democracynow--2020-01-21--National Archives Doctored Photo of 2017 Women's March to Blur Messages Critical of Trump

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Well , the National Archives and Records Administration apologized Saturday for doctoring a photo of the 2017 Women ’ s March to remove criticism of President Trump .
The shocking revelation that the agency — which calls itself the country ’ s , quote , “ record keeper ” — had altered the image were first reported in The Washington Post last week .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ : American Women and the Vote , ” the National Archives displayed a large image of the first Women ’ s March .
But signs referencing Trump had been blurred to remove his name , including a poster reading “ God Hates Trump ” and another reading “ Trump and GOP , hands off women.
” AMY GOODMAN : Signs in the photo referencing female anatomy were also blurred .
One sign reading “ If my vagina could shoot bullets , it ’ d be less REGULATED ” had the word “ vagina @ @ @ @ @ @ @ word “ pussy ” from a sign reading “ This Pussy Grabs Back.
” The National Archives initially stood by its decision to edit the photo , telling The Washington Post the changes were made , quote , “ so as not to engage in current political controversy.
” Archives spokeswoman Miriam Kleiman said , “ Modifying the image was an attempt on our part to keep the focus on the records.
” But Saturday , as tens of thousands in Washington , D.C. , and across the country took to the streets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , officials at the archive were seen flipping over the image at the exhibit .
An apology went up in its place .
It began , “ We made a mistake.
” Well , for more , we ’ re joined in our New York studio by Louise Melling , deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union .
Welcome to Democracy Now !
It ’ s great to have you with us .
Respond to what ’ s happened .
I mean , the actual head of the National Archive was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Good morning .
Lovely to be here today .
As you said , the job of the National Archives is to record history .
Its job is not to manipulate history and , in particular , to manipulate history so as to obliterate critiques of the president .
As you just pointed out , the archives has come out and apologized .
That ’ s an important first move , but it ’ s completely insufficient .
What we need now from archives is an accounting of who made this decision , why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , have they done this before ?
AMY GOODMAN : Oh , interesting .
No , I mean , they changed the meaning of the photo .
AMY GOODMAN : When you have a poster that says “ God hates Trump ” and you blur out “ Trump , ” it makes you look like someone is carrying a poster that just says “ God hates.
” LOUISE MELLING : Absolutely , absolutely .
I mean , they changed history .
I mean , they are whiting out criticism .
They are whiting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Well , the other aspect of this , though , is your take on their initial reasons for doing this .
Even if they had some concerns , they should have at least had some kind of explanation at the exhibition or chosen a different photograph .
Why not just simply choose a different photograph ?
LOUISE MELLING : I can ’ t imagine an explanation that ’ s sufficient for the National Archives to doctor and alter photographs that are part of an exhibit .
They ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ march .
Their job , again , is — their job is to record history , to show us history .
Their job is not — what they did , as you said , was to manipulate history .
What they did was to obliterate criticism of the president .
What they did was to obliterate references , just references , to women ’ s bodies , as if to say that those things are not acceptable .
If we can ’ t trust the archives to actually be accurate , what can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were talking earlier about faith in democracy , faith in institutions .
That ’ s essential to democracy , to our full functioning .
And this is one institution , I think , where we clearly thought the job was more basic perhaps than others , like , and here they are altering photographs .
It ’ s Orwellian .
AMY GOODMAN : And talk about the fact that this is all discovered by a Washington Post reporter who goes over to the archive as the women are marching all over the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Joe Heim from The Washington Post , who reports in his Twitter account and then in a story that he had gone over to the archives researching a story , he noticed the photograph as he walked by , he noticed that there were images who blurred , checked out the credits on the photograph , went back to the office , working with a photographer from the Post who he ’ s credited also in his Twitter account , and then uncovers and reveals and tells us all about what happened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ happenstance , and thank goodness he was there .
Thank goodness he did the homework , and thank goodness he publicized it .
AMY GOODMAN : And what has the archive responded to the ACLU , your demand for an explanation ?
LOUISE MELLING : I have seen nothing other than the statement that it ’ s a mistake .
And I will say , as to mistake , like , when I think about mistake , mistake is if I spilled coffee on the photo .
This was an affirmative act .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ those images so as to blur and erase criticism of the president and criticism of — you know , words like “ vagina.
” AMY GOODMAN : Well , I want to thank you , Louise , for joining us .
Louise Melling , deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, the National Archives and Records Administration apologized Saturday for doctoring a photo of the 2017 Women’s March to remove criticism of President Trump. The shocking revelation that the agency — which calls itself the country’s, quote, “record keeper” — had altered the image were first reported in The Washington Post last week. In an exhibit called “Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote,” the National Archives displayed a large image of the first Women’s March. But signs referencing Trump had been blurred to remove his name, including a poster reading “God Hates Trump” and another reading “Trump and GOP, hands off women.”
AMY GOODMAN: Signs in the photo referencing female anatomy were also blurred. One sign reading “If my vagina could shoot bullets, it’d be less REGULATED” had the word “vagina” blurred out. Another erased the word “pussy” from a sign reading “This Pussy Grabs Back.”
The National Archives initially stood by its decision to edit the photo, telling The Washington Post the changes were made, quote, “so as not to engage in current political controversy.” Archives spokeswoman Miriam Kleiman said, “Modifying the image was an attempt on our part to keep the focus on the records.” But Saturday, as tens of thousands in Washington, D.C., and across the country took to the streets for the fourth Women’s March, officials at the archive were seen flipping over the image at the exhibit. An apology went up in its place. It began, “We made a mistake.”
Well, for more, we’re joined in our New York studio by Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Respond to what’s happened. I mean, the actual head of the National Archive was an Obama appointee.
LOUISE MELLING: Good morning. Lovely to be here today. As you said, the job of the National Archives is to record history. Its job is not to manipulate history and, in particular, to manipulate history so as to obliterate critiques of the president. As you just pointed out, the archives has come out and apologized. That’s an important first move, but it’s completely insufficient. What we need now from archives is an accounting of who made this decision, why they made this decision. And really, have they done this before?
AMY GOODMAN: Oh, interesting. No, I mean, they changed the meaning of the photo.
LOUISE MELLING: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: When you have a poster that says “God hates Trump” and you blur out “Trump,” it makes you look like someone is carrying a poster that just says “God hates.”
LOUISE MELLING: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, they changed history. I mean, they are whiting out criticism. They are whiting out and erasing women’s bodies.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, the other aspect of this, though, is your take on their initial reasons for doing this. Even if they had some concerns, they should have at least had some kind of explanation at the exhibition or chosen a different photograph. Why not just simply choose a different photograph?
LOUISE MELLING: I can’t imagine an explanation that’s sufficient for the National Archives to doctor and alter photographs that are part of an exhibit. They’re putting up a photograph of the 2017 march. Their job, again, is — their job is to record history, to show us history. Their job is not — what they did, as you said, was to manipulate history. What they did was to obliterate criticism of the president. What they did was to obliterate references, just references, to women’s bodies, as if to say that those things are not acceptable. If we can’t trust the archives to actually be accurate, what can we trust? I mean, you were talking earlier about faith in democracy, faith in institutions. That’s essential to democracy, to our full functioning. And this is one institution, I think, where we clearly thought the job was more basic perhaps than others, like, and here they are altering photographs. It’s Orwellian.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the fact that this is all discovered by a Washington Post reporter who goes over to the archive as the women are marching all over the country.
LOUISE MELLING: Yes, kudos to Joe Heim from The Washington Post, who reports in his Twitter account and then in a story that he had gone over to the archives researching a story, he noticed the photograph as he walked by, he noticed that there were images who blurred, checked out the credits on the photograph, went back to the office, working with a photographer from the Post who he’s credited also in his Twitter account, and then uncovers and reveals and tells us all about what happened. I mean, it’s happenstance, and thank goodness he was there. Thank goodness he did the homework, and thank goodness he publicized it.
AMY GOODMAN: And what has the archive responded to the ACLU, your demand for an explanation?
LOUISE MELLING: I have seen nothing other than the statement that it’s a mistake. And I will say, as to mistake, like, when I think about mistake, mistake is if I spilled coffee on the photo. This was an affirmative act. Somebody made an affirmative choice to blur those images so as to blur and erase criticism of the president and criticism of — you know, words like “vagina.”
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Louise, for joining us. Louise Melling, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union.


democracynow--2020-01-21--Voting Rights Advocate: The Impeachment of Trump Is Needed to Protect Our Elections & Democracy

