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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Inside Trump’s Impeachment Bunker

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

Daily News, News, News Commentary

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Underneath the Oval Office there’s this room. It’s a windowless place with terrible cell phone reception but, right now, it’s home to a team crafting President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense strategy. Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Treasury aide Tony Sayegh started the effort to protect the president only in the past few weeks, but they’re already seeing results. How has this team circled the wagons for the president? And why is one senator in particular pleased to see the White House mount a proper defense?

Guest: Sarah Ellison, reporter covering media and politics for the Washington Post.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Underneath the Oval Office, there's a basement room.

0:09.2

The Washington Post, Sarah Ellison, describes it like this.

0:13.0

It's a place that you get terrible cell phone reception.

0:16.6

It is literally like a bunker.

0:19.0

Like no windows.

0:20.3

Nope.

0:20.8

There's nowhere to look, nothing else to do down there.

0:24.2

And that's the reason why no one is really in there for very long.

0:28.2

This is kind of like a temporary space.

0:30.2

This is where the president's impeachment strategy is being crafted.

0:34.5

And I don't want to overstate how complicated the strategy is or how intricate it is

0:39.4

because the biggest problem that people have when they're trying to communicate a message

0:43.6

for this administration is figuring out how to keep the president on the same message as the

0:50.7

people who are working for him. And while Sarah doesn't want to overstate the work being done here,

0:56.1

she's watched as words and ideas bounce from this room down to the Capitol,

1:01.9

into the news cycle, then back to the South Lawn,

1:05.6

where the president and his staff amplify them.

1:08.6

There are these viral moments and key lines that you can tell are going to get

1:15.7

picked up and repeated. And if you're watching Fox News or if you're listening to certain conservative

1:22.8

radio hosts, you will hear those messages again. So when you saw Pamela Carlin, the law professor last week,

1:32.1

use Barron's name and make wordplay with it.

1:35.9

Which is, the Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility.

...

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