-The House took a historic vote today
to endorse the impeachment inquiry into President Trump
and set out rules for the next stage of the process.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
This was the first time the full House voted
on the current impeachment inquiry into Trump.
It's a day that he has long dreaded,
and you can tell because the further along impeachment got,
the more he started to freak out.
-The President tweeted that the, "Do-nothing Democrats
should be focused on building up our country."
He said, "Not wasting everyone's time and energy
on," all-caps, "Bull [bleep]"
-They can't win on election day, so they're pursuing an illegal,
invalid, and unconstitutional bull [bleep] impeachment.
-The angrier Trump gets, the more he sounds
like a cab driver from Queens.
"You want me to take you to LaGuardia at 4:00 p.m.?
This is bull [bleep]
[ Laughter ]
Keep walking!
Get an Uber!"
[ Cheers and applause ]
Also, I like when you can tell
which words were written for Trump
and which ones he added.
"All right, uh, Mr. President, here's the script.
We're gonna call it illegal, invalid, and unconstitutional."
"Okay, yeah, that's good. I might add one word."
[ Laughter ]
"Is it a bad word?" "No."
"Donald, if it's a bad word,
you have to put a dollar in the swear jar."
"What? I thought if I swear,
I get to take a dollar out of the swear jar.
This is bull [bleep]
That's one you owe me."
[ Laughter ]
So, Trump was clearly dreading this vote, and yet,
even as late as this morning, his advisers were
still insisting that Democrats would fail.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway
went on Fox News and claimed that she had
some inside dirt on the impeachment process.
-Impeachment is simple math.
You either have the votes or you don't.
And guess what -- dirty little secret --
they don't have the votes.
-Kellyanne Conway definitely seems like someone
who spent high school sharing dirty little secrets.
[ Laughter ]
She should be standing by a locker, whispering,
"Jackie's boyfriend told Jeff's sister
who told Dana's cousin who told Mike's cousin
who told Sophie's mom who told Jason's mom,
who told Danny's prom date, that -- guess what --
they don't have the vote."
[ Laughter ]
But there you go -- Kellyanne Conway says Democrats
don't have the votes to impeach Trump, and if that's the case,
then surely, they wouldn't have the votes
for today's resolution.
-A historic vote just held in the House of Representatives.
The Democratic-controlled Congress voting to move ahead
with the impeachment inquiry.
-House Democrats and one independent lawmaker
passing a resolution laying out the impeachment process
by an overwhelming majority.
-On this vote, the yeas are 232, the nays are 196.
-What? We can't trust Kellyanne Conway?
[ Laughter ]
I guess up is up and down is down.
[ Laughter ]
And for her part, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
played it cool and made clear the whole time
she was confident she had the votes.
In fact, right before she presided over the vote,
she spoke to reporters and at the end of her press conference,
she coyly teased what she was about to do.
-As you may understand, I have business on the floor
that I have to see to, so I'm going to excuse myself.
Thank you all very much.
-Damn! That's like in an action movie
when Tom Cruise says something like, "Sorry. This is my stop,"
and then jumps out of an airplane.
[ Laughter ]
And while Pelosi was playing it cool,
Trump and his allies, of course, were freaking out.
In fact, Trump is so desperate and so wildly grasping at straws
that, this morning, he just blurted out
an all-caps tweet about his infamous phone call
with the president of Ukraine that just said,
"Read the transcript."
Yeah, we did.
That's how we found out about the crimes you committed.
Trump's like a bank robber who screams, "Watch the tape!"
Then the jury watches the tape, and it's just him smiling
straight in the camera, holding up a bag of cash.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Then...
later in the morning, Trump tweeted again,
this time even more desperate
and trying out an even dumber argument.
He tweeted, "The impeachment hoax
is hurting our stock market.
The do-nothing Democrats don't care."
That has nothing to do with impeachment.
There's no secret footnote in the Constitution that says,
"The president shall be removed from office for treason,
bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors
unless it's bad for the stock market,
in which case, cool it."
[ Laughter ]
And Trump was not the only one at a loss
for how to respond to the impeachment vote today.
Take Republican Congressman Devin Nunes who complained about
all the damning testimony
Democrats have heard from witnesses.
Democrats have been holding those depositions
in a secure room at the Capitol known as the SCIF,
and Nunes called those hearings a cult.
-What we're seeing among Democrats
on the intelligence committees down in the SCIF right now
is like a cult.
These are a group of people loyally following their leader
as he bounces from one outlandish conspiracy theory
to another.
-You're calling Democrats a cult?
Donald Trump looks like something
that was summoned by a cult.
[ Laughter ]
In fact, Trump wasn't actually born.
He just appeared one day in the middle of a pentagram.
[ Laughter ]
-"Who has summoned me?
And was she hot? Was she like a 10?"
[ Laughter ]
"I don't like being summoned by anything less than a 10.
I'll go back to hell right now."
[ Laughter ]
And that wasn't even the dumbest thing Republicans said
before the vote, because, as always,
they also had dumb posters.
Congressman Steve Scalise, for example,
brought out a giant poster to accuse the Democrats
of acting like Soviets for following a procedure
laid out by the founders in the Constitution.
-This is unprecedented.
It's not only unprecedented, this is Soviet-style rules.
Maybe in the Soviet Union you do things like this
where only you make the rules.
Madam Speaker, when you look through this resolution
and you see how one-sided,
how Soviet-style this is running...