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The War and Peace Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
Today is the Senate impeachment trial day in Washington .
It is historic .
We ’ re speaking with Rick Perlstein , who has written several books on President Nixon and what happened to him , also has focused on what happened to President Clinton .
And we ’ re joined by Kristen Clarke .
She is head @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rights Under Law .
She ’ s in Washington , D.C. Kristen Clarke , today we ’ re expected to see a battle between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Minority Leader Chuck Schumer .
They will debate for several hours about what ’ s going to take place .
Then there ’ s going to be 24 hours for both the House managers , the prosecutors , the Democrats , and President Trump ’ s lawyers .
And as Mitch McConnell laid out the rules last night , these 24 hours @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each , 12-hour days , clearly wanting to make this extremely fast , then a debate over whether there will be witnesses .
And then there will be 16 hours where the senators will weigh in .
They are kind of like jurors .
They ’ re all sitting there , can ’ t have any phones .
They can ’ t actually get up and ask questions of both sides .
They have to hand their cards , their questions , to Chief Justice John Roberts , who will then read out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go on for about 16 hours .
Can you talk about the form of this , and also what information hasn ’ t been gotten out , or only recently ?
KRISTEN CLARKE : The process feels rigged and intentionally designed to keep the Senate and the public in the dark .
And that ’ s unfortunate .
No doubt , Senator McConnell has constructed the rules here to extend debate well into the night , during hours in which the public likely would miss the opportunity to hear the evidence and hear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the precedent that was set under Clinton .
It ’ s important that we remember that the Clinton trial lasted for about a month .
For President Johnson , that process extended for about two months .
The way the rules have been set forth here , we ’ re looking at the possibility of this process concluding by the middle of next week .
There has been resistance to entering the record that was built in the House into the record in the Senate .
And the way that Senator McConnell has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it virtually impossible for a majority to agree and come to consensus that we should hear from the witnesses , that we should hear from the facts .
This is particularly startling when you think about the very positions that Senator McConnell and Senator Lindsey Graham took during the Clinton impeachment .
Both of them were there , and both of them talked very openly and frankly about conducting a searching examination for the truth , about the importance of hearing from witnesses , about the importance of having a full and fair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concerned about the process that is underway , because at the end of the day we can ’ t forget the very issues that are the subject of this impeachment , which concerns allegations that a president interfered with our elections .
As somebody who has been practicing voting rights and election law for virtually every day of my professional life , I care deeply about the allegations at hand .
The idea that we ’ d have a president who would abuse his power and leverage a $ 400 million payment , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in order to secure from a foreign country a public announcement that is televised or broadcast that a political opponent is under criminal investigation is deeply troubling .
This is conduct that undermines democracy , that undermines the integrity of our elections , that destroys public confidence in the process .
So , you know , there is much debate about the rules and about new evidence circulating every day , but we can not forget the deeply troubling and startling allegations that are the very subject of this impeachment process .
JUAN @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get back to those rules for a second .
You mentioned , and Chuck Schumer has lamented , the reality that McConnell is proposing to go into the wee hours of the morning .
He wants to start the 12-hour process that 1 p.m. each day , so that it will go at least until 1:00 a.m. in the morning .
And also , the amazing revelation that the Republicans are going to control the camera angles of what ’ s actually seen on C-SPAN , is in an uproar over the fact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have even control over the cameras to be able to show individual senators or whatever from the hearing as the trial is ongoing .
KRISTEN CLARKE : There is no question that Senator McConnell is rigging the rules , that this is being set up in a way that feels like a sham process .
It is a gross departure from the precedent sent by the Clinton impeachment process , where there were 24 hours of debate that extended over a longer period of time .
By cramming and forcing the senators to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of time over two days , it is absolutely clear that they intend for the debate to extend into the wee hours of the night , when the public will miss the opportunity to hear the very important facts at issue here .
AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to go — stay on that issue of press restrictions .
The Republican Senate leaders have issued these restrictions on journalists covering the impeachment trial .
Press will be restricted to a pen and would be subjected to passing through a magnetometer that would check @ @ @ @ @ @ @ carrying electronic devices that would allow them to report on the trial from the press gallery .
Several news organizations have criticized the rules , as Juan mentioned , including C-SPAN , which is calling on the Senate to allow its cameras to document the trial .
A coalition of organizations , led by the ACLU , has written an open letter to Senate leaders , saying , quote , “ The public and the press should be empowered to bear and use computing devices to bear witness to history from the galleries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senate Chamber to position its cameras so that they can broadcast the historic proceedings throughout the country and make the archives available to the public .
… Journalists are not , as the Senate itself unanimously affirmed in 2018 , the 'enemy of the people , ' nor should they ever be treated as such by an institution in the United States government.
” Kristen Clarke , also being told that they can not talk to senators something like — I don ’ t know the exact time restriction — half an hour @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hour after , that means , especially the Republican senators , who won ’ t want to go on the record on this , know when they can run into the Senate chamber without being bothered , is how they would view it , by reporters .
But , of course , it ’ s our role to put our elected leaders on the record .
KRISTEN CLARKE : Yeah , I smell a potential legal challenge here .
I think the restrictions that have been imposed on the press and that are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their job are deeply troubling and go to the heart of the First Amendment .
So we ’ ll see how that plays out .
But no doubt , when you think about the effort to stifle the public ’ s ability to follow and observe this process , when you think about the restrictions on the press , when you think about Senator McConnell ’ s rules , which are intended to not shine light on the evidence and the fact but are constructed to keep the public in the dark and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in secrecy , you know , it almost feels like we are witnessing the death of democracy here .
All of these issues — a public and open forum in Congress , free elections , a free press — really go to the heart of American democracy .
I think that what ’ s playing out here is deeply troubling .
And I hope that we can get the American public to focus again on the issues at hand , which really go to the heart of democracy .
We want elections where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , where candidates can compete freely and fairly .
And that ’ s critical to ensuring that at the end of the day that the public can have confidence in the outcome produced by our elections .
And the allegations levied against the president here are deeply troubling , are very concerning .
We ’ ve got about 286 days left until the November 2020 presidential election .
And what ’ s to keep him from doing this again ?
It ’ s important that the Senate do its job , that it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to bare all of the evidence , so that the public and the Senate can understand what the president did here and determine whether or not the president violated his oath of office and abused his power .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : I ’ m wondering if you could comment also on the announcement by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham last week that while the trial is ongoing , that there will be no meetings of the Senate Judiciary Committee , and the possible implications of that ?
KRISTEN CLARKE : This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we now mark three years into the Trump presidency , and President Trump has moved at lightning speed to fill vacancies across our federal court system , and has done so at a record-breaking pace .
When you compare the number of nominees named by President Trump three years into his presidency compared to President Obama at the same point , there is a stark disparity .
He has put in place two Supreme Court justices , 50 judges on the federal circuit court — Obama appointed 25 over that time period — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appointed about 97 during that same time period .
These are judges who are there for a lifetime .
These are judges who are overwhelmingly white and male .
They don ’ t reflect the diversity of our country .
These are judges who bear extremist records and raise real questions about their ability to hear issues that come before them impartially .
This development matters , because it is hard to imagine how the Senate could carry out the grave responsibility of reviewing the questions before them during the impeachment trial and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I am glad that Lindsey Graham has suspended the Judiciary Committee ’ s process during the time period , and hope that the senators will take all of their time and attention to uncover the evidence and facts at hand in this impeachment process .
I ’ m glad that the public will get a reprieve from President Trump ’ s dangerous judicial nominees during this time period .
AMY GOODMAN : I want to go to a video tweeted by the Senate Democrats showing remarks made by Senators Lindsey Graham and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he wasn ’ t at the time , during the Clinton impeachment trial .
AMY GOODMAN : So , that ’ s to the issue of witnesses .
Again , Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell now saying that they don ’ t want witnesses .
And now I want to go to play two clips of Alan Dershowitz , one of the newest members of Trump ’ s legal team .
This is Dershowitz speaking in 1998 in reference to the Clinton impeachment .
AMY GOODMAN : So , that ’ s Alan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is Dershowitz Sunday appearing on ABC This Week , referencing former Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Curtis ’ defense of President Andrew Johnson during his impeachment trial in 1868 .
AMY GOODMAN : So , there you have the complete turnaround of these men .
Rick Perlstein , you ’ ve covered Nixon .
You covered the Clinton impeachment .
Talk about what Dershowitz is now saying and what the others are saying around witnesses , how it played out with Clinton .
RICK PERLSTEIN : Right .
A wise man once defined conservatism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ covers but does not bind certain people , and binds but does not cover others .
In other words , it ’ s about protecting the powerful , and procedural neutrality , fairness , logic , a lack of hypocrisy has nothing to do with it .
And that , you know , really goes back to , again , these media restrictions .
It ’ s not just that the public is going to be kept in the dark .
What ’ s happening is that Republicans are being protected from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forced to go on camera and say that black is white , that up is down , that two plus two equals five .
They ’ re being protected from the judgment of history .
I mean , if the world ends up in smoking ruins because of Donald Trump , these guys do not want to be recorded in the history books as the people who did not stand up .
The Clinton trial shows , actually , quite the difference between this very flawed Democratic Party and this deeply corrupt Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the reason this happened was because Clinton was willing to allow his attorney general to replace an independent counsel when that counsel ’ s term was up and that the attorney general , Janet Reno , chose a partisan Republican .
That ’ s how committed the Democratic Party was to fairness .
You know , in the same way , when the Democrats took over the Senate Judiciary Committee , Patrick Leahy gave enormous latitude to allow Republicans to pink — blue-slip , or veto , Democratic judges — right ?
— @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans have no commitment to procedural neutrality .
They ’ re only interested in , basically , a Führerprinzip , like the one in Germany : The leader is always right ; we ’ re going to protect him at all terms .
And whether our republic can survive this sort of depredation is very much in question .
The walls are closing in .
The hour is very late .
AMY GOODMAN : Finally , Kristen Clarke , you are a voting rights leader in this country .
How do you answer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
If people don ’ t like what President Trump has done , vote him out of office in the next election ” ?
KRISTEN CLARKE : We need fair rules .
We need a level playing field in order for our democracy to work .
And when you have a public official — here , the president — who abuses his office and abuses his power to rig the outcome , to undermine a political opponent because they are afraid to compete on that level playing field , then we should all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the outcomes are ones that people feel are fair , outcomes where they can have confidence .
And here , I think it ’ s important that we all ask : With 286 days to go , what ’ s to stop President Trump from doing it again ?
It ’ s important that the Senate do its job , lay bare the evidence , and that we determine whether or not he indeed abused his office and withheld aid to Ukraine in order to buy a public pronouncement about a criminal investigation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not conduct that we should tolerate in American democracy today .
AMY GOODMAN : Kristen Clarke , we want to thank you for being with us , president and executive director of the Lawyers ’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law , and Rick Perlstein , author of The Invisible Bridge : The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan and Nixonland : The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America .
When we come back , the National Archives erases history ?
Stay with us .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Today is the Senate impeachment trial day in Washington. It is historic. We’re speaking with Rick Perlstein, who has written several books on President Nixon and what happened to him, also has focused on what happened to President Clinton. And we’re joined by Kristen Clarke. She is head of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She’s in Washington, D.C.
