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This is a rush transcript from "Media Buzz," February 9, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: On the Buzz Meter this Sunday, in a media frenzy that ricocheted from the Iowa debacle to the state of the union to the Senate trial, President Trump was finally found not guilty on the two charges of impeachment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But this is what the end result is.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: The most predictable thing that's happened, the headline you could have written with total confidence months ago, President Trump acquitted by U.S. Senate.

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC: President Donald Trump was acquitted of two impeachment charges, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress by a group of Republicans senators who were able to excuse Trump's crimes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: How much of the media focused on Mitt Romney, whose vote to convict was hailed by liberal commentators and denounced by those on the right.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIN BURNETT, CNN: Senator Mitt Romney taking a courageous stand, voting to convict President Trump.

JOHN AVLON, CNN: We don't see things like that that much anymore. That was a classic profound encouraged speech.

LOU DOBBS, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK: Romney is going to be associated with Judas, Brutus, Benedict Arnold forever when he is not even a footnote in a footnote, otherwise, because of his betrayal.

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC: I jumped out of my chair, and for the first time in my life I cheered Romney.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS: Mitt, you made your stand. Now, you should resign. You committed a fraud in the people of Utah, on the Republican Party. If I have to move there to run against him in four and a half years, I will.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Why one senator out of 100 became the media story. Some pundits pounced on Nancy Pelosi for tearing up Trump's speech to Congress, while others slam the president for denouncing her and the Democrats as horrible and corrupt people, the press actually loving this non-stop warfare. The Iowa fiasco not only hurt Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders as they vie to claim victory, the chaotic caucuses left hoards of media people with no numbers, no results, and not much to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE KORNACKI, MSNBC: Well, we thought we had prepared for every contingency. This is the one we didn't prepare for actually. So we're trying to piece it together with all of you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Plus, Rush Limbaugh is battling lung cancer, how the conservative icon changed the face of radio and the bitter media divide over his presidential medal of freedom. I'm Howard Kurtz and this is MEDIA BUZZ. This is a Fox News alert. We are covering a developing story out of the Bronx in New York, where two police officers have been shot in less than 24 hours.

We're now learning that a man suspected in at least one of the shootings is in custody. The first attack occurring last night when an offer and a policeman was shot at after a man approached asking for directions. The second incident happening early this morning when a gunman shot an officer in the arm, inside the 41st precinct station.

Both officers are recovering. We will bring you updates throughout the day. The morning after the Senate acquitted Donald Trump, 52 to 48 on the first article, the president had brief and revealing moment at the National Prayer Breakfast.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: When they impeach you for nothing, then you're supposed to like them. It's not easy, folks. I do my best.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: President scoffed at the notion that Nancy Pelosi who was sitting close by prays for him. And she soon responded with reporters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY PELOSI, HOUSE SPEAKER: I don't know if the president understands about prayer or people who do pray. But we do pray. I pray hard for him because he's so off the track of our Constitution, our values.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: And then came the victory lap at the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It was evil. It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars. Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person. She may pray but she prays for the opposite. But I doubt she prays at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Joining us now to analyze the coverage, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at the Federalist and a Fox News contributor, Melanie Zanona who covers Congress for Politico, and Ray Suarez, a PBS News Hour correspondent and co-host of KQED's World Affairs. Mollie, you saw that graphic on MSNBC, guilty but acquitted. Are many in the media or at least some in the media buying into the notion the President Trump's acquittal didn't really count because it wasn't a fair trial?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: It was a very difficult time for the media. They had pushed this impeachment. It sort of bullied Nancy Pelosi into doing it against her stated preferences and against her instinct. And it kind of ended up -- it ended turning out pretty poorly for them. Not only was he acquitted despite what that Chiron (ph) said guilty but acquitted.

That's not how that works, MSNBC. But it also was a time when President Trump saw his approval ratings go way up, highest that they've been throughout his presidency. The Republican Party's ratings in general went up as the Democrats went down. So it went poorly for them. And I think they were trying to pretend it hadn't gone as poorly as it did.

MELANIE ZANONA, POLITICO CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: And you know the one thing the media did agree on is that this is Trump's best week ever perhaps between his soaring approval ratings in the Gallup poll, the fact that he was acquitted, he got rave reviews from his own party for the state of the union, a really strong job's report on Friday. And so that is one area where everyone is in agreement.

KURTZ: But do you think everyone is in agreement or just some? Because yes, there is a Washington Post headline today that says about the Democrats' alarm bells over Trump's resilience. But that's not the dominant thing that I'm seeing on some of the other channels.

ZANONA: Well, Democrats, at least privately on Capitol Hill are saying this was one of Trump's best weeks ever. They're ready to move on to --

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: -- but do you think that's the media consensus publicly?

ZANONA: Yeah, I absolutely do. I know at least at Politico, I write a morning news letter, and I have weekly winners and losers. And I certainly put Trump at the top of the list for winners.

KURTZ: All right. It is hard, Ray, for the press to move on when the day after impeachment the president is denouncing Democrats and Pelosi as vicious and horrible people, dirty cops and all that. And Pelosi gives it right back to him. But I'm wondering could it be in the media's interest to keep investigating Ukraine, to keep talking about the aftermath of impeachment, because it remains a juicy story and the ratings are good?

RAY SUAREZ, WORLD AFFAIRS KQED CO-HOST: They are saying deployment and manpower, question. News rooms are smaller than they were 20 years ago, even though there's so much more to talk about and so much more to cover. Can you really devote two people on your this staff to bird-dogging this continually now that the passing parade seems to have moved on?

I think it's an open question in many places that are smaller than they were when the need is even greater, especially in the middle of a campaign, especially in the middle of primary season, especially in the middle of other stories.

KURTZ: We are all being stretched pretty thin. As I mentioned, Mitt Romney voting to go convict and remove President Trump, the only -- the first senator in history to do that against president of his own party in an impeachment trial. Let's take a look at what the Utah senator had to say on the floor and with Chris Wallace.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): My faith is at the heart of who I am. I take an oath before god as enormously consequential.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You realize this is war. Donald Trump will never forgive you for this.

ROMNEY: But on the other side, there is do you do what you know is right. Do you know what your conscience and your heart tells you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Many journalists, not just liberal opinion people who are praising Romney as a senior statesman act of conscience and all that. Some of the same people in 2012 when he was the GOP nominee portrayed him as a greedy, heartless businessman, and soulless flip-flopper, and just plain weird.

HEMINGWAY: Oh, in fact, the media treatment of Mitt Romney explains so much about our current moment. Republican voters saw that you could nominate someone literally like Mitt Romney and still have him portrayed in the media as if you were Hitler.

KURTZ: And Ray, there's a flipside to this, and we saw that in the open. Many media conservatives who did back Romney in 2012, some of them reluctantly, now saying he should resign. He should be kicked out of the Republican Party. He should be tarred and feathered because he determined in his judgment as a senator that Trump had abused power.

SUAREZ: I guess you don't even really have to call a vote and call the role then. You just check how many Republicans are in the Senate and how many Democrats and post that as the score. If more people had voted out of party affiliation, he would have been less of a story. But being the sole decentre concentrated a lot more attention on him than he would have gotten otherwise.

ZANONA: Yeah, and -- you know a lot more attention on Mitt Romney than there was on the House Democrats who defected on the House side, which I thought was interesting. But, you know, from my perspective on Capitol Hill, Romney's defection was much more surprised than some of the House Democrats, especially in Senate trial.

There weren't a lot of twists. We knew the outcome. Those of us who were up there everyday really never thought the witness was going to prevail. So when Romney did come out in support of one of these charges --

KURTZ: Everything else was predictable except for this one --

(CROSSTALK)

HEMINGWAY: Yes, he was lauded by the way as a profile in courage. Good hint is that if the media appraising you, it's not so courageous. But they didn't do a good job of explaining why conservative voters didn't like what Mitt Romney did. They portrayed as if he were just betraying Trump. There were many reasons why they didn't like it.

They thought the merits of the impeachment case were weak and that that showed that he had bad judgment. The way that he rolled out the media thing showed that he cared very much about being portrayed well by the media. His long history of animus toward Trump made it difficult to hear his argument that he was doing this in good faith. And then most importantly, he hurt Republicans and helped Democrats with his vote.

(CROSSTALK)

SUAREZ: Interesting moment there when you -- in 25 years, last generation in Washington, if you give faith as part of an explanation for why you did something. It's usually hands off. People are very conscious about calling that into question. We are now in an era where if you use that as the explanation, you can still be doubted, smeared, and called a hypocrite by members of your own party, fascinating moment.

HEMINGWAY: It's actually important that people do talk about faith and that the media understand how to talk about faith. The issue there being a lot of people were motivate by their faith and hearing that argument, you know, only hearing it from one person that their faith motivated them when many people had that argument is also not a great media coverage.

KURTZ: Romney did give his first interview to Fox News. He wasn't just playing to the liberal media. But I've got another one for you and then we'll take it around the table. Let's look at -- this is the day after when the president praising, as we mentioned earlier at the White House, was praising his allies and ripping into his detractors.

And we look at that CNN -- that on screen battered Trump, vindictive and impeachment acquittal celebration. There's another version that said Trump vindictive and vulgar. He did use the word bold before word. And then John Harwood who has just been hired as a CNN White House correspondent, hired from CNBC had this to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was dark because he's made clear that his mind is dark. This is somebody in deep psychological distress right now, self- pitying, insecure, angry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: So Harwood, a reporter, says the president is in deep psychological distress. Is this a new approach to journalism?

HEMINGWAY: Harwood is described as a reporter. He's clearly a pundit and has been for many years. But I think the issue here, again, is that we have an issue on which for many, many years, the president was falsely accused of being a traitor who colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. The media pushed that narrative. They won awards for pushing the narrative.

They were completely exposed as not being good reporters, not being good analysts of the situation. They are embarrassed. And they're not in a position right now to be able to accurately describe what is going on. People can hear the speech themselves and say that doesn't seem vindictive. They can have a better context.

The media seem unable to because they're implicated in this false story that led to this acquittal.

KURTZ: You can certainly say critics are describing it as vindictive. Opinion people can say it is vindictive, vulgar, whatever word you want to use as news headline. This was news coverage. Do you think, Melanie, that journalists should be more cautious? I've asked this question on the program a number of times in describing the president's state of mind.

He's angry. He's unhinged and all those negative attributes as prescribed by the arm's chair psychologists of the media.

ZANONA: Yeah, we absolutely have to be more vigilant about how we approach that issue. Look, I don't know if Harwood whether he was that assessment based on his conversation with sources or if this was his own feelings and analysis.

