver of the space the company is taking up on youtube. The link online to the smart banana fake history videos are linked to other video producing entities like fiveminute crafts and 7second riddles and something called bright side and five minute magic. Its all this random click bait sort of highly optimized content on youtube. So, like, at fiveminute crafts girly which they say is the female version of their five minute crafts channel one of the things they teach you to do is to clean your toilet by pouring a pepsi into it. You dont have to scrub, just pour the pepsi and your toilet is clean. Heres a handy tip about smearing toothpaste on a