 Okay, we're back. We're live. It's Wednesday morning. It's 11 o'clock. It must be Trump week, which is a very important day. But let me say every day is a very important day for Trump. So and the country. So here we are with Tim up here in the studio. And we have Cynthia Sinclair. She's remote. I mean, he's remotely located. She's not remote as a person. Yeah, lots of stuff is going on here today. I mean tons of stuff. And matter of fact, I'm driving in a minute ago. And there it is, these constitutional lawyers, for in a row, I think it is, all opining on the Constitution. That was really powerful. And the Republicans had a chance to cross examine them. And that was interesting. Interesting. The arguments they came up with. So, Tim, what do you think? Do you have any chance to watch it? I woke up very early again this morning. Yes, I have watched it. And, you know, history is being made. And, you know, I see comparisons to the Nixon hearings. But I see even more of a partisan divide. And I find that very discomforting. I do too. Cynthia, you've been watching it. I know you have, because I started setting up for the show. I can hear it in the background in your room there. So let's talk about what's going on right now, this instant moment in those hearings. Well, I turned it off when I came down to sit in front of the computer. So I don't know at this moment. But right at this point in time, they've already gone through all of the chairman's questions and the Democratic attorney's questions. The Republican ranking members questions. And then their lawyers questions. And now they're doing the five minutes, five minutes, five minutes, going back and forth between Republicans and Democrats. And you're right, there were four law professors that were there. Three are unanimously in favor of impeachment. And one says that he's against it because he doesn't think there's enough evidence at this point. But he hasn't addressed the fact that the reason we don't have enough evidence is because of the obstruction that's going on. What do you think, Tim? Do we have enough evidence? They do. It would be better to have the evidence of Bolton, McGlainy, Giuliani. It would be very nice to get them all in a room and have them tell their story. But because that's obstructions taking place, then therefore we have to go with what we have. Can I just read a real quick quote? Because any Democrat from Washington State is retiring. And on his exit or soon to be exit, he said something I think sums this whole 10 days up. In fact, the whole impeachment process, the whole three years between the Republicans and the Democrats, he said the following. I will never understand how some of my colleagues in many ways good people could ignore or deny the president's unrelenting attack on the free press, his vicious character assassination of anyone who disagreed with him, and his demonstrably very distant relationship with the truth. We are simply too many hyperbolic adjectives and too few nouns. Civility is out. Compromise is out. All or nothing is in. Any heck? Representative of the House of Representatives. Democrat. Democrat. Wow. Okay. So where is this going? How long is this going to happen? I mean, I actually am surprised. I thought that they were just going to get on to it. They were going to read the report of the Intelligence Committee and write it up. I thought it was going to be pretty simple. But no, they're having a hearing and everybody's getting a lot of, a lot of FaceTime and everybody's making a lot of speeches. I'm much more persuaded by the Democratic speeches. I think the Republican speeches are as they were in the Intelligence Committee. You know, talk about hyperbole. But let's talk about where it goes from here. I mean, how long is this supposed to go? Do we know the witnesses going forward? When the hearings part is over, what are they going to do? They're going to write it up, I guess, as articles of impeachment, which nobody knows yet what those are. I find that interesting. What's going to happen, Tim? I think it's going to, what we've said before, I think they're going to keep it short and simple as far as the articles of impeachment. You heard the precursor here today. I don't think they're going to bring in any of the Mueller information and testimony in the report. I don't think that's going to enter into this impeachment articles at all. Tim, it doesn't enter into it anyway. What I mean is, you know, we have the whole background, a whole milieu, an environment as a heck of a hyperbole and unfairness and character assassination left, right, and center. That has got to affect the minds of the triers of fact. The jury is the house. And it's got to be in the room, even if it's not an official article of impeachment. What do you think? Well, I think the jury is more the Senate, right, than the house. The house will be voting yes and holding these hearings, but really the trial happens in the Senate. And so it won't happen until it gets to that point. That's an interesting point. I'm really disappointed at this point that they are not going to include the Mueller investigation materials. There were nine counts of obstruction in the Mueller report, four of which could be criminally charged. The only reason they weren't is because of Neil Katyal's DOJ memo saying we can't charge a sitting president. So I think it is remiss of the Democrats to leave that part out because it's too important. I feel the ultimate judge