KURTZ: It did attribute to anybody else.

ZANONA: Right. So, you know, I can't speak to that. But what I will say is that the president has an unorthodox way of communicating even four years into the presidency almost, and he's eliciting a very strong response from the media. That was also in relation to his victory speech, which the president said not a speech, not a victory speech. There's nothing. And I don't know if all the reporters knew how to cover it.

KURTZ: Ray, the president, we showed it at the top, loved that Washington Post headline on acquittal. He said it was the best headline he ever gotten in paper. He usually calls it the Amazon Washington Post. But if you turn to the Post editorial page of the New York Times and many others, it's clear that the elite media opinion here is that he should have been convicted and Republicans were cowards for not standing up to the president?

SUAREZ: Well, several Republicans also conceded that he did what he was accused of, and they just didn't find that it rose to the level --

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: -- was harsh, but go ahead.

SUAREZ: They, concluded no. We don't remove for this kind of thing. But boy, I wish he hadn't have done it. Yes, the editorial pages, the unsigned opinion pieces under the masthead wanted the president to go in many case. There were a lot of papers that didn't.

KURTZ: Many of the big national papers, obviously as we just said, wanted him to go as you just said. When we come back, the Iowa caucus chaos damaged the Democrats but was it also embarrassment for journalists. And later, tearing up the state of the union, even some liberal pundits are saying Nancy Pelosi went too far.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: It's just mind-boggling, three long days after the caucuses. Iowa Democrats finally managed to give media some sort of final results, showing Pete Buttigieg with a minuscule lead over Bernie Sanders in a delegate count, though the party reviewing inconsistencies in dozens of precincts.

And Melanie Zanona, no numbers on election night, partial numbers next day. How do reporters cover a story like this, and how do you not conclude that it's not a fiasco?

ZANONA: It was really difficult in those hours after the results didn't come in. What do you talk about when there's no results to go off of? But what I will say is I think Pete Buttigieg did a good job of winning the spin game. He just went ahead and declared victory. And the media sort of ran with it because they didn't have a whole lot to go out with that.

KURTZ: Right. He took some flak from that. But he did kind of ceased the moment. Molly, you were in Iowa. If Buttigieg had been declared the winner, even by a hair that Monday night as in a normal process, wouldn't there have been explosion of positive media stories about him, and then wasn't he kind of robbed?

HEMINGWAY: The main point of the Iowa caucuses, media coverage it gives you heading out of it. The next morning, the newspapers all declared a winner. You're on the next morning shows. And it gives you that momentum heading into New Hampshire. But also remember that before the caucuses we were told there were four different measures of how you declare to be a winner.

The first vote, the second vote, this arcane state delegate issue, and then just a number of delegates, and Bernie Sanders won two of those metrics. He tied in the third. And only in the fourth one, this live very confusing issue with delegates is he narrowly behind. So I think in a way he didn't get his due in the way media were covering. And that was kind of obvious throughout the process.

KURTZ: I agree with you on both of those. And Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders both on Fox News Sunday today, Buttigieg has been willing to go on Fox a lot. Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren who are now trailing in both races, not so much, Bernie Sanders bounced back from a heart attack just a few months ago. So it is a remarkable victory for him.

As Mollie said, he got robbed with the media spot slight as well. Because by the next day, everybody is doing the state of the union, like the news cycle marches on, you can never get that back.

SUAREZ: Well, ask President Rick Santorum how missing the Iowa bounced may end up having big effects down the road.

(CROSSTALK)

SUAREZ: -- and it was only weeks later that he was declared the winner in Iowa. And he really could have used that early boost heading into New Hampshire. It's a rough thing. And I think Pete must have had some sort of inkling that he was doing well, because the humiliation of declaring victory, flying to New Hampshire and finishing in third would have been just un-survivable, I think.

KURTZ: Right. Well, of course, they won't get reports from the different precincts. But, you know, even when everything works well in the Iowa caucuses, it's sort of way too complicated, and there's too many conflicting interpretations. So let's just go to go around. My diagnosis for the caucuses, death by suicide.

I don't think there's going to be another Iowa caucus. I certainly don't think it's going to be first in the nation for the Democrats given how badly this embarrassed the party, Mollie.

HEMINGWAY: It's going to be rough, particularly for Democrats. They didn't like having to be first in Iowa in any case. They didn't think it was a very representative for their caucus. So this just adds fuel to the fire.

ZANONA: Yeah. I absolutely agree. I think it's a sensitive issue for Democrats. If anything, there'll be a calendar change where maybe multiple states that go first, not just Iowa.

KURTZ: And Ray, again, you know, when things work well, it's still -- and the people of Iowa I love and they take this very seriously. But it is still a predominantly white, largely rural unrepresentative state.

SUAREZ: There are more people in Brooklyn and Queens than there are in Iowa. And, you know, I'm not sure what the argument for Iowa going first is any longer, especially not with the process like this.

KURTZ: Are you saying Brooklyn and Queens should go first?

(CROSSTALK)

SUAREZ: I'm down with that. I think you and I could both go around to Sheepshead Bay, put our campaign headquarters there.

KURTZ: All right. Well, there's a revolutionary suggestion, Ray Suarez, Melanie Zanona, thank you for joining us the first time. Mollie Hemingway, thanks to all of you. Ahead, Frank Luntz weighs in on impeachment, Iowa, and the battle to shake public opinion. But up next, a behind the scenes look at all those journalists news struggling to deal with the colossal Iowa mess and those who screwed up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: Among the biggest losers in the Iowa debacle are the media organizations that spent so much money and sent so many people to cover this contest over the last year, only to be grappling with the complete absence of news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No results at all from the Iowa caucuses, a huge, huge embarrassment for the Iowa Democratic Party.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of ramifications if this group out here doesn't get their act together.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I also feel like I created false expectations, because the way these things go every four years, you do usually get results right away. And so it is a little bit weird.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: There were no numbers and plenty of hours to fill. And that continues for much of the next day. It also led to the spreading of rumors as in this report from CNN's John King.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- messages from eight -- two other campaigns who said they are hearing that the Biden campaign is going to file an injunction. And so we don't know that that's true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Well, the Biden campaign made clear it wasn't true. And King later tweeted in the breaking news rush. My discussing even skeptically incoming from rival campaigns was, in a word, stupid. When Iowa Democrats finally released partial results late Tuesday, it was hard to instantly process the flurry of numbers, even for such savvy analysts, as MSNBC's Steve Kornacki.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Buttigieg there in Dubuque. What's that? OK, they're telling me it says 100 percent. That actually dis -- do we know how much it is? OK, 100 percent is not in. Let me just go back to the -- to this right here. Yeah, OK. I'm going to ask if you can give me three minutes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: You have got to feel for him. We all tried to get a handle on it, but we're foiled by the sheer incompetence by the Iowa Democratic Party. Ahead, Rush Limbaugh battling advanced lung cancer and getting a high honor at the state of the union. But first, the coverage of the president and House speaker, escalating their verbal warfare even after impeachment ends. Frank Luntz is on deck.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: It's been a tumultuous week for the media. We're all suffering from vertigo. Joining us now from Los Angeles is Frank Luntz, the veteran pollster who has worked for many Republican clients. And Frank, let's start with impeachment, Gallup has President Trump at 49 percent approval, highest of his presidency, and about 10 points higher than when impeachment started.

After endless hours of the coverage of the testimony and the focus on Ukraine and endless newspaper stories and segments and web pieces, how is that possible?

FRANK LUNTZ, LUNTZ GLOBAL FOUNDER: Well, it's possible because the American people are fed up with this. And there's a lesson here for all those watching in Washington, D.C. This -- the trial was a circus. There was no sense of planning. There was no sense of accountability. There was no sense of what the American people deserve, which is a straight-forward, not a partisan approach.

And, Howie, I look at this. And it may have been a tough week for the media, but I think it's a worse week for the American people. And that's what I care about as a pollster. All they are seeing now is a horribly broken Washington, politicians that treat each other with disrespect. And it's out of control.

And at some point, you reach a breaking point. And I think if we have more events like what happened this week, you may have a fundamental slide, a destruction of faith in democracy. Everybody is responsible. Everybody is doing it. And it has got to stop.

KURTZ: Well, I would just say that obviously, the public was divided two 50 percent, in most polls say removal, impeachment along with conviction. But, you know, there was a lot of evidence, the Bolton manuscript, the diplomats who testified.

Nonetheless, I'm wondering whether or not people not only got sick of endless coverage, but simply don't trust the press on this whole subject or anything really having to do with the coverage of this President?

LUNTZ: They don't. And they -- and they have every right not to because everyone has got a horse that they're backing. I don't find the reporting - - I listen to the language, I read the headlines, I read everything below that appears on television.

And it is clear, you can turn it on, and within a matter of seconds, you can tell where the person who wrote it stood. That's not the way it's supposed to be. Our press has become like it is the United Kingdom, where there's a right wing, a center, and a left. And that has never been part of what America was supposed to be. And you lose the faith and trust in the media to hold people accountable because they keep picking sides.

One more thing, I actually think this makes Donald Trump's reelection more likely, not less, because if the public feels that there's a deliberate bias against the President, they will rally around him. Just watch.

KURTZ: OK. One quick last question on this subject and that is, does it hurt the President rather than just sort of taking the win that he goes on and attacking Pelosi, Schiff, Democrats, vicious horrible people, and, you know, without sort of gesture of trying to bring the country together?

LUNTZ: Well, every time he's done it, he has gone up or at least he has pleased his base. So, as a pollster, I'm not sure if it hurts him politically, but privately, all of us on all sides wish that we could end this, wish that there can be some sense of civility and decency. I understand his wanting to do this, but I don't think it's good for the country. Honestly, I don't think it is.

KURTZ: Right. Well, Nancy Pelosi is attacking him, too. So, obviously, both sides are not deescalating at all, at least so far.

Let's turn to the Iowa causes. I mean, the media have endlessly chronicled what a complete and utter fiasco the whole thing has been. Do you think it hurt in particular Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders who might have been declared the winners, or co-winners, or a tie, whatever, but also, the Democratic Party as a whole?

LUNTZ: Well, how can you run a country if you can't run a caucus? You criticized the Republicans repeatedly for voter suppression. And yet, you've got hundreds of counties that are not reported correctly according to New York Times. I think that once again we are shredding the confidence that the public has in democracy.

