"Is anyone really surprised that the public doesn't support impeaching the president on the basis of a report that people have not read?" the New Yorker's Susan Glasser said.
June 7, 2019

You could tell Jeff Toobin was really frustrated with the endless Democratic arguments about whether to hold impeachment hearings.

"This sort of process arguments about how we should do it, or when we should do it. Hold some hearings and talk about the substance of the investigation, not this process talk. It's June already," he said.

"And, you know, the Intelligence committee hasn't held any serious hearings, Oversight has held a couple. The Michael Cohen hearing was a serious, important hearing. the Judiciary committee hasn't held any significant hearings about investigating the president. Do that, don't talk about this!" Toobin said.

"And you can find people that has no privilege argument. Corey Lewandowski has no argument for privilege. He wouldn't be able to refuse a subpoena," John Berman said.

Ever-cynical Villager Frank Bruni sniped about Jerry Nadler wanting to be the center of attention if there were centralized hearings.

"I think that's a point worth making and that's one of the things going on here. But I also think nothing that Nadler is saying directly addresses Nancy Pelosi's hesitation here, which she thinks this is a potential political loser. So everything he's saying is an interesting argument if you're going to move forward and all that, but he hasn't addressed that question. Is this a smart political play for Democrats in terms of what happens for Democrats in 2020?" Bruni said.

"You know, Susan, that 59 of the members believe that talking about it out loud, having hearings, will be politically advantageous, whereas Nancy Pelosi thinks she's seen this movie before and that beginning impeachment investigations will ultimately re-elect Donald Trump," Camerota said.

"You know, it's a really circular argument. If you don't have an investigation and an unearthing of the facts and element, how are you supposed to get people to support something that you haven't yet established in an authoritative, public way -- needs to be done," said Susan Glasser, who writes for the New Yorker.

"And that's what's striking to me is Democrats have been engaged in this circular argument rather than actually looking at the facts. I was recently on Capitol Hill and I was stunned that even many members of Congress, Democratic members of Congress, critics of the president, were saying to me, 'Well, yeah, I haven't really gotten through the whole Mueller report. I'm working on it. It's very interesting.'

"And when Mueller gave his statement last week, what did you find in the polls? You found many people, even Republicans, saying 'I wasn't aware of what was in this report.' And they seem to react to the gravitas of the statement as offered by Mueller. So it's surprising that he hasn't chosen to testify about his own work.

"But if even Democratic members of Congress have not read this report, I think, is anyone really surprised that the public doesn't support impeaching the president on the basis of a report that people have not read? That the public hasn't heard more about? That there haven't been hearings on?"

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