is not the House of Representatives, not the Senate, but ultimately the voter. And this hearing today, this morning, was for the purpose of the voter to understand what's really at stake here, what's really going on. And for those many, many voters that never was taught a civics lesson in high school, an introduction to what the Constitution and the intent of the Constitution is all about. Well, you're in favor of having constitutional lawyers telling, in so many words, telling this committee what it should do. You're looking at a civics 101 class today. These are professors trained in constitutional law and they are stating it like any good professor knows how to do, how to take a complex subject and translate it for an audience that really doesn't have a lot of exposure to these legal and constitutional issues. Yeah, right. As if the judge were giving instructions. But you know, some of the constitutional lawyers, my limited hearing of it was saying you should find that there is sufficient evidence. You should vote for impeachment, which I thought was interesting because that's the ultimate decision to be made. Usually an expert witness is not permitted to do that. Usually an expert witness can give you expert information. He can give you the rules of the game, but he doesn't tell you exactly how you should vote. Some of them are doing that. I see them advocating for the future of the Constitution of the United States. That's what I saw here this morning. Yeah, no doubt about it. And frankly, if I were in that committee, I'd be happy to hear their opinion on the final decision to be made also. Okay, so let's talk about how this plays. You're going to laugh at my question. Let's talk about how this plays in Europe. I've been watching you. You mean before or after NATO? I mean, you know, Europe has been this trip, as all the trips have been a disaster. As I recall, he called Macron two-faced. Nothing like calling the leader of one of the long-term allies of the United States back to the Revolution. The creation of this country possible, he's calling the leader of that country two-faced. Where does that go? How does that fly? Well, where did it come from? There was a short video about, believe it was Macron, Trudeau, Boris Johnson, and the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rudder, Marout. They all kind of informally got together in the middle of the hallway. There was a camera that had a pretty long-distance microphone on it, and they were basically making fun, most likely, of Donald Trump in his 40-minute press conference. And, you know, who scheduled that? So they were making fun of him. And, you know, obviously this video now comes in front of Donald Trump, and he's calling Trudeau two-faced. This is not good diplomacy. No. However you might feel about it. But what it goes to show is that when Donald Trump's not in the room, people are talking about him, and most likely not in the most flattering terms. He has come against NATO for so long, and against the international cooperation of Europe and the United States. What should he expect? Well, he's laying tariffs on France. He's pulling U.S. support in NATO. He's doing everything he can to destroy NATO. And he's doing everything he can to insult and disrupt the relationships between the United States and the countries in NATO. I can't imagine this is all, you know, a coincidence or a mistake. It's got to be intentional. And you know who's interested serves? You get one answer. Well, Vladimir Putin. There you go. All right, Sid, what do you have to say about that, Cynthia? Well, I want to go back just a little bit, if you don't mind, back and address a little bit about these law professors that we've been seeing. We have one from Harvard, one from Stanford, one is from George Washington, and one George Washington University, and one is from the University of North Carolina, all from, you know, they're all law professors. But I want to specifically give you guys a quote from Pamela Carlin, who's the one from Stanford law. She was really powerful. And in his opening statements, Representative Collins from Georgia, that ranking member, really kind of ripped into these law professors and their ability to address what was going on and what was going to be talked about today. And Mrs. Collins said, I mean, and Ms. Carlin said, Mr. Collins, I take offense. I read every transcript from every witness. I would not speak about these things without receiving and reviewing the facts. So I am insulted that you would suggest that as a law professor, I wouldn't care about the facts. Everything I read on these occasions tells me that when President Trump invited indeed demanded foreign involvement in our upcoming election, he struck at the very heart of what makes this republic makes this a republic to which we pledge allegiance. That demand that Professor Feldman just explained constituted an abuse of power. Indeed, as I want to explain in my testimony, drawing a foreign government into our elections is an especially serious abuse of power because it undermines democracy itself. End quote. Thank you, Cynthia. Now back to the main track of our conversation. Sorry. We have distractions here. And I think one of the big elements of all of this is that Donald Trump will find distractions, create distractions in order to get the public off the subject of the impeachment hearings and the possibility of impeachment. Can we enumerate the distractions? Well, I think