Kristen Clarke, today we’re expected to see a battle between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. They will debate for several hours about what’s going to take place. Then there’s going to be 24 hours for both the House managers, the prosecutors, the Democrats, and President Trump’s lawyers. And as Mitch McConnell laid out the rules last night, these 24 hours each have to be over two days each, 12-hour days, clearly wanting to make this extremely fast, then a debate over whether there will be witnesses. And then there will be 16 hours where the senators will weigh in. They are kind of like jurors. They’re all sitting there, can’t have any phones. They can’t actually get up and ask questions of both sides. They have to hand their cards, their questions, to Chief Justice John Roberts, who will then read out their questions. And apparently this will go on for about 16 hours. Can you talk about the form of this, and also what information hasn’t been gotten out, or only recently?
KRISTEN CLARKE: The process feels rigged and intentionally designed to keep the Senate and the public in the dark. And that’s unfortunate. No doubt, Senator McConnell has constructed the rules here to extend debate well into the night, during hours in which the public likely would miss the opportunity to hear the evidence and hear the facts. This is not following the precedent that was set under Clinton. It’s important that we remember that the Clinton trial lasted for about a month. For President Johnson, that process extended for about two months. The way the rules have been set forth here, we’re looking at the possibility of this process concluding by the middle of next week. There has been resistance to entering the record that was built in the House into the record in the Senate. And the way that Senator McConnell has constructed the rules is intended to make it virtually impossible for a majority to agree and come to consensus that we should hear from the witnesses, that we should hear from the facts.
This is particularly startling when you think about the very positions that Senator McConnell and Senator Lindsey Graham took during the Clinton impeachment. Both of them were there, and both of them talked very openly and frankly about conducting a searching examination for the truth, about the importance of hearing from witnesses, about the importance of having a full and fair trial.
So I’m deeply concerned about the process that is underway, because at the end of the day we can’t forget the very issues that are the subject of this impeachment, which concerns allegations that a president interfered with our elections. As somebody who has been practicing voting rights and election law for virtually every day of my professional life, I care deeply about the allegations at hand. The idea that we’d have a president who would abuse his power and leverage a $400 million payment, that had been authorized by Congress, in order to secure from a foreign country a public announcement that is televised or broadcast that a political opponent is under criminal investigation is deeply troubling. This is conduct that undermines democracy, that undermines the integrity of our elections, that destroys public confidence in the process. So, you know, there is much debate about the rules and about new evidence circulating every day, but we cannot forget the deeply troubling and startling allegations that are the very subject of this impeachment process.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to get back to those rules for a second. You mentioned, and Chuck Schumer has lamented, the reality that McConnell is proposing to go into the wee hours of the morning. He wants to start the 12-hour process that 1 p.m. each day, so that it will go at least until 1:00 a.m. in the morning. And also, the amazing revelation that the Republicans are going to control the camera angles of what’s actually seen on C-SPAN, is in an uproar over the fact that basically they’re not going have even control over the cameras to be able to show individual senators or whatever from the hearing as the trial is ongoing.
KRISTEN CLARKE: There is no question that Senator McConnell is rigging the rules, that this is being set up in a way that feels like a sham process. It is a gross departure from the precedent sent by the Clinton impeachment process, where there were 24 hours of debate that extended over a longer period of time. By cramming and forcing the senators to sit for this length of a period of time over two days, it is absolutely clear that they intend for the debate to extend into the wee hours of the night, when the public will miss the opportunity to hear the very important facts at issue here.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go — stay on that issue of press restrictions. The Republican Senate leaders have issued these restrictions on journalists covering the impeachment trial. Press will be restricted to a pen and would be subjected to passing through a magnetometer that would check to make sure they’re not carrying electronic devices that would allow them to report on the trial from the press gallery. Several news organizations have criticized the rules, as Juan mentioned, including C-SPAN, which is calling on the Senate to allow its cameras to document the trial. A coalition of organizations, led by the ACLU, has written an open letter to Senate leaders, saying, quote, “The public and the press should be empowered to bear and use computing devices to bear witness to history from the galleries. C-SPAN should be allowed into the Senate Chamber to position its cameras so that they can broadcast the historic proceedings throughout the country and make the archives available to the public. … Journalists are not, as the Senate itself unanimously affirmed in 2018, the 'enemy of the people,' nor should they ever be treated as such by an institution in the United States government.” Kristen Clarke, also being told that they cannot talk to senators something like — I don’t know the exact time restriction — half an hour before the proceeding and a half an hour after, that means, especially the Republican senators, who won’t want to go on the record on this, know when they can run into the Senate chamber without being bothered, is how they would view it, by reporters. But, of course, it’s our role to put our elected leaders on the record.
KRISTEN CLARKE: Yeah, I smell a potential legal challenge here. I think the restrictions that have been imposed on the press and that are limiting and stifling their ability to do their job are deeply troubling and go to the heart of the First Amendment. So we’ll see how that plays out. But no doubt, when you think about the effort to stifle the public’s ability to follow and observe this process, when you think about the restrictions on the press, when you think about Senator McConnell’s rules, which are intended to not shine light on the evidence and the fact but are constructed to keep the public in the dark and to keep what played out here shrouded in secrecy, you know, it almost feels like we are witnessing the death of democracy here.
All of these issues — a public and open forum in Congress, free elections, a free press — really go to the heart of American democracy. I think that what’s playing out here is deeply troubling. And I hope that we can get the American public to focus again on the issues at hand, which really go to the heart of democracy. We want elections where there’s a level playing field, where candidates can compete freely and fairly. And that’s critical to ensuring that at the end of the day that the public can have confidence in the outcome produced by our elections.
And the allegations levied against the president here are deeply troubling, are very concerning. We’ve got about 286 days left until the November 2020 presidential election. And what’s to keep him from doing this again? It’s important that the Senate do its job, that it air all of the facts, lay to bare all of the evidence, so that the public and the Senate can understand what the president did here and determine whether or not the president violated his oath of office and abused his power.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’m wondering if you could comment also on the announcement by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham last week that while the trial is ongoing, that there will be no meetings of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the possible implications of that?
KRISTEN CLARKE: This is a very significant development. So, we now mark three years into the Trump presidency, and President Trump has moved at lightning speed to fill vacancies across our federal court system, and has done so at a record-breaking pace. When you compare the number of nominees named by President Trump three years into his presidency compared to President Obama at the same point, there is a stark disparity. He has put in place two Supreme Court justices, 50 judges on the federal circuit court — Obama appointed 25 over that time period — and 133 district court judges. Obama appointed about 97 during that same time period. These are judges who are there for a lifetime. These are judges who are overwhelmingly white and male. They don’t reflect the diversity of our country. These are judges who bear extremist records and raise real questions about their ability to hear issues that come before them impartially.
This development matters, because it is hard to imagine how the Senate could carry out the grave responsibility of reviewing the questions before them during the impeachment trial and properly vet judicial nominees for lifetime appointments. I am glad that Lindsey Graham has suspended the Judiciary Committee’s process during the time period, and hope that the senators will take all of their time and attention to uncover the evidence and facts at hand in this impeachment process. I’m glad that the public will get a reprieve from President Trump’s dangerous judicial nominees during this time period.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a video tweeted by the Senate Democrats showing remarks made by Senators Lindsey Graham and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, though he wasn’t at the time, during the Clinton impeachment trial.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: In every trial that there has ever been in the Senate regarding impeachment, witnesses were called.
SEN. MITCH McCONNELL: It’s not unusual to have a witness in a trial.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: If there’s any doubt, call witnesses.
SEN. MITCH McCONNELL: The crisis will only be resolved by a fair and sober search for the truth.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: When you have a witness, who was there, who was engaged in it, who was in the middle of it, telling you about what they were doing and why, it’s a totally different case, and it’s the difference between getting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
SEN. MITCH McCONNELL: It’s certainly not unusual to have a witness in an impeachment trial.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: But if we don’t get to call meaningful witnesses, direct witnesses to the point, is that you’re basically changing impeachment.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s to the issue of witnesses. Again, Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell now saying that they don’t want witnesses. And now I want to go to play two clips of Alan Dershowitz, one of the newest members of Trump’s legal team. This is Dershowitz speaking in 1998 in reference to the Clinton impeachment.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: It certainly doesn’t have to be a crime. If you have somebody who completely corrupts the office of president and who abuses trust and who poses great danger to our liberty, you don’t need a technical crime.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Alan Dershowitz in 1998 around Clinton. This is Dershowitz Sunday appearing on ABC This Week, referencing former Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Curtis’ defense of President Andrew Johnson during his impeachment trial in 1868.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: When you read the text of the Constitution, bribery — treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, “other” really means that crimes and misdemeanors must be of a kin — akin to treason and bribery. And he argued, very successfully, winning the case, that you needed proof of an actual crime. It needn’t be a statutory crime, but it has to be criminal behavior, criminal in nature.
AMY GOODMAN: So, there you have the complete turnaround of these men. Rick Perlstein, you’ve covered Nixon. You covered the Clinton impeachment. Talk about what Dershowitz is now saying and what the others are saying around witnesses, how it played out with Clinton.
RICK PERLSTEIN: Right. A wise man once defined conservatism as the ideology that says the law covers but does not bind certain people, and binds but does not cover others. In other words, it’s about protecting the powerful, and procedural neutrality, fairness, logic, a lack of hypocrisy has nothing to do with it.
And that, you know, really goes back to, again, these media restrictions. It’s not just that the public is going to be kept in the dark. What’s happening is that Republicans are being protected from the humiliation and the political damage of being forced to go on camera and say that black is white, that up is down, that two plus two equals five. They’re being protected from the judgment of history. I mean, if the world ends up in smoking ruins because of Donald Trump, these guys do not want to be recorded in the history books as the people who did not stand up.
The Clinton trial shows, actually, quite the difference between this very flawed Democratic Party and this deeply corrupt Republican Party. When Clinton was impeached, the reason this happened was because Clinton was willing to allow his attorney general to replace an independent counsel when that counsel’s term was up and that the attorney general, Janet Reno, chose a partisan Republican. That’s how committed the Democratic Party was to fairness. You know, in the same way, when the Democrats took over the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy gave enormous latitude to allow Republicans to pink — blue-slip, or veto, Democratic judges — right? — this commitment to procedural neutrality.
The Republicans have no commitment to procedural neutrality. They’re only interested in, basically, a Führerprinzip, like the one in Germany: The leader is always right; we’re going to protect him at all terms. And whether our republic can survive this sort of depredation is very much in question. The walls are closing in. The hour is very late.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Kristen Clarke, you are a voting rights leader in this country. How do you answer those who say, “Why impeachment? If people don’t like what President Trump has done, vote him out of office in the next election”?
KRISTEN CLARKE: We need fair rules. We need a level playing field in order for our democracy to work. And when you have a public official — here, the president — who abuses his office and abuses his power to rig the outcome, to undermine a political opponent because they are afraid to compete on that level playing field, then we should all be concerned. We want elections where the outcomes are ones that people feel are fair, outcomes where they can have confidence. And here, I think it’s important that we all ask: With 286 days to go, what’s to stop President Trump from doing it again? It’s important that the Senate do its job, lay bare the evidence, and that we determine whether or not he indeed abused his office and withheld aid to Ukraine in order to buy a public pronouncement about a criminal investigation in a political opponent. That is not conduct that we should tolerate in American democracy today.
AMY GOODMAN: Kristen Clarke, we want to thank you for being with us, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Rick Perlstein, author of The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.
When we come back, the National Archives erases history? Stay with us.


