Hi, I'm Mormon-Aulney. The daily news in traditional and social media is swamped with President

Trump's potential impeachment. Trump and most elected Republicans call it a hoax,

but Washington is moving closer and closer to a historic moment of truth.

It won't be just impeachment by the House of Representatives,

but the next step, trial by the Senate.

If that takes place, Chief Justice John Roberts,

the appointed head of the third bunch of government,

will be the presiding officer. Conviction on whatever the charges might be could mean that a

president elected in 2016 is removed from office even before the voters are heard from again

in November of 2020. We'll hear more about how the process is supposed to work in a few

moments, but first, is American democracy functioning the way it's supposed to? That might

depend on where you get your news. Yasha Monk is associate professor at Johns Hopkins University,

he's senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund, and he's author most recently of The People

versus Democracy. Good to have you with us. Thank you so much for having me on.

So will we be seeing the People versus Democracy? Is that what the trial in the Senate is all

about? Well, I think certainly there's an elected president who is attacking the institutions of democracy.

And so the first thing to say is that that's not a situation which you want to be in.

I mean, any time that you're talking about potential impeachment, it means that something

has gone deeply wrong.

And what's gone deeply wrong in the last years is that we have a president who has attacked

the rule of law

and the separation of powers to such an extent that there's now a very strong rationale for removing

...