NATO was a perfect playground for that. He, you know, he found people names, you know, taking shots at Macron, taking shots at Trudeau calling him two-faced. Anything he could do to get the attention off what's occurring right now as we speak. And it's, you know, we've talked about this for the last year, the bright and shiny silver object that he wants us all to look at and look away from certain important things. And I, you know, we're right there right now. And NATO was his springboard to do that. Yeah. Well, everything, anything to distract us. And what I find in Europe is that things really are separating in the sense that there are six countries within NATO that have formed an organization to bypass his sanctions on Iranian oil. I don't think they've actually bought the oil yet, but the reason they created the organization was to buy the oil in violation of Trump's sanctions on oil sanctions on Iran. There's a split. Well, then you see everything turning. You see, so actually, what I'm saying is I don't think the distraction in Europe. That trip was unnecessary anyway. There was no real reason for it. It's, it's not a successful distraction. I mean, if you watch him, I don't think you think he gains anything by that personally. No, I don't think so. I think again, what did he accomplish? I've yet to see those accomplishments being, you know, politicized. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. Well, we saw some drama, you know, immature drama. And that's not something we want as a world image for the United States. Right. So Cynthia said that the hearings are not really the, the hearings are not really the trial, although Cynthia, I have to say, it really looks like a trial, doesn't it? With all these highfalutin speeches that the Republicans make for five, 10 minutes at a time. And it looks like a trial in terms of the witnesses. The whole thing in the House looks like a trial. Now, you can say that the real trial is in the Senate. And indeed, there will be another trial in the Senate. However, it seems to me that we are having the trial that him referred to, that is the trial in front of the people now. And therefore, one of the big things that Trump is doing is he's trying to wreck the press. And I really enjoy being interested in your comments on the Bloomberg maneuver a couple of days ago. He's going to exclude Bloomberg from his press conferences, of which there are none in the U.S. So I find it very interesting he's going to exclude them now as he has excluded others and specific reporters in the past. So what did you thought about that? Is that a successful distraction? What does that mean to the country that we have a major and very well, a very high credibility organization, which has been excluded from this theoretical press conference? Well, my answer to that is we had journalists from other credible news organizations, be it NBC or CNN, that their credentials were pulled because they asked a hardball question to the President that he didn't care for. Bloomberg News is a very credible news organization, and he's going to make sure that Bloomberg News doesn't cover anything because he thinks they're tainted. And that's what he's trying to show his base, that again, see, it's fake media. They're going to taint the information. They're going to skew it to poor Bloomberg against President Trump, and you should not listen to him, and I'm not going to let you listen to him. Notice there's a strange oblique kind of parallel between this and Amazon, you know, owned by Bezos, and Bezos owns the Washington Post. And the Washington Post is very critical of Trump. So Trump takes away a $10 billion, actually more than that, more than a $10 billion defense contract away, by himself, all by himself. You know, it's that sole proprietorship government all by itself, and he did that to punish Bezos, to scare Bezos, and I think to scare other members of the press, you know, that if you run against him, if you criticize him, he's going to punish you. And when you get through with all this punishment, you get a press that maybe it's a little intimidated, you get a press that's a little more reluctant to talk about him, criticize him, I think that's what he's gunning for. It's not so much a distraction, it's a continuation of his intentional willful damage to the press. My own view is I would impeach him for that alone. Cynthia, what would you do? I agree with you. I think that if you look back, when we talk a lot about connecting the dots here on our show, and we've talked a lot about the enabling act of 1933, was it, or 32? 33. 33, yeah, in Germany. And just exactly the first thing he did was go after the press and divide the people. And I think that is a very important thing that we all need to remember. Every single dictator that has ever rose to power starts by assassinating the press and controlling the narrative that is being put out. And that's what I see the Republicans doing throughout this whole hearing process from the first ones that were in the Intelligence Committee, and now these here in the Judiciary Committee, and it seems to me all they want to do is present a false narrative. The only person they ask questions of is the one guy that they like, you know, the Turley guy, Jonathan Turley, the guy from the George Washington, because he agrees with them. And so they don't even ask the other guys any questions. You know, like you said, they go on for five minutes with their little