-How are you feeling, first off?
Because you've been hobbling around.
-You've seen me in crutches on the building.
like an entire year. -Yes.
What happened? -I, ugh, it's so boring.
-[ Chuckles ] Just tell me. -I sprained my ankle
and broke my ankle at once... -What?
-...while doing nothing.
My big adventure was I was stepping down.
-That was it? -And that was enough to break
and sprain my ankle and put myself
on crutches for four months.
I'm only off crutches for a few days.
-What a drag. -I know.
-You're getting better. Were you getting used to the crutches?
-Kind of.
The cool thing about crutches,
I will say, and I mean nothing against -- right --
but having big pieces of metal in my arms
at all times, going down the street in New York City,
kind of an advantage.
-Yeah. -You know what I mean?
-Swatting people away. -In New York,
people are good about, like, giving each other
physical space.. -Yes.
-...and not making eye contact.
And, like, people are good about managing density of humans.
But, like, having -- physically clearing myself more space
and like, "I can wield this at you if I need to."
-Yes. -Like, it bought me
some elbow room. -Yeah.
-It was nice. Now I feel -- I feel vulnerable.
I feel like I've -- I feel like I've been plucked.
-[ Laughs ] -I don't have my sticks anymore.
-I want to talk to you about the big news.
John Legend is "People's" sexiest man -- No.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ] Is that right?
Let's talk about it.
-Expect a 27 minute commercial-free monologue
for me on today's big news.
-Yeah.
The impeachment hearings started today.
What's the takeaway?
What went down today?
What do we have to expect?
-You know, I don't -- we have so few experiences of impeachment
as a country that there's no, like, normal impeachment.
Nobody knows how it's supposed to go.
So I think there's a lot of suspense just to see
what it looked like and to see how it was going to proceed.
I think the really good news is that it was kind of calm.
Like, it could have been a crazy circus.
People could have pulled anything,
and instead it kind of proceeded like a normal hearing.
And these were witnesses who had a story to tell
and who told it with incredible dignity and gravitas.
And yes, some of the questioning was stupid,
but almost all of wasn't.
And to me, that was like manna from heaven,
'cause I've just been hoping for this issue to be resolved
in a way that is rational, fact-based, calm,
not about intimidation and name-calling.
That just tells the American people what happened
and let's people make their own decisions.
And today was a really good start for that.
-And what is exactly they're saying is impeachable?
-So, you can't solicit something from a foreign entity
to benefit the next U.S. election.
You can't go to any foreign entity and say,
"Hey, give me some help in this next election."
You can't ask, whether or not you get it.
You cannot solicit anything of value from a foreign entity
for use in a U.S. election.
And President Trump and his personal attorney,
Rudy Giuliani admit they did that.
They went to Ukraine and they said,
"We want investigations of Joe Biden
and we want investigations of the Democrats."
And Giuliani just flat out admits,
"The reason I want that is because
I think it would be a value to my client."
[ Laughter ] Well, that sounds great on TV.
Also, that's it's a crime.
[ Laughter ]
-Oops, yeah. -Oops.
I mean, not unless Ukraine is -- you're going try
to pretend it's, like, a proper noun that applies
to an American who you met somewhere.
I mean, as long as we admit that Ukraine is a foreign country,
you can't ask them for things that are going
to help your client in the next election.
They admit that, and so... -It was a perfect phone call.
-It was perfectly criminal.
[ Laughter ] It was the perfect crime.
-Yeah. They've -- I mean, they admit it
because they don't think it should be
a criminal offense, but it is.
And an impeachment, it doesn't necessarily have to be something
for which you would go to jail if you were a civilian,
although this is something for which you would
go to jail if you were a civilian.
In this case, it just has to be something that's inconsistent
with the responsibilities of the president.
High crimes and misdemeanors in the Constitution
aren't laid out like the penal code.
They aren't laid out in terms of specific statues,
but a president trying to get help from a foreign country
against his political rivals here is not only wrong,
it's not only criminal, it is definitely impeachable conduct.
And they admit that.
And so how are we going to proceed as a country
toward deciding whether or not he gets impeached
and removed from office?
Well, we saw day one of that effort today,
and they are calmly elucidating the facts.
And I think it is actually going to be
a useful thing for the country.
I think this is going to be a sort of a...
I don't think this is going to be a divisive thing.
I think this is going to get people on the same page.
-How long do you think this will go?
-Um, I don't know.
I mean, we know now
that there's is going to be another hearing this Friday.
The U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine was recalled as part
of this scheme that Trump and Giuliani were pulling off.
She's going to testify on Friday,
and then we've got three days of hearings next week,
including a couple days where there's going
to be two hearings per day.
So, we know there's going to be a lot between now
and the end of next week, and then I don't know.
We got a new revelation about a new phone call
that Trump was on today that we didn't know about before,
and that resulted in them calling new witnesses
that we've never heard of before today.
So it could stretch on for a while,
but I don't -- I don't think it will go, like,
deep into next year or something.
-Do you think the whistleblower will be revealed or...?
-If so, that will be a new low for our country.
That would be really bad.
The whistleblower came forward to say,
"I have reason to believe that "X" thing happened
on this call, when President Trump called Ukraine.
I am concerned about it,
and I believe it should be looked into."
Turns out what the whistleblower was worried about
actually did happen on the call, and it was looked into.
And it turns out it was even worse
than the whistleblower said.
So now it takes a really, I think...
What's the nice way to say this? -Yeah.
-It takes a small mind to look at that set
of circumstances and be like,
"We better out that whistleblower."
Now, the whistleblower was correct.
The whistleblower was drawing attention to something
that happened in the administration
that did turn out to be a real problem.
And if you're going to try to vilify and punish
and chase around and retaliate against that person,
that's not illegal, it's fundamentally unfair.
And it's something that I think every American
should sort of be horrified by.
So, I think the -- the Democrat who's leading the hearing,
Congressman Adam Schiff, today tried to draw
a real hard line on that and said,
"We're not going to entertain
Republican efforts to try to out this whistleblower.
We're not even going to get close there."
And I hope he's able to still hold that line.
I also hope the people who are messing around with this,
trying to blame somebody for being the whistleblower,
trying to out them, trying to target them,
I hope they look at themselves in the mirror
and come to realize how wrong that is and how un-American.
-The -- if it does -- if everyone says,
"Oh, okay, he should get impeached," then what happens?
-Well, the house makes the first decision.
They decide whether or not they are going to impeach him,
and impeaching doesn't mean you get removed from office.
It's kind of the equivalent, in the criminal laws,
of you getting criminally charged.
And then once you're criminally charged,
once you're impeached in the house,
then those charges,
those articles of impeachment go to the Senate.
And the Senate puts the President on trial.
Now, the Senate is run by Republicans,
and so everybody assumes that means that the trail
will last five minutes and then it'll end with him
getting an award. [ Laughter ]
But, I mean, we'll -- we'll see.
I do feel like, you know, we learn something on day one
of the impeachment hearings, and I think we're probably going
to learn more as it goes forward.
And the fact that the President has admitted to this
criminal behavior, I think is going to make it hard
for it to be a knee jerk thing for Republican Senators
to just say, "We don't care, and we're happy
to be seen blowing this off."
This is a really serious thing
we're going through as a country,
and it's being treated seriously,
at least on day one.
And if that sustains, I don't think any of us
should have anything other than an open mind
in terms of how our elected officials
are going to deal with this. 'cause this is serious stuff.
And I think a lot of them will be called
by their better angels.