And, Howie, I want to raise one more point. There's no reason for Nancy Pelosi to tear up Donald Trump's speech. That was petulance. And that's the same type of action that the Trump people were furious with Hillary Clinton back in 2016 when she called them deplorables.

If the Republicans show that effort, I actually believe that that could have a significant impact on the election, as Americans look at this and say that's awful.

Now, Donald Trump should have shook her hand. And, in fact, the strategy that he could have used to express his disappointment with her was to say to her with the biggest smile possible, I'm still here, Nancy, you see?

KURTZ: All right. Maybe you should have given him that line. Look, you predicted on this program about nine months ago that Bernie Sanders was the likely nominee then you backed off a little bit when he slid in the polls. You want to revive the prediction? Obviously, many in the Democratic Party are worried that he would be a nominee who would easily lose to the President?

LUNTZ: I don't necessarily think that he would easily lose. I've been -- I spent a week in Iowa, I spent a week in New Hampshire, which I wish the reporting community would do.

All these pundits who are -- who are on these cable channels are purporting to know what's happening. And yet, they are not talking to the voters themselves. And they're going to end up like 2016 where they get it wrong.

The Sanders' rallies are bigger than anyone else's. They're more passionate than anyone else. He's drawing a group of people that don't look like they came out of Berkeley from the 1960s. His appeal is getting deeper, it's getting broader. And it is similar to Donald Trump, and that, they want a wholesale change. They want to drain their swamp actually.

If you want to look at the red analogy, they want to fill swap that Donald Trump is trying to drain.

KURTZ: All right. Frank, I've got 30 seconds. Joe Biden disappointing fourth place finish in Iowa. He himself predicted in the debate on Friday that he will lose New Hampshire. But are the media sort of prematurely saying he's in such trouble, he can never recover, he's toast.

LUNTZ: Well, I've never heard a candidate be called toast when they are a frontrunner, when they're still leading in the polls nationwide.

With that said, I don't think he does well in New Hampshire, I don't think he does well in Nevada, and I think he narrowly wins in South Carolina. Every vote that Mike Bloomberg, and that's the person we should be talking about -- every vote that Mike Bloomberg gets is a vote that Joe Biden once had and doesn't anymore.

KURTZ: All right. We will -- we will talk more about Bloomberg in the weeks to come. Frank Luntz, good to see you from L.A.

LUNTZ: Thank you.

KURTZ: Thanks very much.

Coming up, mix media review for -- Frank just talked about, Nancy Pelosi's State of the Union stunt. And a media furor over the President firing two staffers.

And later, the media says Joe Biden is in deep trouble, is that a premature obituary?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: Fox News alert, we are learning more details about the pair of shootings that injured two police officers in the Bronx in less than 24 hours. NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea saying that moments ago, the man suspected in both shootings is now in custody. The suspect not being named as of this moment, but Shea says he has previous criminal record, which includes a shootout with police back in 2002.

Both officers are expected to fully recover from their injuries. And the officer from Saturday's shooting is expected to be released from the hospital this afternoon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Three years ago, we launched the Great American comeback.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: President Trump drawing mix media review for State of the Union, but Nancy Pelosi stole many of the headlines, as you know, by rather tearing up the speech.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why did you rip the speech up, Madam Speaker?

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), MARYLAND: That was the courteous thing to do considering the alternative.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Joining us now here in Washington, Gayle Trotter, host of Podcast, Right in D.C., the Gayle Trotter Show, and in Manchester, Mara Liasson of NPR, a Fox News Contributor.

So, Gayle, even some liberal commentators like Chris Matthews are saying it was a low blow and disrespectful for Pelosi to tear up Trump's speech at the end of his address, which she did quite deliberately and in front of the cameras. So the pundits are split, but not entirely.

GAYLE TROTTER, GAYLE TROTTER SHOW HOST: That's right. Some people gave her flak for hit. But you saw the New York Times had two articles making false equivalency between Trump not shaking her hand and Nancy ripping the speech, which had the names of all American heroes and these great stories.

And so, you see some of the media giving fault to Nancy for doing that. But I think the mainstream media, the big ones, are actually trying to say that it's an equivalent action between President Trump and Nancy Pelosi.

KURTZ: Mara, the journalist who is were supporting Pelosi on this are saying in fact that the President's initial refuse to shake her hand somehow justified this along with the fact that she says that the speech was full of lies, which obviously we can go through and fact-check it, but often, they're disputed details in any State of the Union speech.

But the bottom-line was, we all saw the image the next day she stole a lot of the next-day headlines.

MARA LIASSON, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yeah. And I think that the reporting has pointed out that what she did get a round of criticism from people who support the President, and a lot of Democrats in Congress loved it because she was expressing what a lot of them felt about the speech.

The State of the Union was an incredible by partisan event from the President's remarks to Nancy Pelosi's actions at the end. And I think that's the fairest way that the media can report it. If commentators want to say she -- she was right to do it or wrong to do it, that's another thing.

TROTTER: But you're taking about violating norms all of the time and how is there not significant blowback to Nancy Pelosi for violating this?

LIASSON: There is -- there was significant blowback. She did violate a norm and too many norms are being violated. I don't know how many norms we have left. I mean, we can go all the way back to -- to you know a Congressman yelling you lied to Barack Obama during the State of the Union speech.

KURTZ: All right. Let me get a couple...

LIASSON: There's no doubt that both sides are breaking norms.

KURTZ: Let me get in a couple of quick footnotes about the State of the Union. The President did not invite anyone from CNN this time for the traditional off-the-record anchor lunch before the speech. And White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham complained a leaked in memo that it was there was the height of hypocrisy for some of those journalists who did attend the lunch, which is off-the-record to then leak tidbits from the conversation to some of their colleagues including some the President specifically asked them not to share.

Let me turn now to what happened late Friday, which is the President in rapid succession firing his ambassador to European Union Gordon Sondland and also Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, both of them testifying obviously at the House impeachment hearings. And let's listen to what some people had to say about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CUOMO PRIME TIME HOST: Anybody who does not side with this President is seen as an enemy.

This is just the beginning, Vindman, Sondland. It's not the end.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Vindman, you want to be in charge of foreign policy, why don't you try running for President?

President Trump is draining the swamp. And this is what it looks like.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Gayle, the Washington Post's headline was Campaign of Retribution. Obviously, the President has the right to do this. And they're all his appointees. But why shouldn't it be portrayed by the press as striking back at perceived enemies?

TROTTER: It should not be portrayed that way. And I think the problem is the media mobs want someone who stays in his lane and that they're able to manipulate through their coverage of these events. But I will tell you that many Americans across the country were so happy this to the see that people who had done the public betrayals are no longer in charge of our foreign policy and are no longer able to undermine this President.

So that's where the media coverage was wrong because it didn't give enough lift to that feeling of relief by the American people that these people are no longer in positions to harm this administration.

KURTZ: But, Mara, when Gayle says public betrayals, you know, the view from these two witnesses that they were summoned to testify, they told the truth. Vindman, of course, won a Purple Heart in Iraq and his lawyer says this is about revenge and being booted for telling the truth. And he was escorted out of the White House, he was reassigned to the Pentagon, which is fine.

LIASSON: Yeah.

KURTZ: But the President obviously was trying to send a message.

LIASSON: Right. The President certainly was within bounds to do what he did. Alexander Vindman is not unemployed. As you said, he's back in the Pentagon from which he was detailed.

On the other hand, to say that the President wants to take revenge or get some payback for the people he felt did him wrong is fair. Stephanie Grisham even said when are these people going to pay for this.

So I think it's -- it's fair reporting to say that both things are true. He was within his rights and it was perfectly legal for him to remove these people from the White House, but also, of course, he's trying to get back at home that he thinks did him wrong.

KURTZ: Right. CNN calling it a Friday night massacre, but that's off, because the Saturday night massacre with Richard Nixon, fired people who are investigating him, the special prosecutor. All right.

LIASSON: Right.

KURTZ: After the break, on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, two days away, the pundits saying Mayor Pete is hot, Joe Biden is not. And can Bernie Sanders really win the nomination? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: There's two days to go until the New Hampshire primary. And we're still feeling it from the Iowa caucus meltdown, when people judge prematurely, gave a victory speech, and Joe Biden eventually admitted defeat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE BUTTIGIEG, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Iowa, you have shocked the nation, by all indications, we are going onto New Hampshire victorious.

BERNIE SANDERS, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It is really sad that the Democratic Party of Iowa, if I may say so, screwed up the counting process quite so badly. We ended up winning the popular vote by 6,000.

JOE BIDEN, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We took a gut punch in Iowa. The whole process took a gut punch. But look this isn't the first time in my life that I've been knocked down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Mara Liasson in New Hampshire. The papers are filled with tick-tocks about this remarkable upset by this previously obscured small town mayor, Mayor Pete. And he has shot up in the New Hampshire polls. In one poll today, he's 2 points behind Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and others. Are they -- are journalists taken with Pete Buttigieg as they were with say Beto?

LIASSON: No, actually. I think that whoever puts in a surprise finish in Iowa gets a certain round of media coverage. Pete Buttigieg was not polling at the top of the polls in Iowa. So he was a surprise and he gets the round.

But I think there has been a skeptical coverage of Buttigieg, too. You know, he's the old person's idea of what a young person should be, his kind of platitudinous, et cetera. But he did better than people thought he would, so he got a bounce, which includes media coverage out of Iowa.

KURTZ: Nothing better in politics than better than expected.

LIASSON: Yes, better than expected.

KURTZ: Gayle, back when he was an asterisk with a funny name, Buttigieg decided to do a lot of media interviews. Just this past week, Gayle, he was on 18 different shows including all Fox Sunday shows today, Fox News Sunday among them.

I think that helps him. And I think, in contrast with Joe Biden doing very few television interviews, in his first Sunday show today on ABC, what do you think?

TROTTER: Right. Well, he even did interview on TMZ live, so he has really got an expansive view of what media coverage he's willing to go for. And you see that in contrast with the coverage in Biden. You see bye, bye, Biden, Biden blew it. It is all these liter of headlines about Biden.

And I think that's why you're seeing Mayor Pete, even though he's against the Electoral College, he's happy that he was able to succeed in Iowa due to the delegate count versus the popular vote. And I think we're going to see more coverage of him because he's willing to do these interviews at a much greater pace, because he has less to lose.

KURTZ: Yeah. Well, of course, he was the one who is least well known in America, so he decided that he is going to do media interviews. And you know who else did a lot of media interviews, Donald Trump in 2016.

Mara, plenty of media reports now. It's kind of delayed because of Iowa caucus results being delayed, Joe Biden blew it, he couldn't excite anybody.

