Politics of Democrats' impeachment debate

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Politics of Democrats' impeachment debate

Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Nadler at odds over how to proceed? Reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' All-Stars.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," June 6, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You worry about the politics right now, impeachment and everything else that's on the table, and how that can further divide us.

REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF., HOUSE SPEAKER: Again, with all due respect to your question, I'm not here to talk about impeachment.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: I call her nervous Nancy. Nancy Pelosi is a disaster, OK, she's a disaster. And let her do what she wants.

JERROLD NADLER, D-N.Y., HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: We are launching an inquiry now, and whether we'll launch an impeachment inquiry, it may come to that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, HOST: Speaker of the House not talking about it today, but talking about it to Democrats. According to "POLITICO" in this piece called "Pelosi tells Democrats she wants to see Trump in prison," "Nadler pressed Pelosi to allow his committee to launch an impeachment inquiry against Trump the second such request made in recent weeks only to be rebuffed by the California Democrat and other senior leaders. "I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison," Pelosi said, according to multiple Democratic sources familiar with the meeting."

We'll start there with our panel, Josh Holmes, president and founding partner of Cavalry, Susan Ferrechio, Chief Congressional Correspondent for the "Washington Examiner," and Mo Elleithee, executive director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics. Josh, we kind of went from she's fighting the Democrats, pushing them back, holding them off on the impeachment to full court press, let's put them behind bars?

JOSH HOLMES, PRESIDENT, CAVALRY: I think this is her tactic. This is the best way she knows how to try to keep a very agitated Democratic Conference in the House at bay while she convinces them not to impeach. And I think that her tactic here to try to turn the volume all the way back on the caustic rhetoric to try to keep them where they are. The problem is at some point that nob gets to the end, and you just sound crazy. And I think we've gotten pretty close to that when we're calling for the imprisonment of the president of the United States.

BAIER: Considering that, where's the crime right now? If post Mueller report, where is the thing that puts him behind bars?

SUSAN FERRECHIO, "WASHINGTON EXAMINER": Right, and I don't think she's wavered really at all. She doesn’t want impeachment. She's saying wait until he's out of office, let's get him out of office, and then how could he be prosecuted? Tax fraud, something with the Trump Foundation.

BAIER: Something that hasn’t happened yet.

FERRECHIO: Investigations that could be ongoing now, and when he leaves office he could be prosecuted. They're even talking about obstruction of justice, that he could somehow be criminally prosecuted for that. It's very far-fetched, some of the stuff, that's right, but look, when I talk to Democrats on Capitol Hill, the pro-impeachment Democrats especially, they believe -- you have frame this in what their understanding is of this president. They think a criminal was elected president. So he has had already committed crimes before he got there. So when they are talking about him being a criminal, that's what they're talking about. It's all very confusing.

And then if you asked them what he should be impeached for, which I've done, and I've interviewed many, many people, what has he done wrong, what he's covering up, many of them don't know. They say we will just find out, or he's done something wrong, we know that. It's all very vague, it's all over the map. And Pelosi is trying to control all of that, and I think that's why she's turning the volume up with her rhetoric.

BAIER: Isn't this upside down, Mo? What happened to innocent before proven guilty? I understand this is rhetoric and trying to hold off Democrats, but suddenly we go to going behind bars?

MO ELLEITHEE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GEORGETOWN INSTITUTE OF POLITICS: This isn't like standing up at a national party convention chanting "lock her up" right? It's not that. Nancy Pelosi has been trying to make the case, and I think what I heard in that comment was a differentiation between impeachment and prosecution. The House doesn’t have the ability to prosecute. The House has the ability to impeach. That's a political argument. That's a political action.

And she knows that the votes aren't there in the Senate. She knows that it is, at least as of now, still politically perilous, which is why she's out there saying, let's continue the investigations, let's continue to put a spotlight on the things that we think he's done wrong and see where that goes.

The public isn't there yet, although there is some evidence in recent polling that the public is ever so slightly moving in that direction. We've seen some polls in recent weeks where public support for impeachment has crept up. It's still not a majority.

BAIER: OK, but just explain to me how this is rolled out. Where is the crime, where is the crime that she's putting him behind bars, where is the crime that the impeachment is going to be based on? Obstruction?

ELLEITHEE: So there are a lot of people out there who believe if you look at the Mueller report, he laid out a case on obstruction of justice that he could not prosecute given the Department of Justice guidelines. There are a lot of people, Susan said --

BAIER: On a conspiracy that he did not indict for?

ELLEITHEE: Yet we have seen time and time again in our judicial system --

BAIER: I understand, I understand, but I'm just saying you have to make that case, and what prosecutor is going to do that?

ELLEITHEE: But this is the point, right, that this is where the pro- impeachment crowd is going, and she's saying we don't have the votes for that. There's lots of investigations that may still turn up -- there are still criminal investigations that have to do with his other activities, with the Trump Foundation, with campaign finance violations. He hasn't been convicted of anything yet, which is why I think she saying let's keep the focus on the investigations. And there seems to be at least a majority of people out there who buy into the notion that he has done something wrong. Does it rise to criminality? We haven't seen it yet.