democracynow--2020-01-21--A Show Trial? As Trump Impeachment Trial Begins, Mitch McConnell Accused of Staging a Cover-Up

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : It ’ s a historic day in Washington as the Senate opens just the third impeachment trial of a U.S. president in the history .
Under proposed rules by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell , each side will be given 24 hours over two days for opening arguments beginning on Wednesday .
Then senators will have 16 hours for questions and four hours for debate .
At that point , the Senate will vote on whether to hear from any new witnesses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ McConnell of trying to rush the impeachment process .
AMY GOODMAN : This comes as President Trump has added several prominent lawyers to his legal team , including former independent counsel Kenneth Starr , whose probe led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton , and former Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz .
In 2008 , Starr and Dershowitz helped serial sex predator Jeffrey Epstein receive a sweetheart plea deal when he was arrested on sex trafficking charges in Florida .
One of Epstein ’ s victims also accused Dershowitz of sexually assaulting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ charge .
Starr is also the former president of Baylor University .
He was ousted from the job over the school ’ s mishandling of reports of sexual assault by football players .
On Monday , the White House released a 110-page brief claiming that impeachment is , quote , “ a dangerous perversion of the Constitution that the Senate should swiftly and roundly condemn , ” unquote .
In other impeachment news , House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff , who ’ s one of the impeachment managers , has accused the CIA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the impeachment trial .
We ’ re joined now by two guests .
Rick Perlstein is a historian and the author of several books , including The Invisible Bridge : The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan , which covered the Watergate investigations and Nixon ’ s impeachment — of Nixon , who actually resigned before he was impeached .
Epstein ’ s [ sic ] forthcoming book is titled Reaganland : America ’ s Right Turn , 1976-1980 .
He joins us from Chicago .
And in Washington , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and executive director of the Lawyers ’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law .
Rick Epstein [ sic ] , let ’ s begin with you .
You covered the — rather , Rick Perlstein , let ’ s begin with you .
I ’ m sorry for getting that wrong .
Can you talk about what we are about to see ?
RICK PERLSTEIN : A show trial .
I ’ m really struck by the fact that the guy running this , Mitch McConnell , comes out of this tradition of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go back and study .
The fact of the matter is , for most of the 20th century , and of course all of the 19th , the South was basically an authoritarian society .
It wasn ’ t really a democracy .
And it used all kinds of strategies and stratagems to evade democratic accountability .
I mean , when they said , you know , African Americans can ’ t vote , the laws didn ’ t say African Americans can ’ t vote .
They used things like literacy tests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They used intimidation .
So , much the same way now , we see the Republicans running the Senate manipulating the rules in order to make it impossible to basically achieve a fair trial or anything approaching justice .
So , we have this situation where they ’ re only going to be able to introduce the actual evidence and witnesses after they make their arguments .
So that means anything that comes out tomorrow , we won ’ t be able to see .
You know , Lev Parnas says that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ present his evidence of Rudy Giuliani ’ s implication in these events to the Southern District of New York .
That probably has something to do with William Barr .
So , from every angle , we see the kind of walls closing in .
The big picture , I think , is , you can think of the kind of right-wing takeover of American politics as the Southernization of the United States .
And this is sort of like what you saw when Southern juries would always acquit whites accused of crimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans accused of crimes against whites , no matter the evidence .
Right ?
So we see this kind of pattern , that ’ s deeply embedded in American history , rising up to the highest levels of American justice .
And it ’ s horrifying , and we shouldn ’ t have any illusions about what ’ s going on here .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Rick Perlstein , this whole issue of witnesses , and especially witnesses from the administration who might have direct knowledge of the president ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Or for those who don ’ t know of the specifics of what happened during the Nixon era , although Nixon never got actually impeached — JUAN GONZÁLEZ : — he resigned before impeachment — but several key White House aides , Haldeman , John Dean — JUAN GONZÁLEZ : — testified before Congress about what actually happened — JUAN GONZÁLEZ : — or at least submitted themselves to questioning .
RICK PERLSTEIN : Right .
And that was basically to keep themselves out of jail , to basically look good for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guy named John Sirica , who was one of the heroes , because , basically , he was kind of expected to kind of go along with the White House ’ s cover-up , and he basically , at every step in his trial , pushed further and said , “ No , the White House must be involved .
The White House must be involved.
” So , as White House figures basically faced the music , they submitted themselves to testimony .
And Richard Nixon , at first , tried basically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a novel doctrine at the time .
Sam Ervin , who was the head of the Senate Watergate Committee , called it “ executive poppycock.
” But eventually people just said , “ Look , we ’ re going to save our hides.
” And it was a different Republican Party then .
Some of the people on the Senate Watergate Committee , some of the Republicans , were actually quite active in investigating Nixon .
One of the members , Lowell Weicker , was independently wealthy and funded his own investigation efforts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the impeachment .
That happened the next year in the House , so it was kind of not quite a parallel .
But what you saw was a lot closer to an actual fair , open , good-faith inquiry .
Now , even then , there were still people who behaved like Fox News Republicans and refused to consider the evidence no matter what .
And those people were all basically voted out of office in 1974 .
But it ’ s very memorable that one of the Republicans who was defending Nixon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Earl Landgrebe from Indiana , went on the Today show the morning before Richard Nixon resigned , after the smoking-gun tape came out proving that Nixon was directly lying to not only to the American people but his congressional supporters , and he said , “ I ’ m going to support my president no matter what , even if you have to take me out and get shot .
Don ’ t confuse me with the facts.
” It ’ s almost like Earl Landgrebe would be a Republican leader now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Republican Party .
AMY GOODMAN : Can you talk more about that moment ?
I mean , it was quite something .
And a lot of people refer to Nixon ’ s impeachment , but in fact , in the end , he wasn ’ t — AMY GOODMAN : — because he resigned .
But that moment of the parade of Republicans that went to see him in the White House ?
RICK PERLSTEIN : That ’ s right .
Well , so , basically , the House underwent an impeachment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That was the time when Barbara Jordan gave her extraordinary speech about the Constitution .
And as this is happening , the Supreme Court is deciding a very epochal case , The United States v. Nixon , in which they ’ re deciding basically whether Richard Nixon has the right to extend executive privilege to cover up his own crimes .
And they say , “ Well , executive privilege exists .
It ’ s important for a president to be able to have private conversations with his aides .
But you can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of jail , you know , to avoid being kicked out of office.
” And that forced 60 more tapes to be forced into the public record .
And on one of those tapes was this smoking gun that showed that Nixon had been involved in the cover-up in an extremely direct way within hours of the Watergate burglary .
And after that happened , he shedded — he shed support , and senators basically let it be known that they were going to vote to remove him from office .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dramatic .
First of all , in the final impeachment vote that day , after the first vote , the chairman , Peter Rodino , another hero , a congressman from New Jersey , said , “ We have to clear this room , because we have reports that a plane might be heading here.
” People were afraid that a plane was going to crash into the Capitol .
That was of course a rumor .
That didn ’ t happen .
But that just kind of tells the fear and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were closing in towards dictatorship in America .
And very closely after that , yes , the Republican leadership , most famously Barry Goldwater , who had been the last Republican presidential nominee , but , more importantly , the leaders of the House and Senate of the minority , came to Richard Nixon and spoke to him in a language that he understood , which was politics , which was votes .
They said he didn ’ t have enough votes to survive and that he would suffer a historic humiliation if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s when he decided that the chips were down and he had to quit .
AMY GOODMAN : Rick Perlstein , we ’ re going to continue with you , author of several books , including The Invisible Bridge : The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan and Nixonland : The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America .
We ’ ll also speak to Kristen Clarke about what was not handed over to the House .
Is the Justice Department involved in a cover-up ?
She ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lawyers ’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law .
Stay with us .