LIASSON: Yeah.

KURTZ: He struggled to raise money. His team knew for months that he was in trouble according to a couple of accounts. All these on the basis of what everyone says Iowa is a small unrepresented state except you have Biden himself saying he's going to take in New Hampshire as well in that debate Friday night.

LIASSON: Yeah. That was kind of shocking to downplay expectations, you know, by yourself.

KURTZ: To that extent.

LIASSON: Look -- yeah, the historical rules only work until they stop working. And what we know from the past is that someone who comes in fourth in Iowa and expects to also do poorly in New Hampshire generally doesn't find their footing and become the nominee.

But you know what, all the rules have been thrown out the window. Maybe Joe Biden can blow everybody out of the water in South Carolina and regroup on Super Tuesday. I mean, we just don't know. But there's no doubt that by everything we've known from the past coming in fourth in Iowa, when you were making electability, you were first, second and third calling card about the viability of your candidacy is just bad.

KURTZ: That's a fair point. And also many Biden allies, some of them on the record were contributing to these newspaper stories about how you know they all knew for months that he will have a hard time in Iowa.

And, Gayle, Bernie Sanders, you know, who as I mentioned earlier, bounced back from a heart attack, he was always going to do well in neighboring state because he's from Vermont.

TROTTER: Yes.

KURTZ: But even left-leaning pundits are now worried about him winning the nomination. You have the Times' Michelle Goldberg calling him a wild gamble.

TROTTER: Yeah.

KURTZ: Are many journalists, Gayle, in your view, oppose to Sanders because they don't think he can beat Trump?

TROTTER: Clearly, that's the case. And they're trying to influence voters' view of Bernie Sanders. And we saw this happened in 2016 when so much was against him and he appeals to far-left Democrats.

But I think people in the media understand that there -- there needs to be a broader appeal. And so, they are trying to paint him in a certain way that will affect his chances rather than just reporting it straight.

KURTZ: Just briefly, do you think they are painting him unfairly?

TROTTER: Yes.

KURTZ: I mean, he's a self-described Democratic socialist?

TROTTER: Yes, I think they are. Because, wild gambit, I mean, I think that is not about his policy preferences, but it's about his electability.

KURTZ: Yeah. And ultimately, the voters do get to decide this, despite all the prognostications and predications, and sometimes, we find out how wrong we were as you both have pointed out. Gayle Trotter, Mara Liasson in Manchester, thanks very much for joining us.

Still to come, Rush Limbaugh transformed broadcasting. The media now debate his legacy even as he battles a potentially fatal illness. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: Rush Limbaugh who utterly transformed the radio landscape made a stunning announcement the other day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSH LIMBAUGH, THE RUSH LIMBAUGH SHOW HOST: The upshot is that I have been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. And I wish I didn't have to tell you this. And I thought about not telling anybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Limbaugh put talk radio and especially conservative talk radio on the map, filling a void in the era before the internet. And Fox News, whether you love or loathe his ideology, he drew a huge audience of dido heads and became force of the Republican Party. President Trump praised him at the State of the Union.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: He's the greatest fighter and winner that you will ever meet. Rush Limbaugh, thank you for your decades of tireless devotions to our country.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: But emotional as the First Lady presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, right there during the speech.

Now, some of the media point out that he Limbaugh is a polarizing figure, who use such terms. He was booted as an ESPN analyst over a comment about black quarterback. He apologized for calling a law student a slutty, got caught up in an investigation after admitting very candidly that he had become addicted to pain killers.

So I get the debate over whether he should have gotten the medal. But he is a man who inspired millions while fighting for his beliefs, regularly torching what he calls the drive-by media.

Now, I've interviewed Rush a few times. We should all wish him the best, even his critics, even those who oppose him ideologically. We should wish him the best as he battles this deadly disease. And I will say that about anyone, either on the left or the right. We are all human beings.

That is it for this edition for "Media Buzz." I'm Howard Kurtz. This is a week when I felt like we needed two hours. OK.

Check out my "Media Buzz Meter" Podcast, you can put that graphic back up. You can subscribe at Apple iTunes, Google Play, or FoxNewsPodcast.com.

I just feel like we went -- we kind of bounced around from the Iowa caucuses to the State of the Union, to the President being acquitted and impeachment charges to the war of words with the Democrats and to the firings and all of that, we tried to cover it all for you.

Hope you like our Facebook page where we post my daily columns. And continue the conversation on Twitter @HowardKurtz.

Back here next Sunday at 11:00 Eastern with the latest Buzz.
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This is a rush transcript from "Media Buzz," February 9, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: On the Buzz Meter this Sunday, in a media frenzy that ricocheted from the Iowa debacle to the state of the union to the Senate trial, President Trump was finally found not guilty on the two charges of impeachment.

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WASHINGTON - The Senate acquitted President Donald Trump for his dealings with Ukraine on Wednesday, culminating months of bitter partisan clashes over accusations he tried to cheat in the 2020 election by pressuring the U.S. ally to investigate political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

The Republican-led Senate voted to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment - abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was the only senator to cross party lines by voting to convict for abuse of power.

Here is how the day and events played out. Refresh for updates.

Protest gathers outside Capitol following acquittal vote

A group of about 200 protestors, organized by progressive groups like Common Cause, Indivisible, Greenpeace, and the Women's March, gathered outside the Capitol following the Senate's votes to acquit Trump.

Protestors shouted "Moscow Mitch," "shame," and "November is too late" as they rallied against Trump. Kim Shyman, a 59-year-old candy company owner from Maryland, said she joined in the protest because she "could not sit at home with this going on."

The trial was a "sham," she said and the acquittal was "awful." Sara Anzalone from New York, 21, told USA TODAY she met the group at the Women's March.

"I think that, you know, getting a foreign power to interfere with our country is just completely against the constitution and completely out of his power," Anzalone said. "And I really think that he should be held responsible and it really kind of makes me pissed off that he could have been held accountable today. So, I'm coming out here to show my support for other people who are agreeing with me and agree that he should have removed from office today."

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., addressed the crowd to cheers, and shouts of "fascist" when she said Trump's name.

Trump has been "committing crimes and cover-ups in broad daylight," she said. "I will focus my ire on Senate Republicans. Shame on you, Mitch McConnell. We will not forget this betrayal."

A man pulled a "roaming anti-Trump bandwagon" around the perimeter of the protest, giving out anti-Trump paraphernalia.

- Nicholas Wu and Savannah Behrmann, USA TODAY

Pelosi highlights bipartisan trial vote against Trump

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., issued a statement saying the Senate vote to acquit Trump "normalized lawlessness and rejected the system of checks and balances in our Constitution."

Trump and Senate Republicans who acquitted the president had criticized the two articles of impeachment for being supported by only Democrats in the House. GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah joined Senate Democrats in voting to convict Trump of abuse of power, but they fell short of the two-thirds majority required to remove Trump or even a majority. But Pelosi noted that Trump got the first bipartisan trial vote in history.

"The president will boast that he has been acquitted," Pelosi said. "There can be no acquittal without a trial, and there is no trial without witnesses, documents and evidence. By suppressing the evidence and rejecting the most basic elements of a fair judicial process, the Republican Senate made themselves willing accomplices to the president's cover-up."

- Bart Jansen

Schumer calls Trump, GOP trial victory temporary

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said history would view Trump's acquittal as a temporary win, while Republicans will face questions as additional evidence dribbles out.

"History will view this as a Pyrrhic victory for Senate Republicans and the Republican Party and for President Trump," Schumer said. "They're afraid to hear the other side. They're afraid to hear the truth. They're afraid to talk about what was right."

Schumer complained against that the Senate voted largely along party lines to reject his proposals to subpoena witnesses and documents for additional evidence in the trial.

"I believe the American people will realize this is one of the largest coverups in the history of our nation," Schumer said. "I believe the American people will know who stood in the way of truth."

Schumer said the bipartisan vote for conviction, with GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah joining Democrats in voting unsuccessfully to convict Trump for abuse of power, would go down in history.

"No one had illusions that the president would be convicted," Schumer said. "But we made the fight for truth and we made the fight for facts and it created a bipartisan impeachment that can never be erased from history."

- Bart Jansen

McConnell said impeachment is net win for GOP

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell focused his political commentary after the Senate acquittal on surmising that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been dragged into the impeachment inquiry against her better political judgment and then tried to get it over with as quickly as possible.

"I think this was a thoroughly political exercise from the beginning to the end," said McConnell, R-Ky.

McConnell said he had observed Pelosi, D-Calif., carefully over the years because their leadership terms overlapped and they worked on appropriations bills together earlier in their careers.

"I'm pretty sure she didn't want to do this," McConnell said. "But the fact that she was pulled into this direction against what appeared to be her political instincts a year ago underscores that this was a purely political exercise."

Pelosi resisted declaring an impeachment inquiry after special counsel Robert Mueller announced the results of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. But after revelations about Trump's July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, she declared a formal inquiry Sept. 24 that produced articles of impeachment before the end of the year.

"Having been dragged into something she instinctively felt was a mistake, then the second impulse was to get it over with as quickly as possible," McConnell said of what he called an "abbreviated, truncated, rush job over in the House."

McConnell then guessed that House Democrats would make the case a fight over witnesses in the Senate. But his staff counted 60 times when House managers had declared during the trial that they had already proved their case.

"I'm proud of my colleagues for seeing through that," McConnell said of the nearly party-line votes to reject additional witnesses in the trial.

He also said it was right to avoid having Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts resolve a tie over witnesses, if a vote had come to that.

"It's pretty clear that would have dragged the Supreme Court into the maelstrom," McConnell said.

He concluded that impeachment was a political loser for Democrats because Trump enjoyed the highest approval ratings of his presidency.

"Right now this is a political loser for them," McConnell said. "At least for the short term it has been a colossal political mistake."

- Bart Jansen

President Trump acquitted on both impeachment charges

WASHINGTON - The Senate acquitted President Donald Trump for his dealings with Ukraine on Wednesday, culminating months of bitter partisan clashes over accusations he tried to cheat in the 2020 election by pressuring the U.S. ally to investigate political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

The Republican-led Senate voted to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment - abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was the only senator to cross party lines by voting to convict for abuse of power. Conviction was always unlikely in the GOP-led Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority because it required the support of at least two-thirds of the Senate or 67 senators.

