New Yorker Reporters on Impeachment

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Wnyc, David, Arts, Yorker, Society & Culture, Storytelling, Books, New, Remnick, Politics

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

David Remnick asks five New Yorker contributors about the nascent impeachment proceedings against the President. Susan Glasser, the magazine’s Washington correspondent, notes that Republicans have attacked the inquiry but have not exactly defended the substance of Trump’s phone call to Zelensky. Joshua Yaffa, who has been reporting from Kiev, notes Ukraine’s disappointment in the conduct of the American President; Jane Mayer describes how an impeachment scenario in the era of Fox News could play out very differently than it did in the age of Richard Nixon; Jelani Cobb reflects on the likelihood of violence; and Jill Lepore argues that, regardless of the outcome, impeachment is the only constitutional response to Donald Trump’s actions. “This is the Presidential equivalent of shooting someone on Fifth Avenue,” she tells Remnick.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:10.6	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. No modern president has ever been convicted on impeachment charges.
0:18.3	Richard Nixon resigned before the vote ever took place. Bill Clinton was
0:22.2	impeached, but he was acquitted in the Senate, and his popularity went up. What will happen with this
0:28.3	wildly unpredictable presidency, the Trump presidency, is pure conjecture. Every day brings a new
0:34.9	revelation, a new turn.
0:41.0	There are so many big questions about what's going on right now,
0:43.3	and we're going to tackle at least a few of them with some of the writers who are covering the situation for the New Yorker.
0:46.7	We'll start with Susan Glasser,
0:48.5	a veteran of D.C. politics who writes our weekly column
0:51.3	on Washington in the age of Trump.
0:54.2	I reached her on Skype.
0:58.0	Hi, this is Susan.
0:59.8	Hey, Susan, it's David. How are you?
1:02.0	Hey, great.
1:02.7	I'm sorry to interrupt your lunch, but I can't help but ask,
1:06.4	what is the mood like in Washington this week?
1:09.6	It seems to me like it's, it hasn't been this way in a very long time.
1:14.5	You know, I saw somebody referring to it as Shocktober, which is pretty silly.
1:21.8	But Washington has these weeks, days when the wheels feel like they're coming off. And that's usually in the early days of a scandal or investigation when tons of information starts to break free. And I feel like usually, you know, it could end up being wrong. But usually in Washington, there's a pretty strong conventional wisdom and people have a sense
1:44.9	of how the politics of something are going to shake out. And here, you will run into people who
1:51.6	will allow that they can see it both ways, that the beginning of impeachment could be the day
	...

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