AMY GOODMAN : “ A Rapist in Your Path , ” the anti-rape anthem , was developed by the Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis and has since gone viral .
It was performed all over the country this weekend at the Women ’ s Marches .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: It’s a historic day in Washington as the Senate opens just the third impeachment trial of a U.S. president in the history. Under proposed rules by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, each side will be given 24 hours over two days for opening arguments beginning on Wednesday. Then senators will have 16 hours for questions and four hours for debate. At that point, the Senate will vote on whether to hear from any new witnesses. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused McConnell of trying to rush the impeachment process.
MINORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER: A trial where there’s no evidence, no existing record and no new evidence, no witnesses, no documents, that isn’t a trial at all. It’s a cover-up.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as President Trump has added several prominent lawyers to his legal team, including former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, whose probe led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and former Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz. In 2008, Starr and Dershowitz helped serial sex predator Jeffrey Epstein receive a sweetheart plea deal when he was arrested on sex trafficking charges in Florida. One of Epstein’s victims also accused Dershowitz of sexually assaulting her. Dershowitz has long denied the charge. Starr is also the former president of Baylor University. He was ousted from the job over the school’s mishandling of reports of sexual assault by football players.
On Monday, the White House released a 110-page brief claiming that impeachment is, quote, “a dangerous perversion of the Constitution that the Senate should swiftly and roundly condemn,” unquote. In other impeachment news, House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, who’s one of the impeachment managers, has accused the CIA and NSA of withholding documents potentially relevant to the impeachment trial.
We’re joined now by two guests. Rick Perlstein is a historian and the author of several books, including The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, which covered the Watergate investigations and Nixon’s impeachment — of Nixon, who actually resigned before he was impeached. Epstein’s [sic] forthcoming book is titled Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980. He joins us from Chicago. And in Washington, Kristen Clarke is with us, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Rick Epstein [sic] , let’s begin with you. You covered the — rather, Rick Perlstein, let’s begin with you. I’m sorry for getting that wrong. Can you talk about what we are about to see?
RICK PERLSTEIN: A show trial. I’m really struck by the fact that the guy running this, Mitch McConnell, comes out of this tradition of Southern politics that all of us should go back and study. The fact of the matter is, for most of the 20th century, and of course all of the 19th, the South was basically an authoritarian society. It wasn’t really a democracy. And it used all kinds of strategies and stratagems to evade democratic accountability. I mean, when they said, you know, African Americans can’t vote, the laws didn’t say African Americans can’t vote. They used things like literacy tests. They used things like property qualifications. They used intimidation.
So, much the same way now, we see the Republicans running the Senate manipulating the rules in order to make it impossible to basically achieve a fair trial or anything approaching justice. So, we have this situation where they’re only going to be able to introduce the actual evidence and witnesses after they make their arguments. So that means anything that comes out tomorrow, we won’t be able to see. You know, Lev Parnas says that he’s not been able to present his evidence of Rudy Giuliani’s implication in these events to the Southern District of New York. That probably has something to do with William Barr. So, from every angle, we see the kind of walls closing in.
The big picture, I think, is, you can think of the kind of right-wing takeover of American politics as the Southernization of the United States. And this is sort of like what you saw when Southern juries would always acquit whites accused of crimes against African Americans and always convict African Americans accused of crimes against whites, no matter the evidence. Right? So we see this kind of pattern, that’s deeply embedded in American history, rising up to the highest levels of American justice. And it’s horrifying, and we shouldn’t have any illusions about what’s going on here.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rick Perlstein, this whole issue of witnesses, and especially witnesses from the administration who might have direct knowledge of the president’s actions, could you contrast that? Or for those who don’t know of the specifics of what happened during the Nixon era, although Nixon never got actually impeached —
RICK PERLSTEIN: Mm-hmm, that’s right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — he resigned before impeachment — but several key White House aides, Haldeman, John Dean —
RICK PERLSTEIN: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — testified before Congress about what actually happened —
RICK PERLSTEIN: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — or at least submitted themselves to questioning.
RICK PERLSTEIN: Right. And that was basically to keep themselves out of jail, to basically look good for the judge in the Watergate trial, a guy named John Sirica, who was one of the heroes, because, basically, he was kind of expected to kind of go along with the White House’s cover-up, and he basically, at every step in his trial, pushed further and said, “No, the White House must be involved. The White House must be involved.” So, as White House figures basically faced the music, they submitted themselves to testimony. And Richard Nixon, at first, tried basically to assert executive privilege, which was a novel doctrine at the time. Sam Ervin, who was the head of the Senate Watergate Committee, called it “executive poppycock.” But eventually people just said, “Look, we’re going to save our hides.”
And it was a different Republican Party then. Some of the people on the Senate Watergate Committee, some of the Republicans, were actually quite active in investigating Nixon. One of the members, Lowell Weicker, was independently wealthy and funded his own investigation efforts. Now, that wasn’t the impeachment. That happened the next year in the House, so it was kind of not quite a parallel. But what you saw was a lot closer to an actual fair, open, good-faith inquiry.
Now, even then, there were still people who behaved like Fox News Republicans and refused to consider the evidence no matter what. And those people were all basically voted out of office in 1974. But it’s very memorable that one of the Republicans who was defending Nixon to the end, a congressman named Earl Landgrebe from Indiana, went on the Today show the morning before Richard Nixon resigned, after the smoking-gun tape came out proving that Nixon was directly lying to not only to the American people but his congressional supporters, and he said, “I’m going to support my president no matter what, even if you have to take me out and get shot. Don’t confuse me with the facts.” It’s almost like Earl Landgrebe would be a Republican leader now, not just kind of an embarrassment to the Republican Party.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk more about that moment? I mean, it was quite something. And a lot of people refer to Nixon’s impeachment, but in fact, in the end, he wasn’t —
RICK PERLSTEIN: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: — because he resigned. But that moment of the parade of Republicans that went to see him in the White House?
RICK PERLSTEIN: That’s right. Well, so, basically, the House underwent an impeachment inquiry in the spring and summer. That was the time when Barbara Jordan gave her extraordinary speech about the Constitution. And as this is happening, the Supreme Court is deciding a very epochal case, The United States v. Nixon, in which they’re deciding basically whether Richard Nixon has the right to extend executive privilege to cover up his own crimes. And they say, “Well, executive privilege exists. It’s important for a president to be able to have private conversations with his aides. But you can’t basically use it to stay out of jail, you know, to avoid being kicked out of office.” And that forced 60 more tapes to be forced into the public record. And on one of those tapes was this smoking gun that showed that Nixon had been involved in the cover-up in an extremely direct way within hours of the Watergate burglary. And after that happened, he shedded — he shed support, and senators basically let it be known that they were going to vote to remove him from office.
And a couple things happened that were very dramatic. First of all, in the final impeachment vote that day, after the first vote, the chairman, Peter Rodino, another hero, a congressman from New Jersey, said, “We have to clear this room, because we have reports that a plane might be heading here.” People were afraid that a plane was going to crash into the Capitol. That was of course a rumor. That didn’t happen. But that just kind of tells the fear and the drama and the idea that the walls were closing in towards dictatorship in America. And very closely after that, yes, the Republican leadership, most famously Barry Goldwater, who had been the last Republican presidential nominee, but, more importantly, the leaders of the House and Senate of the minority, came to Richard Nixon and spoke to him in a language that he understood, which was politics, which was votes. They said he didn’t have enough votes to survive and that he would suffer a historic humiliation if he persevered. And so that’s when he decided that the chips were down and he had to quit.
AMY GOODMAN: Rick Perlstein, we’re going to continue with you, author of several books, including The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. We’ll also speak to Kristen Clarke about what was not handed over to the House. Is the Justice Department involved in a cover-up? She’s the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “A Rapist in Your Path,” the anti-rape anthem, was developed by the Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis and has since gone viral. It was performed all over the country this weekend at the Women’s Marches.