Trump was just the third president to face a Senate impeachment trial in U.S. history. Former Presidents Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton 1999 were both acquitted.
More: What we learned (and still don't know) after the Trump impeachment saga
The thrust of the accusations from House Democrats was that Trump invited foreign influence in the 2020 election by pressuring Ukraine to gather dirt on Biden, and then stonewalled the investigation after getting caught. The lead House manager who prosecuted the case, Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the misconduct was part of a pattern, which included invitations to Russia and China to investigate his rivals, that would continue if left unchecked.
More: Sen. Mitt Romney will vote to convict President Trump on abuse of power charge
"You can't trust this president to do the right thing, not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of the country," Schiff said. "A man without character or ethical compass will not find his way."

But Trump's defense lawyers and congressional Republicans argued the president's conduct didn't warrant removal from office and amounted to a policy dispute. Trump's defiance of subpoenas during the investigation was to protect the executive privilege, to keep advice from top aides confidential, according to his defenders.

"The president has done nothing wrong, and these types of impeachments must end," said White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
"Pelosi disgraced herself':GOP outraged by Pelosi ripping up Trump State of the Union speech
The main allegation was that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, while withholding $391 million in military aid and a White House meeting.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced the inquiry Sept. 24, after revelations about Trump's July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. During the call, Trump urged his counterpart to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter, who worked at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings. Trump has claimed Biden strong-armed the Ukrainian government to fire its top prosecutor in order to thwart an investigation into Burisma.

House Democrats impeached Trump on Dec. 18 after taking depositions from 17 current and former federal officials and gathering more than 28,000 pages of evidence. Senators asked 180 questions during the trial.

Through testimony and depositions, Democrats pieced together what they have argued is a chronology of Trump's effort to pressure Ukraine's government into announcing investigations into the Bidens.

Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, testified that he assured Ukraine officials at the White House July 10 that a meeting would be arranged between Trump and Zelensky in exchange for investigations.

"Mr. Giuliani's requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky," Sondland said.

A staffer from the White House Office of Management and Budget announced the suspension of the aid to Ukraine during a July 18 National Security Council conference call. "I and others sat in astonishment," testified Bill Taylor, the former top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine. "I also said I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign," Taylor later told other diplomats.

A whistleblower filed a complaint Aug. 12 with the inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, about Trump's July 25 call with Zelensky. Atkinson said the complaint "appeared credible."

House committees announced an investigation on Sept. 9. And Trump released the aid Sept. 11.

"President Trump tried to cheat, he got caught, and then he worked hard to cover it up," said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., one of the House managers.

But Trump's defenders argued the president had the sole authority to conduct foreign affairs and that the request stemmed from longstanding concerns about corruption in Ukraine. Trump repeatedly called the investigation a partisan "witch hunt" and a "hoax."

Alan Dershowitz, who represented Trump, cited arguments from scholars from the period 150 years ago - around Johnson's impeachment - that the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of impeachment should be based on criminal statutes such as treason and bribery described in the Constitution.

"It is inconceivable that the framers would have intended so politically loaded and promiscuously deployed a term as abuse of power to be weaponized as a tool of impeachment," Dershowitz said.

Trump's defense focused on the House procedures and called the inquiry illegitimate because it began with Pelosi's announcement rather than the House vote authorizing it on Oct. 31. Patrick Philbin, a deputy White House counsel, called the impeachment "defective" and "half-baked" because 23 subpoenas were issued before the House vote and because the Democrats decided not to fight in court for testimony from witnesses such as former national security adviser John Bolton.

- Bart Jansen

Mitt Romney will vote to convict Trump on the first article of impeachment

WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. Mitt Romney said he'll vote to convict President Donald Trump on the first article of impeachment - abuse of power - in the Senate trial.

Romney's office said he will not vote to convict on the second article of impeachment - obstruction of Congress.

"The president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust," he said. "A president can indeed commit acts against the public trust that are so egregious that while they are not statutory crimes they would demand removal from office."
Mitt Romney: a solitary GOP voice battling Trump for the soul of the Republican Party
Romney's decision makes him the first and perhaps only Republican to announce he would vote to convict the president.

The 2012 Republican nominee for president choked up at times as he discussed his decision- making process. Calling it the "most difficult decision" he ever faced, Romney said the question before senators was whether Trump's actions rose to the level of a "high crime and misdemeanor."

"Yes, he did," Romney said.
- Nicholas Wu
Trump's alleged actions - pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival - amounted to "a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security interests, and our fundamental values," Romney said.

"Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that I can imagine," he argued.

Romney acknowledged he would face a backlash from within his party, and "abuse" from Trump and his supporters, but he had an "inescapable conviction" that his oath demanded he adhere to the facts of the case.

"We're all footnotes at best in the annals of history. But in the most powerful nation on earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that is distinction enough for any citizen," he concluded.

Sen. Gardner, a swing-state Republican, will vote to acquit
- Nicholas Wu
Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who faces a tough re-election race this year, announced on the Senate floor he would vote to acquit President Donald Trump on both articles of impeachment.

"What we did not see over the last two weeks was a conclusive reason to remove the President of the United States," he said.

Gardner said removal would "nullify the 2016 election" and "rob half the country of their preferred candidate for the 2020 election."
- Bart Jansen
The House had not proved its case, he said, so "it's time to move forward with the people's business" beyond impeachment.

Sen. Feinstein says nearly 90,000 constituents contacted her office

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said calls, emails and letters were pouring into her office supporting the conviction of President Donald Trump at a rate "seldom seen" in her 27 years in the chamber.

"Nearly 90,000 constituents have contacted my office in support of impeachment, compared to 20,000 in opposition," said Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "I'm heartened to see an engaged American public at such a difficult time for our country. It's clear to me where Californians stand on this issue and I thank everyone who took the time to contact my office with their views."

Sen. Jones announces he'll vote to convict Trump

Following a speech on the Senate floor announcing his decision to convict President Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment, Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., told reporters his reelection was not a major concern for him.

"No, did y'all hear that speech? Did anybody hear that speech? It has never crossed my mind," he said when asked if he was concerned about reelection.

Asked about Republican challenger Jeff Sessions' attacks on him, Jones smiled, shrugged, and said, "So?" Sessions served as Trump's attorney general.
- Nicholas Wu
Jones said his decision had been made consulting with his staff, who "put in a lot of time and a lot of hours," rather than with his Democratic colleagues.

The Alabama Democrat said he made up his mind "just a couple of days ago" adding that, "I did what I thought was the right thing."

The Senate Leadership Fund, a political campaign committee aimed at electing Republicans to the Senate, predicted that Jones would be voted out of office for his position on impeachment.

"The Senate Leadership Fund would like to be the first to congratulate Doug Jones on his impending retirement from politics," said Jack Pandol, communications director for the fund. "From voting against Justice Kavanaugh, to opposing the border wall, to repeatedly supporting abortion, Jones hasn't made an effort to hide his far-left stripes."

Sen. Jones announces he'll vote to convict Trump

Sen. Doug Jones, an Alabama Democrat who has previously not said how he'd vote in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, announced Wednesday he would vote to convict the president because his misconduct reflected an abuse of power rather than simply being inappropriate.

"In this case, the evidence clearly proves the president used the weight of his office and that of the United States government to seek to coerce a foreign government to interfere in our election for his personal political benefit," Jones said a statement. "With impeachment as the only check on such presidential wrongdoing, I felt I must vote to convict on the first charge of abuse of power."

Jones said he was sensitive to protecting presidential powers, giving him pause about the charge of obstruction of Congress. But he said it was critical for Congress to retain its powers, too.

"In this matter it was clear from the outset that the President had no intention whatsoever of any accommodation with Congress when he blocked both witnesses and documents from being produced," Jones said.
- Bart Jansen
The vote comes as Jones faces a challenging campaign this year in a conservative state. Jones beat Republican Roy Moore with 50% of the vote in a special election in 2017 to succeed Jeff Sessions, who became Trump's first attorney general. Jones could face Moore or Sessions this year.

Jones said in December that he hadn't watched all of the testimony and debate in the House inquiry, saying he was still "trying to see if the dots get connected."

Jones said he tried to cut through the partisan fog by reading thousands of pages of transcripts, watching videos of testimony, taking copious notes, reviewing history and discussing precedents with colleagues.

"Senators are elected to make tough choices," Jones said. "The gravity of this moment, the seriousness of the charges, and the implications for future presidencies and Congresses all contributed to the difficulty with which I have arrived at my decision."
- Bart Jansen
Sen. Kamala Harris: Senate trial is 'miscarriage of justice'

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said the Senate impeachment trial has been a "miscarriage of justice," claiming President Donald Trump is getting away with abusing his power.

"The Senate trial of Donald Trump has been a miscarriage of justice," said Harris, a former prosecutor. "Donald Trump is going to get away with abusing his position of power for personal gain, abusing his position of power to stop Congress from looking into his misconduct."

"He's going to escape accountability because a majority of senators have decided to let him," Harris said.

Hawley: impeachment is a 'circus.' Alexander calls it 'shallow'

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., gave a fiery speech blasting House Democrats for initiating an unauthorized inquiry that resulted in the first partisan impeachment in history.

"Animating it all has been the bitter resentment of a professional political class that cannot accept the verdict of the people in 2016, that cannot accept the people's priorities and that now seeks to overturn the election and entrench themselves in power," Hawley said during a speech on the Senate floor. "We must leave this impeachment circus behind us."

Senators will vote today on whether to acquit or convict President Donald Trump of two articles of impeachment - abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., called Trump's conduct pressuring Ukraine to investigate his rival "inappropriate," but said the decision about whether to remove him from office should be left to the voters.

"If this shallow, hurried and wholly partisan impeachment were to succeed, it would rip the country apart, pouring gasoline on the fire of cultural divisions that already exist," Alexander said. "It would create a weapon of permanent impeachment to be used against future presidents whenever the House of Representatives is of a different political party."

- Bart Jansen

Trump to meet with Venezuela's opposition leader before vote

As senators await to vote on the impeachment verdict, President Donald Trump will engage in some foreign policy Wednesday by meeting with the opposition leader in Venezuela.

The session with Juan Guaido is an opportunity for Trump "to reaffirm the commitment of the United States to the people of Venezuela and to discuss how we can work with President Guaido to expedite a democratic transition in Venezuela," said White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
- David Jackson and Deirdre Shesgreen
Guaido declared himself interim president in 2019 after President Nicholas Maduro was sworn into office for a second term. Maduro's re-election was marred by accusations of fraud and election rigging.

Trump also welcomed Guaido to Tuesday's State of the Union speech, hailing him as Venezuela's rightful leader denied power by the socialist government in Caracas.

