To Impeach Or Not To Impeach?

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2019

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Atlantic Ideas Editor Yoni Appelbaum and Vox editor-at-large Ezra Klein have both deeply researched the question of impeachment — and each came to a different conclusion. Appelbaum argued in The Atlantic’s March cover story that the House of Representatives “must immediately open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and bring the debate out of the court of public opinion and into Congress, where it belongs.” Klein argues that “impeachment will be a partisan war over the president’s removal, and anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves. The fact-finding potential within the process will be overwhelmed by the question of whether impeachment is merited.” With that question pressing in the wake of the Mueller report, they sit down with Isaac Dovere to discuss the history of impeachment and make their cases: should Congress move ahead with impeachment? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Yup! Hi Radio Atlantic listeners, I'm Isaac Dober, staff writer here at the Atlantic.
0:20.0	Another action-packed episode for you today, with one of the big questions looming over everything in Washington, especially since the release of the Mueller report last week.
0:27.0	Impeachment. This is a complicated topic. It's an emotional topic. It's a visceral topic. It's a topic that most Democratic leaders want to avoid and most Republican leaders won't even touch.
0:39.0	There are questions of whether it's the right thing to do or the practical thing to do.
0:42.0	But so far it's a debate
0:43.8	going on mostly among Democrats. None of the leaders in the House support impeachment
0:47.8	right now, though some of the members do. And of the 2020 Democrats, Elizabeth Warren supports impeachment, as does Julian Castro,
0:55.0	but most of the other candidates have either said no, including Corey Booker and Bernie Sanders,
1:00.0	or they've ducked the question in one way or the other.
1:03.0	Well, here at the Atlantic, we have one of the people who's thought the most about this topic and wrote a very long and very interesting cover article about this for the March issue of our print edition. That's Yoni Applebaum, the editor of the Atlantic's ideas section. The headline on his piece? Impeached Donald Trump. So you can guess where he stands on the question. Also with us is Ezra Klein, founder and
1:25.1	editor at large of Vox where he hosts the Ezra Klein show and co-hosts the Weeds
1:28.8	podcast. He's argued for normalizing impeachment, but after the Mueller report came out, he wrote that since
1:34.8	it didn't meaningfully change the story, Democrats probably shouldn't pursue impeachment.
1:40.0	It's a political remedy after all, and he thinks the politics might end up helping Trump more than hurting him.
1:45.0	So, we figured we would have a discussion or a little bit of a debate.
1:49.0	Should Congress begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump?
1:52.0	Yoni, Ezra,
1:53.4	thanks for being here on Radio Atlantic to help us answer that question.
1:56.2	Thanks for having me.
1:57.2	Thank you.
1:58.2	So let's start with the basic.
2:00.8	Do each of you think that Donald Trump has met the bar for impeachable offenses?
	...

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