democracynow--2020-01-21--Headlines for January 21, 2020

Headlines for January 21, 2020

The impeachment trial of President Trump opens today in the US Senate .
It ’ s just the third impeachment trial of a president in U.S. history .
Democrats slammed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell late Monday after he proposed rules that would rush the trial timeline , forcing Democrats to make their case over just two 12-hour days .
Republicans would get the same amount of time .
Senators will then have 16 hours for questions and four hours for debate .
The rules also do not provide a guarantee that witnesses will be called to testify by forcing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans would have to side with Democrats in order to consider new witnesses and evidence .
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer accused McConnell of orchestrating a “ cover-up ” by rushing through the trial .
Bill Clinton ’ s Senate impeachment trial took over a month .
Ahead of today ’ s proceedings , Trump ’ s legal team called on senators Monday to “ swiftly reject ” the charges and acquit Trump .
Trump ’ s lawyers argue in a brief that the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ threshold for removing a president from office ” and would “ permanently weaken the presidency.
” Trump recently added prominent lawyers Kenneth Starr and former Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz to his legal team .
Both Starr and Dershowitz helped serial sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein receive a sweetheart plea deal in 2008 when he was arrested on sex trafficking charges .
One of Epstein ’ s victims also accused Dershowitz of sexually assaulting her , but Dershowitz has long denied the charge .
Kenneth Starr ’ s probe led to the impeachment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ argued in their own legal brief that Trump pressured a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 elections by withholding aid to Ukraine unless they announced investigations into his political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter .
Lead impeachment prosecutor Adam Schiff has accused the White House of pressuring the NSA and CIA to withhold records about Ukraine that could be relevant to the impeachment trial .
Meanwhile , several news organizations , including C-SPAN , have criticized rules restricting press access to the trial .

The impeachment trial of President Trump opens today in the US Senate. It’s just the third impeachment trial of a president in U.S. history. Democrats slammed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell late Monday after he proposed rules that would rush the trial timeline, forcing Democrats to make their case over just two 12-hour days. Republicans would get the same amount of time. Senators will then have 16 hours for questions and four hours for debate. The rules also do not provide a guarantee that witnesses will be called to testify by forcing a vote on the issue. Four Republicans would have to side with Democrats in order to consider new witnesses and evidence. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer accused McConnell of orchestrating a “cover-up” by rushing through the trial. Bill Clinton’s Senate impeachment trial took over a month.
Ahead of today’s proceedings, Trump’s legal team called on senators Monday to “swiftly reject” the charges and acquit Trump. Trump’s lawyers argue in a brief that the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress “do not remotely approach the constitutional threshold for removing a president from office” and would “permanently weaken the presidency.” Trump recently added prominent lawyers Kenneth Starr and former Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz to his legal team. Both Starr and Dershowitz helped serial sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein receive a sweetheart plea deal in 2008 when he was arrested on sex trafficking charges. One of Epstein’s victims also accused Dershowitz of sexually assaulting her, but Dershowitz has long denied the charge. Kenneth Starr’s probe led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Congressional impeachment managers argued in their own legal brief that Trump pressured a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 elections by withholding aid to Ukraine unless they announced investigations into his political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Lead impeachment prosecutor Adam Schiff has accused the White House of pressuring the NSA and CIA to withhold records about Ukraine that could be relevant to the impeachment trial.
Meanwhile, several news organizations, including C-SPAN, have criticized rules restricting press access to the trial.


democracynow--2020-01-23--"Dark Waters": Meet the Lawyer Whose 20-Year Fight Against DuPont Inspired the New Film

The new film “ Dark Waters ” tells the story of attorney Rob Bilott ’ s 20-year battle with DuPont over contaminated drinking water in West Virginia from toxic chemicals used to make Teflon .
The Environmental Working Group credited Billot with “ uncovering the most heinous corporate environmental conspiracy in history , ” and the issue of contaminated water from the plastics industry continues to devastate areas across the country .
On Wednesday , the Environmental Working Group released a shocking report about how toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS have been found in the drinking water of dozens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ areas including Miami , Washington , D.C. , and Philadelphia .
The so-called forever chemicals are linked to cancer , high cholesterol and decreased fertility , and they do not break down in the environment .
We speak with attorney Robert Bilott , who has just published a new book titled “ Exposure : Poisoned Water , Corporate Greed , and One Lawyer ’ s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont.
” He is portrayed by Mark Ruffalo in the Hollywood film “ Dark Waters.
” We ’ re also joined by Tim Robbins , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plays Bilott ’ s boss at his law firm in “ Dark Waters .
”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Tim?
TIM ROBBINS: Well, I wanted to mention where we’re going to be on tour with The New Colossus. It’ll be Charlotte, North Carolina, Knight Theater, January 28th through February 2nd; Schenectady, New York; Detroit, Michigan; Seattle, Washington; Durango, Colorado; Iowa City; Folsom, California; and Nashville, Tennessee.
AMY GOODMAN: And it sounds like it might be going beyond that, beyond — we will see. But we’re going to turn right now to something else you’ve just been focusing on, but a late study — a new study that’s just come out.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And the new study shows that tap water in 43 cities across the United States is contaminated with toxic chemicals known as PFAS, which have been linked to cancer and lowered fertility. The cities include Miami, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. The report was released by the Environmental Working Group.
Water contamination is the subject of the recent Hollywood film Dark Waters, which stars our guest Tim Robbins, as well as Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway. The film tells the story of attorney Rob Bilott’s 20-year battle with DuPont over contaminated drinking water in West Virginia from toxic chemicals used to make Teflon. Mark Ruffalo plays Rob Bilott. Tim Robbins plays his boss. This is the film’s trailer.
ROB BILOTT: [played by Mark Ruffalo] Hi, Grandmas.
ROB BILOTT’S GRANDMOTHER: What are you doing here?
WILBUR TENNANT: [played by Bill Camp] Your grandma tells me her grandson’s some fancy environment lawyer down in Cincinnati.
ROB BILOTT: I am a corporate defense attorney.
WILBUR TENNANT: So?
ROB BILOTT: I defend chemical companies.
WILBUR TENNANT: Well, now you can defend me.
ROB BILOTT: How many did you lose?
WILBUR TENNANT: A hundred ninety.
ROB BILOTT: A hundred and ninety cows?
WILBUR TENNANT: You tell me nothing’s wrong here.
ROB BILOTT: It’s a small matter for a family friend, help a guy who needs it.
TOM TERP: [played by Tim Robbins] The farmer or you?
WILBUR TENNANT: That’s chemicals, I’m telling you.
ROB BILOTT: I’m seeing documents I don’t understand. They’re hiding something. That chemical, what if you drank it?
DR. GILLESPIE: [played by John Newberg] Drank it? That’s like saying, “What if I swallowed a tire?”
ROB BILOTT: What if whatever’s killing those cows is in the drinking water?
PHIL DONNELLY: [played by Victor Garber] At DuPont, better living through chemistry. It’s our DNA.
SARAH BILOTT: [played by Anne Hathaway] You need to tell me what in the hell is going on.
ROBERT BILOTT: DuPont is knowingly poisoning 70,000 local residents for the last 40 years.
You knew. Still you did nothing.
PHIL DONNELLY: You want to flush your career down the toilet for some cowhand?
JAMES ROSS: [played by William Jackson Harper] You want to take everything that you know and turn it against an iconic American company like an informant, isn’t that right? Isn’t that right? Isn’t that right?
ROB BILOTT: Yes.
They have all the money, all the firepower. And they’ll use it. I know. I was one of them.
Our government is captive to DuPont. They’re trying to force you to make me stop.
SARAH BILOTT: He was willing to risk his job, his family, for a stranger who needed his help.
ROB BILOTT: The system is rigged. They want us to think it will protect us. We protect us. We do.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the trailer for Dark Waters, based on the work of attorney Rob Bilott, who’s joining us now from Los Angeles. He won the Right Livelihood Award in 2017. He’s just published a new book. It’s called Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont. Still with us, director and actor Tim Robbins, who’s one of the stars of the film Dark Waters.
Well, first, before we talk about the film and your book, Rob, this latest news of the new report that finds this — that has detected highly toxic PFAS chemicals in the drinking waters of dozens of major cities across the country?
ROB BILOTT: Yeah, you know, and it really highlights that we’re talking about chemical contamination that goes far beyond — excuse me — far beyond one farmer’s property in West Virginia, even one community in West Virginia and Ohio. We’re talking about contamination now that’s in drinking water all across this country and now all across the world.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you tell us — explain what this chemical is and how it got there?
ROB BILOTT: Yeah. What we’re talking about is a completely man-made chemical, something that didn’t exist on the planet prior to World War II. It was developed right after the war by the 3M Company, and it was sent down to DuPont, who used it in the manufacturing of Teflon outside their West Virginia plant for about 60 years. Unfortunately, a lot of that occurred in the decades before the U.S. EPA even existed. The U.S. EPA didn’t come into being until 1970. So, tons of this chemical were being used at the plant, emitted out into the environment, into the air, into the water, into the soils in the surrounding community, and sent to facilities all over the country and all over the world that used this product in making a wide variety of consumer products, not just cookware — stain-resistant clothing, fabric coatings, microwave popcorn bags, stain-resistant materials of all kinds, fast-food wrappers, you name it.
So, by the time we finally figured out that this chemical was being used, that it was being emitted into our environment and that it was getting into drinking water all over the country and the blood of virtually every living creature in the planet, it had already been out there and being pumped out into our environment, with really the regulators and the public being completely unaware. And it’s taken quite some time to get that story out and for people to start realizing the scope of this contamination. You know, we’re talking about something that’s contamination of really an unprecedented scale: worldwide contamination of water, soil, the blood of humans and animals all over the planet. And most of us, unfortunately, are just now learning about this, even though the information about the toxicity of these chemicals, the fact that it was getting out in the environment, that it would get into us and stay in us, was known by the companies using these materials for decades. And that information wasn’t shared with the rest of us.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, what’s amazing about the film Dark Waters — and, Tim Robbins, you play Rob’s boss; Mark Ruffalo plays Rob Bilott, the attorney — the plaintiffs in West Virginia, the people who were poisoned, their animals poisoned, their property poisoned by this DuPont factory, go to Rob Bilott because his grandma lived in the area, and they understood he was a corporate lawyer, so he would take on the corporations, as opposed to the fact that, no, he represented the corporations.
TIM ROBBINS: That’s right, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And you were his boss.
TIM ROBBINS: Yes. And this is a true story. His boss saw the merit in it and said to Rob, who just had become a partner in the law firm, “Go ahead and do it.” And 12 years later, Rob was still going on, and it was costing the firm a lot of money. It was counterintuitive for the firm to do it, but he saw the moral obligation that all of them had, once they knew the truth of this, to pursue the case.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Rob, the lawsuit that you brought, who you represented and what people won, though the world has lost so much and this case continues?
ROB BILOTT: Yeah. You know, we started off with the farmer in West Virginia, Mr. Tennant, representing him and his family, then, realizing it was in the drinking water of that entire community, represented about the 70,000 people along the Ohio River in Ohio and West Virginia. And as this contamination, the awareness of it, is spreading across the country, we are now bringing a new case, where we’re seeking to represent everyone in the country, who now has these chemicals in their blood.
And hopefully we can require a independent scientific study to confirm exactly what this broad group of chemicals will do to us. We focused on one of them, PFOA, and that’s the chemical that you see focused on in the movie and in my book, as well. But what we now know is PFOA is just one of many of these man-made synthetic chemicals that are getting out in our water, in our blood, and unfortunately the rest of us don’t have much information about what these other chemicals are doing. So we’re trying to get independent scientific studies to confirm that, and to have it so the rest of us aren’t paying for that.
TIM ROBBINS: And Rob did probably the most extensive blood work study in the area that the farmer was.
AMY GOODMAN: In West Virginia.
TIM ROBBINS: And, you know, Rob, maybe you want to talk about that. Recently —
AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.
TIM ROBBINS: Oh, sorry. But the EPA has been really — has recently been, a secret memo discovered, trying to get rid of the science of that.
ROB BILOTT: Yeah, you know, and that the study that was —
TIM ROBBINS: To protect DuPont.
ROB BILOTT: Yeah, the study we did in West Virginia ended up being one of the largest studies ever done of a chemical. We had 70,000 people. And it’s 12 different epidemiological studies, spanning seven years, costing tens of millions of dollars. And the end result was independent scientific confirmation that this chemical causes diseases, including cancers.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to do Part 2 at democracynow.org. Rob Bilott, thanks so much for joining us. His new book is called Exposure. And Oscar-winning actor and director Tim Robbins. The film is Dark Waters. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.