Guaido is scheduled to arrive at the White House at 2 p.m. EST, two hours before the Senate impeachment vote.

Trump, who expects to be acquitted by the Senate, is planning to address impeachment later in the day - after the vote.

Sen. Cornyn: impeachment is 'nuclear option'

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said when it comes resolving policy disputes between Congress and the White House, impeachment is the "nuclear option."
- Bart Jansen
Cornyn said he would vote to acquit Trump because House Democrats failed to provide enough evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor.

"Impeaching the president of the United States is simply the gravest undertaking we can pursue in this country," Cornyn said. "It is a choice of last resort when a president has committed a crime so serious that Congress must act rather than leave the choice to the voters in the election."

Cornyn argued said House Democrats failed to prove evidence of a crime and also argued the accusation of obstruction of Congress, stemming from Trump's defiance of subpoenas, would make future presidents subservient to the legislative branch if enforced.

"They channeled personal, policy and political grievances, and attempted to use the most solemn responsibility of Congress to bring down a political rival in a partisan process," Cornyn said of House Democrats.

Merkley urges GOP to remove Trump from office
- Bart Jansen
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., was the first of dozens of senators expected to speak in the chamber Wednesday before voting on the verdict in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

Merkley made no secret of where he stood in supporting conviction of Trump. He recited how the president directed his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to work with U.S. government officials to withhold an Oval Office meeting and $391 million in military aid for Ukraine unless that country investigated former Vice President Joe Biden.

"When our president invites and pressures a foreign government to smear a political opponent and corrupt the integrity of our 2020 presidential election, he must be removed from office," Merkley said.

Trump is expected to be acquitted because removal would require a two-thirds majority in a chamber with 53 Republicans and 47 members of the Democratic caucus. Merkley directed his comments to Republicans, some of whom have acknowledged inappropriate behavior by Trump but said it didn't warrant removal from office.

Senate poised to acquit Trump, end trial
'He shouldn't have done it':GOP senator who scolded Trump on Ukraine explains why he backs acquittal
It's decision day for the Senate - and a pivotal day for President Donald Trump.

The Senate impeachment trial will end Wednesday when senators, who have served as jurors through weeks of arguments and debate, vote on whether to acquit Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, or to convict him and remove him from office.

The historic vote at 4 p.m. EST culminates months of investigations and debate over Trump's alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden by withholding $391 million in security aid. For senators, the vote will be one of the most-remembered of their careers and will surely play a role in 2020 congressional campaigns.
Rep. Jason Crow: Democrat reads from his children's Constitutions during the Trump impeachment trial
On Monday and Tuesday, senators spent hours explaining their positions in 10-minute speeches on the Senate floor and Trump gave his annual State of the Union address . The speeches will continue Wednesday.

But the result of the final vote has been anticipated for months, even before the House voted Dec. 18 to impeach Trump on two articles of impeachment: abuse of power for the alleged Ukraine pressure campaign and obstruction of Congress for directing his administration to defy subpoenas for witnesses and documents. That's because a two-thirds majority of the Senate is required to convict and remove a president from office, which is unlikely in a chamber with 53 Republicans and 47 members of the Democratic caucus.

The trial has hinged on whether the seven impeachment managers, all Democratic House members prosecuting the case, could make a convincing enough case against Trump to persuade enough Senate Republicans to vote with Democrats on the president's conviction.
Nancy Pelosi: It was 'sad' for Mitch McConnell to 'humiliate' Chief Justice John Roberts with witness vote
The managers argued that Trump tried to cheat in the 2020 election and then tried to cover it up.

"You can't trust this president to do the right thing, not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country," said the lead manager, Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif. "A man without character or ethical compass will not find his way."
'He shouldn't have done it':GOP senator who scolded Trump on Ukraine explains why he backs acquittal
But Trump's defense team argued that Democrats' accusations were unproven and that impeachment would threaten future presidents with removal over policy disputes if he were convicted. The defense lawyers argued that neither of the two articles alleged violations of criminal statutes, as was customary in previous impeachments. And they argued that if the obstruction charge were upheld, confidential advice to future presidents would be at risk.

"We have an impeachment that is purely partisan and political. It's opposed by bipartisan members of the House," said White House counsel Pat Cipollone. "It is wrong. There is only one answer to that, and the answer is to reject those articles of impeachment, to have confidence in the American people, to have confidence in the result of the upcoming election, to have confidence and respect for the last election and not throw it out."

The vote will end only the third Senate trial of a president, after the acquittals of Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999. Pelosi announced the inquiry Sept. 24. The House voted to authorize it Oct. 31. No House Republicans joined Democrats to impeach Trump in December.

The House provided the Senate with 28,578 pages of evidence in the trial, including 17 depositions of current and former government officials. Senators asked 180 questions of House managers and Trump's defense team.

But congressional Democrats wanted to hear from more witnesses, most notably former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton after excerpts from his forthcoming book surfaced during the trial and appeared to counter the president's defense. The debate over whether to hear witnesses became a heated issue and was a crucial test of whether Democrats could bring Republicans to their side.
'We'll find the right time':Pompeo demurs on White House visit for Ukraine's Zelensky
A Democratic push to subpoena additional witnesses or documents failed Friday. Only two Republicans - Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah - joined Democrats in an unsuccessful effort to call Bolton. Broader proposals to subpoena more witnesses and documents were rejected in party-line votes.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the impeachment was a partisan effort by Democrats and must be rejected.

"We must vote to reject the House abuse of power," McConnell said Tuesday on the Senate floor. "Vote to protect our institutions. Vote to reject new precedents that would reduce the framers' design to rubble. Vote to keep factional fever from boiling over and scorching our republic. Vote to acquit the president of these charges."

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said the House managers failed to meet the "high bar" set by the nation's founders to remove a president from office.

"Removing the president from office - and from the ballots for the upcoming election - would almost certainly plunge the country into even greater political turmoil," he said.

A handful of Republicans said Trump's conduct was inappropriate but said it wasn't worthy of removing him from office.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said that it was inappropriate for Trump to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent but that "the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year's ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate."

"The president's behavior was shameful and wrong," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, but the foundation of the House case "was rotten."
State of the Union: Fact-checking Trump's claims on jobs, wealth and wages
Democrats argued that Trump should be removed or his misconduct would continue. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said House managers made a compelling case, and Republican opposition to gathering more evidence "fails the laugh test."

"The Republicans refused to get the evidence because they were afraid of what it would show, and that's all that needs to be said," Schumer said.
Susan Page: From a snub to a ripped speech to campaign messaging, this was not your typical address
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said failure to convict Trump would send a terrible signal "that this president and any future president can commit crimes against the Constitution and the American people and get away with it."
What happened Tuesday: Sen. Susan Collins said she'll vote to acquit Trump
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., whose state Trump won narrowly in 2016, said the White House engaged in a "systematic and unprecedented effort to cover up the scheme" in Ukraine.

"A vote against the articles of impeachment will set a dangerous precedent, and will be used by future presidents to act with impunity," he argued.

Tensions high at State of the Union

The vote will come just a day after the president gave his State of the Union address, an event that put on display the country's divisions and between the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who led her caucus to impeach him.

The president refused to shake her hand after she introduced him. Pelosi ripped up his speech after he concluded his remarks. The two slights left many stunned and wondering whether the tensions between political parties would ever mend.

"I'm not sure I've ever seen the Speaker do something so disrespectful," Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said after watching Pelosi rip up the address just inches behind Trump's head.

Many Democrats said Pelosi's actions stemmed from frustration but others noted that the American public is counting on Congress to move forward and try to come together.

"Our Congress is a representative body and we represent a very divided country," said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., noting some of the topics touted by Trump were divisive. "I think it's our job to try and bridge the divides even when they're very sharp and very difficult."

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said he hadn't seen Pelosi ripping apart Trump's speech but caught Trump withholding a handshake with the speaker.

"The speaker extended the invitation to President Trump to deliver the speech on behalf of the House of Representatives. She was gracious enough to extend her hand," he said. "Notwithstanding the nasty personal comments that he's continuously directed at her. And he behaved like a petulant child."

The speech, in the House chamber where Trump was impeached just weeks ago, did not mention impeachment or the president's almost certain-acquittal Wednesday in the Republican-dominated Senate.

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President Trump acquitted on both impeachment charges, avoids removal

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WASHINGTON - The Senate acquitted President Donald Trump for his dealings with Ukraine on Wednesday, culminating months of bitter partisan clashes over accusations he tried to cheat in the 2020 election by pressuring the U.S. ally to investigate political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

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several house republicans to join trump's impeachment team following internal debate - cnnpolitics

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Several House Republicans to join Trump's impeachment team following internal debate

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The White House announced Monday that it will add several House Republicans to President Donald Trump's Senate impeachment team in what appear to be largely ceremonial roles following an internal debate over whether they should be included.

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impeachment watch: 7 questions that still need to be answered about trump's impeachment - cnnpolitics

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7 questions that still need to be answered about Trump's impeachment

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The second day of questions in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial began -- and ended -- with some drama and some clarity.

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1. politics

2. Impeaching Trump

After Democrats argued that the president is a "danger to the country," Trump's team now has 24 hours over three days to make his case.

Last updated on January 25, 2020, at 1:06 p.m. ET

Posted on January 25, 2020, at 9:46 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump's defense team began presenting its case to the Senate on Saturday, offering a two-hour attack on Democrats and the impeachment process that ignored certain evidence and highlighted a debunked conspiracy theory.

Saturday was day five of the impeachment trial to determine whether to remove Trump from office. The defense will resume Monday.

One of the team's key arguments was that Democrats did not present crucial evidence during their nearly 24-hour presentation over three days.

About an hour into their own presentation, Trump's defense did exactly that.

Mike Purpura, deputy White House counsel, accused Democrats of not showing impeachment testimony that Ukrainian officials were unaware of the freeze on security assistance at the time of the July 25 telephone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

He showed a montage of testimony from four US officials saying they only received calls from Ukrainians about the security assistance after a story was published in Politico on Aug. 28. This lack of knowledge on the part of the Ukrainians at the time of the call, he argued, meant it would not have been possible for Trump to be extorting them to open an investigation into the Bidens in exchange for the aid.

"There can't be a threat without the person knowing he's being threatened," Purpura said. "There can't be a quid pro quo without the quo."

But Purpura did not show testimony that indicated the Ukrainians were in fact aware of the security assistance freeze at the time of the call.

Defense Department official Laura Cooper testified in November that two unclassified emails sent from the State Department to the Pentagon just hours after the call focused "on the issue of Ukraine's knowledge of the hold or of Ukraine asking questions about the possible flow of assistance."

