This Week In Impeachment: A ‘Bullet Proof’ President
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2020
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Friday, Senate Republicans blocked efforts to hear new witnesses and evidence in the impeachment trial of President Trump. The decision signals an unwillingness to challenge the executive branch, despite several Republican lawmakers conceding that Trump was wrong to launch a pressure campaign against Ukraine. And even though the Senate trial is drawing to a close, we may be headed for unending impeachment-related investigations.
Guest: Dahlia Lithwick writes about law and the courts for Slate and hosts the podcast Amicus.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Previously on impeachment. |
| 0:05.4 | The president's Senate trial started with a familiar cast of characters telling familiar stories. |
| 0:11.0 | I'm really reluctant to say it's boring. |
| 0:16.9 | The real question was whether this production would actually be a trial. |
| 0:23.1 | It's partly super boring because they won't allow any new evidence or witnesses to come in that would make it interesting. |
| 0:31.3 | And Dahlia made a prediction. |
| 0:33.4 | I think at the end of the day, this will rise and fall on four Republican senators. |
| 0:39.7 | As of this taping, I think that it is and has always been Mitch McConnell's Merrick Garland play. |
| 0:46.1 | I got the votes. You don't suck it. |
| 0:59.7 | Dahlia Lithwick, I think this might be our last impeachment update. |
| 1:06.5 | I'm trying to muster up sad face for you and just my face is frozen in horror. |
| 1:09.9 | It's like a rictus and so I cannot do any emotion. |
| 1:14.0 | I am both happy and sad at that news, but my face looks like the scream. |
| 1:22.9 | Yeah, I want to say something, which is our music, our impeachment music, is like this jaunty, funny music. |
| 1:30.5 | And that's intentional because we want people to pay attention and think about this as like something to pay attention to even when it gets very weedy. |
| 1:37.1 | But I'm not feeling especially jaunty right now. Like I'm feeling kind of bummed. |
| 1:44.4 | If this had had any kind of conclusion, Mary, that we could all say like, well, that was, you know, a just and fair conclusion. |
| 1:48.6 | We heard from witnesses, you know, the House failed to make their case. You know, the managers just didn't bring it. Anything would have been more satisfying than a bunch of Republican senators sort of |
| 1:55.6 | in the last hours of this complete psychodrama saying, yeah, they made their case. I believe it. But, you know, maybe it wasn't that bad. |
| 2:05.8 | Or it was pretty bad, but maybe we should just use the election to decide it. Or, yeah, it was super bad. But, you know, I don't want to throw gasoline on the fire. Like, none of the answers we got were satisfying. And in fact, weirdly, |
| 2:19.8 | a lot of the answers were just about feelings. Like, you know, they weren't about the case. |
| 2:24.6 | Lisa Murkowski is super sad. You know, well, okay then. You know, Lamar Alexander is feeling bad about |
... |
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