speech, and then they, you know, that's it. Well, let's go to some other strange things that have happened. Tim, you were interested in the fact that Zelensky seems to be showing maybe some space between him and Trump. What's happening with Zelensky? Well, at the hearing, they completely mischaracterized what he said. You know, they took his words and basically just, you know, repackaged him to something he didn't really say. So what did he really say, if I may, real quick? He said, look, I never talked to the president from the position of quid pro quo. It's not my thing. I don't want us to look like beggars, but you have to understand we're at war. If you're going to, if you're our strategic partner, then you can't go blocking anything for us. I think that's about fairness. And it's not about quid pro quo. But what he's saying is, look, what you guys call it, you want to call it, I'm not going to get involved in your squabbles. You have held my aid. We're at war. We have, you know, how many thousands of Ukrainians have died trying to keep Russia from invading into the country. That's what he's saying. And he's saying, quit using us as a pawn. Stop treating us like we are beggars. And he said, show us some respect here. And that is a very powerful message that this very new president has no experience. He's trying to keep his country together. He's trying to fight corruption. And in the process of fighting corruption, he's been involved in corruption, the corruption of the president of the United States trying to extract his, you know, announcement about an investigation about the Ukrainian act into the 2016 election and Biden. Yeah, and the testimony, the evidence that has come out, it seems to me very clear. Trump withheld the money, which was critical to the defense of Ukraine and to the foreign policy of the United States, as enunciated by the State Department and Congress in allocating the money in order to benefit himself. Do us a favor, the interesting language, do us a favor, though, okay? Right. Us is a very interesting word. And one of the witnesses this morning, one of those constitutional law professors, he said, what do you mean, us? Us is the royal we. It's not us. It's him. Do me a favor. So he's putting me and him personally ahead of the interests of the country. Cynthia, what do you have on that? You agree with that or what's your add to that? I have watched Republican after Republican after Republican throughout this hearing say that they, well, they would try to advance this false narrative that we were just talking about. And what you've just said also, they want to keep trying to say that this was all done for corruption. But in reality, you know, this was done to go after, he didn't say, I want you to go after corruption. He said, I want you to go after the Bidens. And then he came on camera and said, by the way, I want China to do the same thing. I want them to, you know, take away some of this power behind Russia was the interfering country in our first election, the 2016 election. And that would sort of help him. That would help him. And then also the rest of this would help him if he can discredit Biden. Well, I think the Republicans have to get off their one major defense. And that was, where's the crime? Ukraine, the Ukraine government got the money in the end. Where's the crime? So why is this impeachment even moving forward? That's one of their main points. Three weeks ago, I used the bank robbery analogy. This morning, you heard other analogies saying, just because you didn't get the money and, you know, it doesn't mean crime wasn't committed. If you rob a bank and you leave the sack of money on the table and you get out the door and you're arrested, you're going to be prosecuted for robbing a bank. Let me go to one other related point, and that is the telephone calls that came out this week. They were included in the report of the Intelligence Committee, and we didn't hear about them before. We only knew about them when the report came out. Those telephone calls are really important. What do you think? Who is hyphen one? Who is hyphen one? It's a good bet that hyphen one is Trump. What do you think of those calls? They mean much? Well, we don't know. And again, if you want to spend another six months getting at the detail of those calls and how they do interplay to this whole thing, fine. But it's going to work against the Democrats because we're not talking about policies in the election. The Republicans are right about one thing, and it was mentioned this morning that is, this is all about the speed of which this impeachment is taking place. What is speedy? And is speedy for a reason? And they cited it because of the 2020 election. Well, that's true. It's happening fast because everyone knows that when you delay tactics by tying things up in the courts and refusing to answer subpoenas for witnesses and documents, you're playing the long, you know, you're playing the end game. I agree. Absolutely. If you don't want to respond to subpoenas. And so the Republicans are right. This is speedy for a reason. So let's agree with that. The other thing is, you know, they're playing the cards to say, well, you don't know actually what happened on the calls. This is not direct evidence. And you can't infer anything from the calls. Well, yes, you can. You can infer a lot from the calls. The calls where you have to take them in the context of what else was happening and the people who