According to Cooper, one email said the Ukrainian Embassy and the House Foreign Affairs Committee were "asking about security assistance." The second email, according to Cooper, said that "the Hill knows about the FMF [Foreign Military Financing] situation to an extent and so does the Ukrainian Embassy," referring to the aid money.

And a former Ukrainian foreign official, Olena Zerkal, has also said she read a cable from her country's embassy in Washington in July about the security freeze. "We had this information," Zerkal told the New York Times. "It was definitely mentioned there were some issues."

After the hearing, Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, told CNN that Republicans "continue to make this claim that Ukraine felt no pressure, and that's just nonsense."

"I have been working on US/Ukraine policy for the better part of the last decade. I was hearing in the spring from my contacts who were visiting Ukraine that they were feeling pressure the minute that Rudy Giuliani showed up and started demanding investigations into the Bidens," he said. "Of course, it would stand to reason that the Ukrainians were feeling pressure when the president is telling them, 'The one thing I care about is doing investigations into my political opponents.'"

The Impeachment Today podcast gets you up to date with the day's most important impeachment news. Catch up on all the episodes, or subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Jay Sekulow, Trump's personal attorney, and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, are serving as the lead attorneys on the president's defense team.

In an effort to depict Ukraine as a corrupt country that rightfully concerned Trump, Sekulow hinted at a debunked conspiracy theory that the country had interfered with the 2016 presidential election.

"Let me be clear, the [Democrat] House managers over a two-hour period kept pushing this false dichotomy that it was either Russia or Ukraine, but not both," he said.

But US intelligence officials have found no evidence to support the theory that Ukraine interfered with the US election - a conspiracy the Associated Press found was first floated online during the 2016 election, later amplified by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and then pushed by Trump himself.

Fiona Hill addressed Republican members of Congress promoting the conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election: "This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves."

In her November testimony, Fiona Hill, the former senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council staff, warned lawmakers not to "legitimize an alternative narrative ... that Ukraine - not Russia - attacked us in 2016."

"This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves," she said.

And last month, FBI Director Chris Wray said, "We have no information that indicates that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 presidential election."

Trump's defense also focused heavily on attacking the process of impeachment, echoing a common Republican talking point that Democrats - not Trump - are trying to steal an election by impeaching him. "They're asking you to remove President Trump from the ballot in an election that's occurring in approximately 9 months," Cipollone said. "They're asking you to tear up all of the ballots across this country on your own initiative take that decision away from the American people."

White House lawyers attacked the House impeachment inquiry by saying it was made up of selective leaks and staged public hearings of hand-selected witnesses, and that the president's legal team was shut out. "If you were really confident in your position on the facts why would you lock everybody out of it from the president's side?" said Cipollone.

White House lawyers were not allowed to participate in the first stage of the inquiry, when the House Intelligence Committee took closed-door depositions from witnesses. But the White House was invited to take part in the public hearings in the Judiciary Committee. The Trump administration refused to take part.

Trump's team also went after Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead House impeachment manager, just as he predicted they would Friday night. In one of its first arguments Saturday morning, the defense team played a clip of Schiff paraphrasing Trump's July 25 call with Zelensky during the House's investigation, a clip that Republicans have harped on for months as evidence that Schiff is lying to get Trump out of office.

But even in the segment Trump's lawyers played Saturday, Schiff says he is not directly quoting Trump: "Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates," he said, going on to describe Trump essentially asking Zelensky "to make dirt on my political opponent, understand?"

"That's fake," Sekulow said after playing the clip, suggesting it was inappropriate. "We can shrug it off and say we were making light or a joke, but that was in a hearing in the United States House of Representatives discussing the removal of the president of the United States from office. There are very few things if any that can be as grave and serious."

Sekulow, Trump's personal lawyer, told reporters Friday that the overall case will focus in part on former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company. He also name-checked a handful of conspiracy theories related not only to the Bidens, but to the FBI, the Democratic National Committee, and the creation of the Steele dossier - an unverified document prepared for Trump's political opponents during the 2016 election, which BuzzFeed News first published after Trump and then-president Barack Obama had been briefed on its contents.

House Democrats - acting as prosecutors in the impeachment trial - laid out their case to support two articles of impeachment earlier in the week: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. On Wednesday, Democrats laid out a timeline of Trump's abuse of power when the president made the decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine in exchange for the government agreeing to investigate the Bidens. On Thursday and Friday, Democrats focused on how the president's actions violated the Constitution.

Following the defense's two-hour presentation, senators were essentially split by party, with Republicans praising the president's team and Democrats largely criticizing them.

"I think it was pretty impressive that they took the record that was produced by Chairman Schiff and use that record to show that he was cherry-picking his presentation. ... I think it's a miscalculation to act like we won't hear the whole story later on," Sen. John Cornyn told reporters as senators left the Capitol.

Several Republicans hammered away at House Democrats for using nearly all of their 24 hours of argument to make their case, often keeping senators in session late into the evening. "You ask any senator, even the ones on the other side of the aisle, you did not need 23 hours to regurgitate, repeat, and remarket," Sen. Mike Braun told reporters.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat who served as Hillary Clinton's vice presidential nominee in 2016, said that Trump's lawyers were merely trying to appease the president himself, noting their shots at Schiff, in particular. "I think that was to make the president happy. I think these guys in some ways have an audience of one," he said. "They're trying to make the president laugh, smile, or tweet."

Still, two Democrats were somewhat complimentary of the president's team: Machin and Montana Sen. Jon Tester. Manchin said he thinks Trump's attorneys were "succinct and spoke what they believe would be effective. I think they did a good job."

"I think they made some good points," Tester said. "But we're not done."

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Watch Live: Trump's Impeachment Lawyers Argued Democrats Ignored Evidence. Then They Went Ahead And Ignored Evidence.

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politics Impeaching Trump After Democrats argued that the president is a "danger to the country," Trump's team now has 24 hours over three days to make his case. Last updated on January 25, 2020, at 1:06 p.m. ET Posted on January 25, 2020, at 9:46 a.m.

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The start of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump is a reminder that the American political system does include safeguards and norms that are meant to protect the citizenry from corruption and misdeeds in the highest offices of the land. What happens in the Senate over the next few weeks will show whether these measures still matter.
The rule of law trumps power and presidents. At least, it is supposed to.
The impeachment process, as shaped by the rules devised long ago by members of the House and Senate, is loaded with archaic tradition and stuffy ceremony. The House speaker signs articles of impeachment. House managers then stride through the Capitol complex to hand-deliver the articles to the Senate chamber. In a somber session, senators take a solemn oath to deliver "impartial justice" and sign their names one by one in an oath book near the marble Senate rostrum. These rituals were designed to highlight the gravity of the prospect of removing a president and to signal that in the United States, process and principle transcends all. The rule of law trumps power and presidents. At least, it is supposed to.

Trump has tested the system and pushed it to a breaking point-to this breaking point: only the third impeachment trial in the history of the republic. The narrow case against him brought by the House is strong: Trump used-that is, abused-the power of his office for personal political gain. The evidence is clear. His hand-picked ambassador to the European Union-a hotelier with no previous diplomatic experience who contributed $1 million to Trump's inauguration-testified there was an explicit quid pro quo: Trump would not grant a highly sought-after White House meeting to the new Ukrainian president or provide congressionally approved military assistance to Kyiv unless Ukraine announced investigations to sully Joe Biden and to legitimize a crazy conspiracy theory that held Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the Democrats in 2016.

Trump's actions were not in pursuit of any official aim. Period. He didn't give a damn about corruption in Ukraine. In a May 10 letter to the new Ukrainian president-which only became public last week-Rudy Giuliani noted that his efforts in Ukraine on behalf of Trump (which centered on digging up dirt on Biden) arose out of his personal representation of Trump and served Trump's private interests. That's a nice way of saying Giuliani was on a purely political mission at Trump's direction to gather from another government mud to hurl at Biden. This letter ought to be regarded as a smoking gun. And the General Accounting Office on Thursday released a finding that the withholding of aid to Ukraine that Trump ordered violated the law. In other words, the president, in his official capacity, had demanded illegal action for his private benefit-to obtain derogatory information on a 2020 political rival and to try to absolve Russia of intervening in the 2016 election.

Those data points should seal the deal. But there's so much more. Other congressional testimony confirmed key elements of the extortion plot. The quasi-transcript of Trump's call with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky depicts Trump putting the squeeze on the Ukrainian leader with a mobster-like request for a "favor." In a stunning interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Lev Parnas, the now-indicted associate of Giuliani who aided the former New York City mayor's search for negative material on Biden, described a brazen shake-down scheme that was headed by Trump, and Parnas maintained that Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry each were co-conspirators. Parnas' claims and other evidence suggest there was an even larger conspiracy in which Trump's muscling of Zelensky was related to an attempt by Giuliani and two Fox News regulars-Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, husband-and-wife lawyers-to lobby William Barr's Justice Department to help indicted Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash escape bribery charges in return for Firtash supplying them negative material on Biden and information that supposedly could discredit the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller. RudyGate is becoming a scandal of its own.

The full story is complicated. House Democrats thought they had a simple impeachment narrative: Trump improperly and arguably illegally pressured a foreign leader to take steps to influence the 2020 election in his favor. That would-or should-be enough to impeach a president. Yet pulling on that thread led to the unraveling of a bigger and uglier tapestry of crookedness. And all the shenanigans and skulduggery reflect a wider and deeper rot that Trump has imported into the White House and spread throughout the US government.

Leaving the Ukraine affair aside, the man who is now being tried in the Senate has not only violated a specific provision of the Constitution-the emoluments clause-he has trampled long-existing norms that serve as guidelines for the nation's leaders. For example, a president should release his tax returns and not hand White House jobs to relatives, especially those who cannot receive a security clearance. Trump ignored both of these long-adhered-to but informal rules. He also ignored long-standing guidance about conflicts-of-interest. In fact, the moment Trump was sworn into office, he was in breach of this emoluments prohibition, which bans presidents from accepting gifts and payments from overseas governments and officials. Through the Trump Organization-which Trump still owns-he has pocketed money from foreigners and governments who buy apartments from his firm or pay for rooms in his hotels. Never has it been easier for seekers of influence and access-from across the oceans and from here in the United States-to buy it straight from a president. Trump, though, has disregarded this section of the Constitution and fought lawsuits that would force him to comply with it. This, too, could be the stuff of impeachment.