democracynow--2020-01-23--Tim Robbins: Bernie Sanders Is the Best Shot We Have to Defeat Donald Trump

We continue our conversation with Academy Award-winning actor and director Tim Robbins , whose recent projects include the new film @ @ @ @ @ a play about immigration called “ The New Colossus.
” He recently endorsed Vermont senator @ @ @ @ @ for president .
“ I believe he is the only one of them that can @ @ @ @ @ says .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to another journey you recently took, starring in Dark Waters, but I wanted to ask about your recent endorsement of Bernie Sanders. I don’t know if a lot of people heard about it, although there was a massive rally in California. What? AOC was there.
TIM ROBBINS: And Cornel West and Bernie.
AMY GOODMAN: Of course, Bernie Sanders, Cornel West. How many people would you say were at this rally?
TIM ROBBINS: I believe it was estimated about 25,000 to 30,000 on the beach in Venice.
AMY GOODMAN: So this isn’t so much about you as, of course, about him and the erasing of Bernie Sanders that the corporate media does. How many — was there huge risers with cameras?
TIM ROBBINS: There were cameras.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, tens of thousands of people?
TIM ROBBINS: There were cameras, and someone has it on tape, yeah. I know you can find it on YouTube, if you Google it.
AMY GOODMAN: Not getting much coverage.
TIM ROBBINS: No, and — but that’s par for the course. You know, the reason why I support Bernie is because, despite all of this, he still has immense numbers. He’s leading in the polls, despite being erased or ignored. And I believe he is the only one of them that can defeat Trump. I truly believe that he is the best shot we have of getting rid of this guy. The centrist Democrats have run with a strategy, for years, to try to appeal to suburban housewives that might be conservative. If we get a few of those votes, we’ll shift the focus, and we’ll be able to win the election. It didn’t work.
AMY GOODMAN: They may not be so conservative.
TIM ROBBINS: Well, yeah, maybe not. But here’s the thing. It didn’t work for Gore, didn’t work for Kerry, didn’t work for Clinton. Obama won, because he ran to the left. He ran a progressive campaign. I don’t know why they believe this strategy will somehow change now, that now if we run to the center, everything will be fine. The electorate is restless. They have rejected it in the past. And you see how strong their support for Bernie is, and so I believe he has the best shot.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, just yesterday, President Trump went against his own promises in 2016, in a CNBC interview said he is weighing cutting Social Security, Medicare. And, of course, these are the key issues of the Sanders campaign, Medicare for All and preserving Social Security.
TIM ROBBINS: Yes. And I’m going to be campaigning for him in North Carolina next week. And, you know, I hope that — I hope that the campaign can win.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to go to break and then talk about a new report that has just come out and Dark Waters, this new film that Tim Robbins is starring in, and how they converge. Tim Robbins, the Oscar-winning actor, won for Mystic River. When we come back, we continue with him, and we’ll be joined by the attorney Rob Bilott. The film Dark Waters is about his 20-year battle with DuPont over contaminated drinking water in West Virginia. What’s the latest news about Teflon contamination in this country and around the world? Rob Bilott will also be joining us. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: That’s “The Cradle Will Rock” from the film by the same name directed by Tim Robbins.


democracynow--2020-01-23--“The New Colossus”: In New Play, Tim Robbins Tackles Immigration & Xenophobia

President Trump said Wednesday that he would expand his highly controversial travel ban , which already bars citizens from seven @ @ @ @ @ have Muslim-majority populations — Libya , Iran , Somalia , Syria , Yemen , North @ @ @ @ @ entering the United States .
Politico reports that the expanded ban could implement immigration restrictions @ @ @ @ @ Belarus , Burma , Eritrea , Kyrgyzstan , Nigeria , Sudan and Tanzania , according @ @ @ @ @ speak with acclaimed actor , director and activist Tim Robbins , whose recent work has @ @ @ @ @ United States .
He has starred in many movies , including “ The Shawshank Redemption @ @ @ @ @ ” and “ Dark Waters.
” He also wrote and directed the highly acclaimed film @ @ @ @ @ He is the director of a new play about immigration called “ The New Colossus @ @ @ @ @ ’ s title borrowed from the 1883 Emma Lazarus sonnet that is inscribed on the @ @ @ @