BAIER: OK, they haven't proved it.

FERRECHIO: They're digging for it.

BAIER: They're digging for it.

FERRECHIO: That's why you have 20 investigations going on.

ELLEITHEE: That's no different than when President Trump and his supporters stood up the Republican Convention leading everyone in chants of "lock her up" when there was no proven misconduct.

BAIER: Here's Kevin McCarthy speaking about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN MCCARTHY, R-CALIF., HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: We aren't about party. We're about country. And I hope we take that back to Washington, not wanting to put somebody in jail but put Americans first.

RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI, D-ILL., HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Today on 75th anniversary of D-Day, I have to say I would prefer not to see any American president in jail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: And that's politically, on this day especially after that speech this morning to have this news be the driver. And the flipside, the president gave an interview with Fox where he was asked questions about different political issues and weighed in, as he often does.

HOLMES: I think we know by now when you ask the president, you're going to get an answer. He's not going to have restraint on any set, whether it's Normandy or right here in D.C. But I think the right move here is to not talk about impeachment while you are over celebrating the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

But to go back to this earlier conversation, this is all a political exercise, this is all a political discussion. They don't have any proof. They don't even know what the crime is. The whole point of this is that Nancy Pelosi understands that they could very well lose an election to Donald Trump, and in fact the only thing that's keeping Donald Trump, in her mind, in office is if they go through the impeachment trial and he gets reelected as a result of that. So she sees this in totally political terms and is turning up that volume just to try to keep the base at bay and buy time to get to the Iowa caucus.

BAIER: Yes, just for the D-Day ceremony, that speech delivered today, I tweeted out, I thought that was his best speech of his presidency, in delivery and substance and tone, in the moment. Your thoughts?

FERRECHIO: Yes, and he talked about the veterans who were there, and many of them may not be there for the 80th anniversary. And it's just a reminder about the impact of the war on those veterans and on the braves behind them, the families who never got to see their loved ones come home, the generations impact by that war. And I just hope that we continue having this celebration and don’t just drop it once we lose all those veterans, which eventually will happen.

BAIER: He spent time, Mo, in that speech talking about the allies and talking about British, the French, for all the talk about NATO, he spent time in that speech, and as he is hugging Macron there, praising --

ELLEITHEE: Josh and I were talking about this in the green room. You look at those two gentlemen right there on the screen who are both facing serious political headwinds in their country. Both of them are seen as very unpopular leaders right now in their own countries. And they went up there, and I think the president gave a good speech, I think President Macron gave a good speech. The most disappointing thing for me was he came off of the stage and then came on this network and started to attack Nancy Pelosi by name. You were there, you hit the right tone in that speech. You can put politics aside, we all can put politics aside on this day.

BAIER: More disappointing than throw him in jail on this day?

ELLEITHEE: Well she didn't say that.

BAIER: On this day.

ELLEITHEE: When she asked about it, she said I'm not here to talk about impeachment, which was the right tone.

BAIER: I will also say his approval, according to most polls, is in the mid and upper 40s, more than President Obama was at this point in his presidency.

ELLEITHEE: But he is still weak. He is still weak.

HOLMES: And I will say, we all get focused on the unconventional nature of President Trump, but he still has this club in the bag. He has delivered meaningful, important speeches on several occasions, most notably I think about joint sessions of Congress, State of the Union type speeches.

BAIER: Warsaw, Riyadh, big, big moments.

HOLMES: That's exactly right. And I think today, I agree with you, Bret, I think it might have been his best. There's something special that brings out, I think amongst all of us when we're talking about D-Day and the sacrifices, it clearly brought out the best in President Trump. I thought it was very moving.

FERRECHIO: And you could see how heartfelt his recognition of the veterans was. That's what struck me the most. There were 60-odd veterans there who were there on D-Day, and the way he recognized them I thought was really emotional and important.

BAIER: All right, panel, thank you very much.

When we come back, how the nation's capital remembered D-Day 75 years later.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Finally tonight, D-Day remembered here in Washington.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT: We marvel at the courage that you showed as young men. You stormed the beaches and faced the shadow of death without fear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Vice President Mike Pence at the National D-Day memorial in Bedford, Virginia. The rural town's D-Day losses were among the steepest proportionally of any American community. Over at Arlington National Cemetery 96-year-old D-Day veteran Carl Mann was buried today. He was among the troops storming the beaches at Omaha Beach. He died March 30th. He was in his military career awarded seven Bronze Stars and three Purple Hearts.

And along the National Mall today, about 40 World War II veterans laid wreathes at the National World War II memorial, joined by representatives from each of the allied nations that took part in the Normandy campaign. Just some of the celebrations here in the nation's capital.

Thanks for inviting us into your homes tonight. That's it for the “Special Report.” Fair, balanced, and still unafraid. "The Story" hosted by Martha MacCallum in Paris tonight, starts right now.

Martha?

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