So could his interactions with Russia. During the 2016 campaign, Trump encouraged Moscow's attack on the election, which was waged partly to help him win the White House. He also denied this attack was under way, echoing and signal-boosting Vladimir Putin's we-didn't-do-it disinformation, as his campaign maintained a series of covert interactions with Russia. While running for president, Trump was also secretly negotiating a deal to develop a tower in Moscow that could have earned him hundreds of millions of dollars, and his company sought help with the venture from Putin's office-and yet Trump lied to voters and said he had nothing to do with Russia.

As president, Trump continued to deny, discount, downplay, or dismiss the Kremlin's attack, complaining endlessly about the "Russian hoax." According to the Washington Post, he even told senior Russian officials, during a meeting in the Oval Office, that he was not concerned with Putin's assault on a US election. That was a serious dereliction of duty-a commander in chief informing a foreign adversary he didn't care that it had attacked the United States. Such an action might be grounds for removing a president from office. As could be the multiple cases of potential obstruction of justice that Mueller documented in his final report. Mueller noted that due to a Justice Department policy that says a president cannot be indicted on a federal charge, he did not reach a decision on whether Trump ought to be indicted for any of these actions. That was a job for Congress, Mueller explained in his final report-basically saying this was possible impeachment fodder.

From grand betrayal to sleazy scandal, Trump has covered it all. His onetime fixer, Michael Cohen, now resides in a federal prison in part for making an illegal hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, who has claimed to have had an affair with Trump. According to the evidence in that case, Trump-identified as "Individual 1″-directed Cohen to slip the $130,000 to Daniels to shut her up before Election Day in 2016. (Cohen said that Trump also indirectly encouraged him to not tell Congress the full truth about the Moscow tower negotiations and their interactions with Putin's office-a lie that helped to land Cohen in the slammer.) This means that the man who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was a co-conspirator in a proven criminal conspiracy. That's according to the US Department of Justice, which prosecuted the case.

Trump's presidential tenure has been a never-ending swirl of conflicts of interest, nepotism, law-breaking, norm-squashing, and corruption. (And lies. Over 16,000 lies and false statements so far.) All this has placed a tremendous strain on the system. The media does not always know how to accurately and responsibly cover the flood of mendacity and misconduct. House Democrats, once they took control of their side of the Capitol, were unsure what to do in response to Trump's transgressions. Investigate everything? Focus on the Mueller-documented obstruction? Just plow ahead to the next election? It wasn't until a whistleblower who worked in the CIA sounded the alarm about Trump's Ukraine caper that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues realized they had no choice but to kick-start an impeachment inquiry.

In a way, Trump got off easy, with just two articles of impeachment: abusing his power in the Ukraine scandal and obstructing the House investigation of this episode by blocking administration officials from testifying and by preventing the release of documents to Capitol gumshoes. As for the Republicans, in a cultish manner, they have adopted the line that Trump does no wrong. They deny reality. They live in the land of Fox News, infected and overwhelmed by dearleader-itis. And their slavish devotion to Trump-out of love or fear-undermines the system, for the system is predicated on the notion that most of its inhabitants are good-faith actors who care about preserving it. The built-in protections of this system-such as those that are symbolized by the ritualistic ceremonies of impeachment-only work if they are fully honored. Should a significant number of the guardians of the system say, "Screw it," a democracy may not be able to protect itself from an enemy within.

So much of Trump's presidency has served up causes for impeachment. Yet still the national debate, due to Trump's incessant shouting of falsehoods and the loud and robotic amen-ing of Republicans and the conservative media, often becomes fixated on debating reality-was an obvious quid pro quo a quid pro quo or not?-rather than what to do about that reality. The founders envisioned the possibility of a scoundrel gaining control of the White House. But could they envision an entire political party putting on blinders and becoming the loyal and unyielding foot-soldiers of that scoundrel? Could they imagine a wholesale attack on the rule of law and the principle that no man is above the law? Could they imagine a party-wide abandonment of the elemental notion of checks and balances? This impeachment focuses on one corrupt incident, but it addresses a deeper and wider assault on the nation's governance and its most fundamental values. Even if the ultimate verdict for Trump is essentially pre-ordained, how this trial is handled and staged will be one indication of just how broken the system is.

In many of our homes, offices, workplaces, schools, places of worships, and businesses, fire extinguishers are stored and kept in accessible spots-just in case. They are rarely needed and not often thought about. But they have been purposefully placed in these positions as a precaution. They can be grabbed should an emergency arise and deployed to prevent or limit damage and injury. Our political system has its own safeguards-some written down, others that exist merely in practice. As Trump and his impeachment demonstrate, these protections are there. Yet they are not self-enforcing. They only work if they are used when a threat emerges and disaster strikes.

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With Trump's impeachment, American democracy is on trial

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The start of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump is a reminder that the American political system does include safeguards and norms that are meant to protect the citizenry from corruption and misdeeds in the highest offices of the land. What happens in the Senate over the next few weeks will show whether these measures still matter.

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The president will see an acquittal

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The sordid truth of the impeachment trial of Donald Trump is that it will end with the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, doing him a favor: delivering the votes, with little regard for the facts. That is sadly appropriate, because Trump's favors-the ones he covets, the ones he demands-and the terms on which he extracts them, remain the trial's most contested issue. The House managers cited Trump's statement to President Volodymyr Zelensky, of Ukraine, in their phone call on July 25, 2019-"I would like you to do us a favor though"-as the crux of a corrupt scheme. Trump's lawyers countered that he was talking not about his "personal interests" but about America's. In their trial brief, they argued that Trump "frequently uses variations of the phrase 'do us a favor,' " and cited examples. "Do me a favor," he said he'd asked Europe. "Would you buy a lot of soybeans, right now?" "Do me a favor," he said he'd asked North Korea. "You've got this missile engine testing site. . . . Can you close it up?" The lawyers could have added Trump's claim that, before choosing Alexander Acosta to be his Secretary of Labor, he'd worried that he was related to the CNN reporter Jim Acosta, so he told his staff, "Do me a favor-go back and check the family tree."

But, of course, what Trump was asking from Ukraine wasn't about soybean farmers' livelihoods, or arms control, or even genealogical information. He wanted dirt on a political opponent and was willing to hold up military aid for an ally in order to get it. Trump's core belief seems to have been that Ukraine, by receiving aid from America, incurred a debt that should be paid to him personally. That equation works only if, as Adam Schiff, the lead House manager, put it on Wednesday, "you view your interests as synonymous with the nation's interests." And Trump does. He has no conception of where he ends and the country begins.

Nor, apparently, do his lawyers, most notably Alan Dershowitz. "Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest-and mostly you're right!" Dershowitz told the senators. And so, "if a President did something that he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment." With that, Dershowitz provided a pseudo-intellectual scaffold for Trump's self-delusion.

Somewhere in there is the distorted echo of a real argument. A President should at least consider the electoral effect of what he does, not because his continued tenure is so important but because the opinions of citizens are. They are the ones who have to fight the wars and bear the burdens. Voters can be wrong, but even then they can still be helpful in discerning the public interest. That is the basis of democratic accountability. But Dershowitz was talking about manipulating the election process itself. In response, Senator Angus King, Independent of Maine, asked if a President could extort an Israeli Prime Minister into charging the President's opponent with anti-Semitism. In fact, by Dershowitz's logic, a President could not only seek foreign assistance in a campaign; he could unleash any number of investigations into his political opponents, declare spurious emergencies to prevent their parties' political gatherings, engage in surveillance, or take measures to limit access to polling stations-suppressing, rather than amplifying, voters' voices.

Dershowitz was arguing that, as Schiff said on Thursday, if the President believes that a deal is in his political interest, "then it doesn't matter how corrupt that quid pro quo is." Schiff was not exaggerating when he called this argument "a descent into constitutional madness." It may even prove more pernicious than the simple fact of Trump's acquittal-which was preordained, given the Republican majority's fealty to him-because the standard it sets for Presidential accountability is so degraded. It's easy to imagine defense teams playing a video of Dershowitz's presentation at a future impeachment trial, in an effort to exonerate another rogue President-perhaps one who has hung a portrait of Trump in the Oval Office. One thing that Republican senators might do, as they so flagrantly fail their country, is to clearly say that Dershowitz's reasons for acquittal are not theirs.

The first article of impeachment charged Trump with abuse of power in his dealings with Ukraine, and even a few Republicans, such as Senator Lamar Alexander, conceded that the managers had proved that case. (Alexander added that, nonetheless, the President's actions didn't warrant impeachment.) The case for the second article, charging Trump with obstruction of Congress for denying it witnesses and documents, was more complicated. Here, the Trump team's arguments were at least in the realm of constitutional reality, however hypocritically they were offered. The House managers couldn't quite shake the opinion held by many that they should have fought the President's defiance of their subpoenas in court, even if it took time. (Indeed, because Trump's arguments are so extreme and untenable, the House Democrats had been on a winning path in the lower courts.)

At the same time, the managers hammered home the point that the senators had the power to expose the full story by calling witnesses-which they chose, in a vote on Friday, to toss aside. In doing so, they may have set a precedent that will further limit future Senates in constraining Presidents. The managers also made it abundantly clear that this President has played petty games with momentous matters of war and peace.

Unable to exonerate Trump, his lawyers resorted to making an appeal to blind triumphalism. Eric Herschmann, one of the members of Trump's team most prone to go off on political tangents-he used up a lot of time attacking President Obama -reeled off a series of economic statistics and approval ratings and told the senators, "If all that is solely, solely, in their words, for his personal and political gain, and not in the best interest of the American people, then I say, God bless him. Keep doing it!" It was as if those figures added up to a paid-in-full purchase of impunity. Trump, for his part, will undoubtedly see an acquittal as further license for abuse.

Earlier in the week, Trump had held a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, expressly to thank the now Republican congressman Jeff Van Drew for having left the Democratic Party over what Trump called the "impeachment hoax." He exhorted the crowd to reëlect Van Drew-"really a brave man, what he did was incredible"-and to throw out the Democratic "clowns." Perhaps the Republican senators, as they trudged toward casting their vote, were making a calculation about how Trump might return the favor with one for them, or their party, or their country. Or maybe they, too, can no longer tell the difference. ♦

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Trump's Impeachment and the Degrading of Presidential Accountability

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The sordid truth of the impeachment trial of Donald Trump is that it will end with the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, doing him a favor: delivering the votes, with little regard for the facts. That is sadly appropriate, because Trump's favors-the ones he covets, the ones he demands-and the terms on which he extracts them, remain the trial's most contested issue.

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Trumps impeachment