Background Briefing: January 21, 2020
A Witness Who Testified at the Senate Impeachment Trial of Clinton
On this the first day of the impeachment “trial” (of sorts) in the Senate, which is both brazenly and subtly being rigged to quickly exonerate the president and exclude as much evidence as possible, the Senate Majority Leader has already had to revise the rules he made up after just having announced them. Under pressure from moderate Republicans, Mitch McConnell conceded to accept the impeachment case from the House rather than decide to pick and choose the evidence gathered so far as well as add an additional third day for legal arguments so that the proceedings did not go on until 2 AM which elderly Republican senators like Chuck Grassley clearly did not relish. We begin with McConnell’s opening and often-repeated lie which Minority Leader Schumer challenged, that the Trump impeachment will be exactly the same as the Clinton impeachment, and speak with a witness who did appear at the Clinton impeachment trial, Sidney Blumenthal, the former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and senior advisor to Hillary Clinton. He joins us to discuss the stark difference between the Clinton Senate trial and the one McConnell is rigging which he wrote about in his bestseller, The Clinton Wars, and how the same cast of characters hounding him and Clinton; Lindsey Graham, Brett Kavanaugh and Ken Starr, have made a comeback as defenders of Trump. Indeed after defending Trump’s friend the late sex trafficker and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, both Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz are now on Trump’s legal team with Dershowitz claiming at every opportunity to be a liberal Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton.
Decorum in the Senate Lowered by the Snarls of Trump’s Attack Dog Lawyers
Then we speak with a 21 year veteran of the U.S. Senate, Jim Manley, a DC-based independent public affairs consultant and Democratic strategist who served as a senior advisor to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and as an aide to the late Senator Ted Kennedy. He joins us to discuss the Trump-era change in decorum in the well of the U.S. Senate with the two White House attack-dog lawyers barking out overwrought lies and accusations against the House Manager Adam Schiff who presented the House’s case to the senate for impeachment.
McConnell Is Caught Between Covering up and Appearing to Be Fair
Then finally we get an assessment of today’s proceedings from the American University historian Allan Lichtman, the author of the national best-seller, The Case For Impeachment. He joins us to discuss how McConnell is caught between covering up for Trump and putting on the appearance of being fair and impartial, and how this will play with the ultimate jury, the American people who Adam Schiff assured will one day learn the truth. The question remains: will that be sooner or later.