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: President Trump said Wednesday that he would expand his highly controversial travel ban, which already bars citizens from seven mainly Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. Trump made the comment to reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have to be safe. Our country has to be safe. You see what’s going on in the world. Our country has to be safe. So we have a very strong travel ban, and we’ll be adding a few countries to it.
AMY GOODMAN: Trump’s widely condemned travel ban currently bars citizens from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela from entering the U.S. Trump signed it almost exactly three years ago in one of his first major acts as president, sparking widespread outrage. Politico reports the expanded ban could implement immigration restrictions on seven more countries: Belarus, Burma, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, according to two sources.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, we turn now to an acclaimed actor, director and activist whose recent work has focused on immigration to the United States: Academy Award winner Tim Robbins. Tim has starred in many movies, including The Shawshank Redemption, Mystic River and Dark Waters. He also wrote and directed the highly acclaimed film Dead Man Walking. But he’s also the director of a new play about immigration called The New Colossus. The play’s title is borrowed from the 1883 Emma Lazarus sonnet which was inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in 1903. Here’s the play’s trailer.
LY MY DUNG: [played by Stephanie Lee] My name is Li My Dung. I am 25 years old.
MEHMET FATIH TRASH: [played by Onur Alpsen] My name is Mehmet Fatih Trash, and I’m 34 years old.
YETTA ROTHSCHILD: [played by Jeanette Rothschild Horn] My name is Yetta Rothschild, and I’m 68 years old.
GABRIELA MIA GARCIA: [played by Paulette Zubata] Mi nombre es Gabriela Mia Garcia. Yo tengo 23 años.
HOMAYUN DIDEBAN: [played by Pierre Adeli] My name is Homayun Didebanam. I’m 42 years old.
TATYANA IOSIFOVNA BIRGER: [played by Mashka Wolfe] My name is Tatyana Iosifovna Birger. I am 33 years old.
ANNA MARGARET WONG: [played by Kayla Blake] My name is Anna Margaret Wong. I am 9 years old.
MEHMET FATIH TRASH: I was born in Adana, Turkey.
TATYANA IOSIFOVNA BIRGER: I was born in Moscow, in the Soviet Union.
HOMAYUN DIDEBAN: Isfahan, Iran.
LY MY DUNG: Dalat, Vietnam.
YETTA ROTHSCHILD: Stuttgart, Germany.
MIRKO PETKOVIC: [played by Zivko Petkovic] Mokro Polje, Yugoslavia.
GABRIELA MIA GARCIA: Yo vengo de Michoacán, México.
SADIE DUNCAN: [played by Quonta Beasley] Tensas Parish, Louisiana.
ANNA MARGARET WONG: Borneo, Malaysia.
ARANKA MARKUS: [played by Dora Kiss] Budapest, Hungary.
HOMAYUN DIDEBANAM: I’m a refugee in the year 1979.
THE ACTORS’ GANG: [inaudible]
MEHMET FATIH TRASH: I’m a refugee in 2017.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the trailer for Tim Robbins’ new play The New Colossus. He’s joining us now in our New York studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you back, Tim.
TIM ROBBINS: It’s great to be back.
AMY GOODMAN: So, The New Colossus. I mean, what we are experiencing now, in addition to this travel ban, pregnant women coming to the United States will have to be tested. The State Department plans to impose travel restrictions on pregnant women, the Associated Press is reporting, to curb what is known as birth tourism? The women who are pregnant, otherwise eligible for U.S. tourist visas, will have to prove they’re visiting the U.S. for other reasons than to have their child. Talk about —
TIM ROBBINS: A slippery slope.
AMY GOODMAN: — The New Colossus.
TIM ROBBINS: Had someone — a friend of mine passed through the border. And they were going through her texts and saw that she was being friendly with another woman, said, “Are you a” —
AMY GOODMAN: Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean, “they were going through her texts”? Who’s “they”?
TIM ROBBINS: The border control people.
AMY GOODMAN: Where was this?
TIM ROBBINS: In the South. I don’t want to say specifically where.
AMY GOODMAN: So they took her phone, and they’re reading her texts.
TIM ROBBINS: Yeah. And they see a text where she’s being friendly with another woman. They say, “Are you involved with a lesbian relationship with this woman?” I mean, the slippery slope. You know, when you empower people with ignorance and with this kind of paranoia about everyone coming into our country south of the border that must be trying to take something from us, it’s really, you know, denigrating not only to the individuals involved on both sides — both the border guard and the immigrant — but also to our country itself. It’s not what I think of when I think of us as a country that is welcoming.
You know, we started The New Colossus in the Obama years during the Syrian refugee crisis. And we asked ourselves the questions at The Actors’ Gang: Who are we as a country? Who are we as a theater company? And I had 12 actors from various parts of the world, some of whom English was a second language. And I asked them to write their story, write the story of either their immigration or their parents’ or grandparents’ immigration. And we came up with this story of 12 different people, from 12 different time periods, speaking 12 different languages, telling the story of the arduous journey towards freedom — something that unites us, by the way, as a country. I don’t think we often think about that.
And in these times, that are so divisive, it’s so exciting to be able to go out into the United States and tell this story, because at the end of the play I come out and I say, “Let’s — I want to talk to you, the audience,” and we start discovering who the audience is. And first I ask, “Is there anyone in the audience that is indigenous or descended from indigenous?” Some hands go up. “What nation?” “Cherokee,” etc. Then I ask, “Is anyone here descended from people that were brought here against their will?” African Americans. “Do you know where from?” “No.” “What year?” “No.” One of our great original sins that’s never been atoned for, robbing an entire people of their history. And then I ask, “Are there any immigrants or refugees? Any refugees? What year did you come? From where? Immigrants, what year? Where from?” Some hands come up. Then I ask, “Sons or daughters of immigrants or refugees?” More hands come up. “Where from? What year?” “Grandsons, granddaughters of immigrants or refugees?” More hands come up. “Great-grandsons,” etc. The whole crowd, the whole audience. In our theater in Los Angeles, every day, every time we do it —
AMY GOODMAN: This is Actors’ Gang.
TIM ROBBINS: Actors’ Gang — we put a map up in our lobby, and we have magnetic pins for people to place where they’re from in the world. And in Los Angeles, in our small theater, every time we do the play, the entire world is represented, reflective of who we are as a culture, something that probably you’d find nowhere else in the world, which is something unique and fantastic about what it is to be here.
And we think about what — you know, this play has led us to really think about what is it, what is this thing that we all share together in this country, this DNA, if you will. Well, first of all, it’s the DNA that said, “No, I will not tolerate religious oppression. No, I will not tolerate fascism or famine or Nazism. I will risk my life to get out of here, because I do not accept it.” First, that DNA. And the people that stayed behind didn’t make it. And then the DNA of the person that’s strong enough to have survived that journey. And then a journey overseas, over the sea, in boats. A lot died on the way. Then, that kind of character that survived once they got here with nothing and then created a future for their family? This is our blood. This is what we are made of. This is something that is something we share, that I think should be celebrated. And that’s why we’re going out on the road to tell this story.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to ask about how it is that conceptions of immigration in the U.S. might have changed. Last year — over all these decades. You’ve spoken to people, through your play, of several generations, who have come to the U.S. Last year, following condemnation of the Trump administration rule limiting permanent status for low-income immigrants, acting Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli attempted to defend the new policy by rewriting the iconic Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty. That’s the poem, of course, that takes your — your play is from, the title of the poem. This is Cuccinelli speaking to NPR’s Rachel Martin last year.
RACHEL MARTIN: Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus’s words etched on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor,” are also part of the American ethos?
KEN CUCCINELLI: They certainly are. Give me your tired and your poor, who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge. That plaque was put on the Statue of Liberty at almost the same time as the first public charge law was passed. Very interesting timing.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: He later defended his comments in a CNN interview, suggesting Emma Lazarus’s poem was written about, quote, “people coming from Europe.”
TIM ROBBINS: Wow.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, if you could respond to this, two points that he makes — first of all, low-income immigrants, who appear, in his view, not to be welcome, and also that initially immigrants to America were, of course, European?
TIM ROBBINS: Well, first of all, always distrust any person in politics trying to rewrite poetry.
Now, there’s a couple of lines they left out: the “Give me … the wretched refuse of your teeming shore … the homeless.” Give them to me. What this is is a story of strength. It’s a poem of strength. It’s saying we are a strong-enough country to accept people that are hurt, that are hurting. We’re strong enough to hold you up. That’s how strong we are as a country. It’s a poem that tells what it is to be compassionate, to be empathetic and to hold power. I will light “my lamp beside the golden door!” I will guide your safe passage into these harbors, you who are — you who are hurt, you who are hurting.
This rewriting of history, first of all, every single immigrant has been demonized. Every wave has been demonized. I grew up with second-generation Italians and Irish in New York City. And there was “The Irish need not apply.” These are kids that were descended from people that were called the worst epithets, held onto their dignity. Every immigrant has this similar struggle, this similar story. This is nothing new. It’s unique now because the differences are being weaponized. And it’s, I think, tragic for our country.
And this is why we want to tell this story and why we want to hear the audience’s stories, to reaffirm who we are, to really tell the story of — you know, the person sitting next to you is probably from somewhere else. And if you’re not an immigrant or refugee, you’re not that far removed. You’re a couple generations removed from that. And we should be holding up these people. It takes great courage. This is a hero’s journey. It’s always been a hero’s journey to say no to what you — to something that is violent or oppressive and to risk your life to come here.
We had a matinée out in Los Angeles. And the map we put up in the lobby — this was the one particular day. It was a matinée for high school students in Los Angeles. And the map was predominantly Mexico, Central America and South America. And we talked that day about the rhetoric that is going around about immigration right now, the demonization of the other. And one of the children was talking about their parents, and another one was talking about their grandparents. And we started talking about what — how we look at your parents and how we look at your grandparents. Let’s stop thinking about them the way they want to talk about it, the way they’ve been using rhetoric to demonize it, and let’s talk about the hero’s journey. Let’s talk about the mythic journey, the courage it takes to leave behind your home. No one wants to leave their home. Who would want to leave their home? There’s something in their home that is creating trouble and a danger for their children. And then to walk 500 miles for a future, this is a noble effort. This is a hero’s journey. And we have to stop thinking about it in the way that the media is portraying it, and talk about it in mythic terms. This is our history, my ancestors, your ancestors. This is the mythic hero’s journey.