made the calls. There's circumstantial evidence of exactly what the Democrats have been trying to prove. So I take them as serious evidence, circumstantial evidence. If I were the judge, I would so advise the jury. This is circumstantial evidence. And it supports the other evidence. What do you think, Cynthia? Well, I don't think it is circumstantial. I think that the transcript very clearly states exactly what he expected and what he wanted and what he was going to give them for it. And then we had a number of witnesses that came forward that did say, very specifically, they heard firsthand. It's not circumstantial. I'm not talking about the call of July 25, Cynthia. I'm talking about the five or six calls that are shown in the report that came out a couple days ago. Right. I do understand that and I'm getting there. What I see with these calls is a very specific connection. And that's one of the things the Republicans have been saying is that we don't have the connection to Trump, but we do. So we have all of these witnesses that have firsthand, not circumstantial. And then we have these telephone calls that connect all of the dots together. And I don't think it's going to take a lot of time to connect those. And so I'm glad they put them in there. And I'm glad that we didn't have them out there before now so that the Republicans could have a chance to create a false narrative to put forward. Okay, let's go to one last point. We have time for one last area. And that is your friend, Bill Barr. I like how you put that. There have been interesting news points this week about that, how he disagrees with his own report. Can you talk about that? Well, sure. Michael Horowitz, who's with the Department of Justice, will be publishing a report probably next week about this investigation of Russia interference in the 2016 election. And his own DAJ is conducting this investigation as per required or requested by Trump many, many months ago, remember? And so William Barr disagrees with Horowitz finding that the FBI had enough information in July of 2016 that would justify the launching of this investigation of Russia's interference. So he's already made overtures on that basic premise of this entire report. So we'll see how that manifests itself here in the next week or so, how he's going to further communicate his reluctance to sign on to this report and or this critical point. Well, it seems to me that Trump's initiative about distraction, which we talked about, includes also this funny investigation that he's trying to create into the origins of the Mueller appointment, the Mueller report. And I mean, it's really troubling because it's so obvious what he's trying to do, A, create a distraction, B, undermine that report, and do an assassination on Mueller and all the people that Mueller talked to, and just confuse everybody about everything. Investigation here, investigation there. Come up the works. So the question is whether that is going to work with the American people. So far it looks to me like it's kind of a joke that people aren't taking it seriously. Do you think they might be? Well, that's tough question. It's packed with a lot of sub questions. And I said it before, I think a great portion of this country and the voters are in their silos. It doesn't matter what they hear. They've already made up their mind either Trump is, you know, should not be impeached or Trump should be impeached. We're now talking about a very sliver of a thin sliver of independent voters or potential Republicans that are disenchanted with Trump that have an open mind to the facts, the data, the evidence presented. So we're not talking about a large slice of Americana here. We're talking very narrow piece. And that will those people would determine how this thing goes one way or the other. Cynthia, you know, it seems like we've come to the point where the jury is the public. And the public includes the base. And the base may be more, you know, forceful perhaps then than the wall flowers who sit and watch to observe. And I guess the question is, do you think that if there was a real mistake, a tactical era by Trump in these distractions, or a tactical era by him and foreign policy, which I think he's fully capable any day. Could that change the way the jury, so to speak, including the base will vote. And when I say vote, I mean, talk to their representatives in the Senate. Do you think there's any hope for that or you agree with Tim? Oh, goodness. Well, I always try to hold up hope, right, that there's hope for our country and that that these Republicans will try to put forward their country over party. And right now what I see is a bunch of Republicans with smug looks on their faces, not interested at all into what the facts are that are involved. What they care about is, you know, presenting their false narrative. And that's the part that really worries me. And we have to remember in the Nixon impeachment, his base stayed loyal all the way till the end. Even after the Supreme Court had ruled that he had to turn over the evidence that he had, that he was obstructing with. And so, you know, I don't know. I think a lot of people have drank the Kool-Aid and it's going to be too late for them to ever come back around. Okay, we're out of time, Cynthia. Tim, great discussion. Thank you, Jerry. There's plenty of material for next week. I promise you that. Down on it. Down on it. I'm shaking hands with everybody now. Aloha, you guys. Aloha.