Impeachment’s Message and Meaning
Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
Slate Audio
4.6 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2021
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by renowned communications researcher and campaign adviser Anat Shenker-Osorio to talk about the messaging of impeachment outside the lens of the law. Then, Bob Bauer, former White House counsel under President Barack Obama and senior adviser to the 2020 Biden campaign, joins Dahlia to discuss the significance of this impeachment as a legal matter, and the next steps needed when the trial ends (in acquittal).
In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern on the guessing-game that is the law of Covid and death-penalty protocols in late-night SCOTUS orders.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It is plainly untrue that the president has the same free speech rights as any private citizen. |
| 0:12.5 | Our response to what Bruce Castor says should be no response. |
| 0:17.3 | It doesn't matter what he says. It matters what we do. |
| 0:23.1 | Hi, and welcome back to Amicus. This is Slate's podcast about the courts, the law, and the rule of |
| 0:28.9 | law. I'm Dahlia Lithwick. I cover those things for Slate. And we are taping this show as |
| 0:34.3 | Donald Trump's attorneys present their defense of the former president in his second impeachment trial in the United States Senate. |
| 0:42.3 | And I confess I spent the week glued to the trial, not merely for professional reasons, but kind of as an emotional capstone to the four years that have come before and the kinds of things we've thought about and talked about on this show. |
| 0:59.3 | So it seems a foregone conclusion that there's going to be a second acquittal, and this raises real questions, |
| 1:06.1 | especially for a lot of folks who've written to me this week about why we're doing this at all and whether |
| 1:11.1 | it's time to just move on and if we can't do it thoroughly, should we do it in a truncated way? |
| 1:17.4 | And this week we're going to ask questions about those issues, first of messaging guru, |
| 1:24.8 | Anat Shanker Osorio, and then of Bob Bauer, he's former White House counsel to |
| 1:29.9 | President Barack Obama. He also led the Biden campaign's legal efforts this past fall. |
| 1:36.6 | Now, later on in the show, Slate Plus members will get to hear from Mark Joseph Stern on what's |
| 1:41.6 | happening at the Supreme Court. |
| 1:43.3 | As to the Mark and Dahlia deep dive segment of this show, Slate Plus members also get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like this one, slow burn, and dear prudence. |
| 1:56.4 | And you'll be supporting the work we do here on Amicus. |
| 1:59.3 | It's only $35 for the first year to sign up go to slate.com slash amicus plus. |
| 2:06.4 | This week really did feel like the perfect legal encapsulation of all the Trump years. |
| 2:15.1 | As we have talked about for such a long time on this show, there cannot be |
| 2:19.5 | anything that even resembles rule of law if the hallmark attitude of the president and the people |
| 2:25.2 | around him is that law is just for suckers. And yet, it does appear that despite the best |
... |
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