-It looks like the cover of a board game.
[ Laughter ]
I feel so bad for the intern who had to run to Kinkos
and print that out.
Look how janky that thing is.
How did that conversation go?
"Hey, I need a giant posterboard of this."
"Oh, is it for your child's history class?"
"No." [ Laughter ]
"It's more my Congressman."
[ Laughter ]
But at least that guy brought a visual aid.
Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy
tried to use his words, but he said something
so confusing that it was nearly impossible to follow his logic.
-This is the moment that history will write.
History will ask you, when you cast this vote,
when you cast a vote to justify something
that has gone on behind closed doors...
I want you to ask the historian and answer the question.
What do you know that happened there?
-What? [ Laughter ]
What are you saying?
History will write this moment, and then, history will ask you
a question, so you want them to ask the historian a question
and then answer the questions themselves?
[ Laughter ]
Sounds like you asked Siri to read a quote
from Alexander Hamilton after spilling water on your phone.
[ Laughter ]
"Siri, read me a passage from the "Federalist Papers."
-History will write this moment, and then, history will ask you
a question and then you should ask the historian a question,
and then a historian will answer it.
[ Laughter ]
-Today's vote was obviously a historic moment
and a huge blow to Trump and his supporters.
The House has now formally endorsed the impeachment inquiry
and that's because the basic facts
of what happened are indisputable.
Trump orchestrated a vast scheme in which
he dangled hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid
to Ukraine in order to get that country to dig up dirt
on his political rivals, and key witnesses
over the last few weeks have confirmed key details
of what happened, including new testimony today
from a top national-security official,
and now Democrats are planning on calling Trump's
ex-national security adviser John Bolton
to testify in a few weeks.
Now, you might remember that when Bolton found out about
the Ukraine quid pro quo led by Trump's personal lawyer
Rudy Giuliani, Bolton reportedly told people at the White House,
"Giuliani's a hand grenade who's going to blow everybody up.
Rudy's not a hand grenade.
He's the guy who walks into a room holding the pin.
"Oh, Rudy, what'd you do?
[ Laughter ]
"You guys see a little metal baseball?"
[ Laughter ]
So, Bolton wanted no part of the Ukraine quid pro quo.
In fact, you might also remember that one of Trump's
handpicked ambassadors, Gordon Sondland,
and his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney,
were both central in orchestrating the quid pro quo
with Ukraine, and when he found out, Bolton reportedly said,
"I'm not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney
are cooking up," and even if you did want to be part of it,
I'm not sure I'd trust these guys to cook up a drug deal.
They look like the only drugs they've taken are the kinds
you see in commercials with middle-aged couples
walking on beaches together.
[ Laughter ]
If Mulvaney's called to testify about his drug deal,
the hearing will probably be sponsored by one of those drugs.
-Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your time
and for the opportunity to be here.
-♪ Viva Viagra ♪
-So, Bolton obviously has a lot to say, and on top of that,
he left the Trump administration on very bad terms.
Bolton, like almost every other Trump aide before him,
was unceremoniously dumped last month after clashing with Trump,
and as usual, Trump couldn't help
but diss Bolton on his way out the door.
-He made some very big mistakes.
You know, John's known as a tough guy.
He's so tough, he got us into Iraq.
That's tough.
And, you know, John wasn't in line
with what we were doing, and actually, in some cases,
he thought it was too tough, what we were doing.
Mr. Tough Guy.
You know, you have to go into Iraq.
Going into Iraq was something
that he felt very strongly about,
and I disagreed with that decision from the beginning.
I thought it was a terrible mistake.
And that's not a question of being tough.
That's a question of being not smart.
So, I wish John the best.
-It doesn't sound like you do.
You can't just end a long rant about how he's an idiot
by tacking on, "I wish him the best."
That would be like slipping a note cut out
from magazine letters under his door that said,
"I'm gonna murder you in your sleep.
Warmest regards, your dear friend, Donald."
[ Laughter ]
Obviously, there's a lot of bad blood there.
But the best part is, all these are awful guys.
Bolton's an unrepentant warmonger,
and Trump, of course, is Trump,
so it's fun to watch them turn on each other
and try to take each other down.
I don't like watching nature shows where a lion
kills a baby antelope, but when they show a spider
and a scorpion going at it, I am in.
[ Laughter ]
So the actual facts of what happened are indefensible.
There's nothing Republicans can say to defend what Trump did.
That's why they're focused instead on the process.
They've been whining for weeks about how Democrats
have been conducting the initial depositions behind closed doors
even though a lot of them are allowed in those hearings.
In fact, this week, CNN asked Republican Congressman Ted Yoho
if he had attended any of the impeachment hearings.
There was even a deposition going on while he was on TV,
and the anchor asked him why he wasn't there.
-You could attend all of these depositions.
Have you attended a single one?
-No, I haven't gone to those. -But why are you not there?
-Because I have other responsibilities in the House.
-Respectfully, Congressman, as glad as I am
that you're on this show, you don't need to be on this show.
You could be in there -- -Well, like I said --
-You could be in there deposing --
-I plan to go in there.
I've got my questions written for him.
-So you are going to this deposition
after you're off the air with us.
Is that right? -As soon as I'm off the air.
Yes, ma'am.
-No, I don't think so. [ Laughter ]
I mean, based on that, I bet he didn't actually
have any questions written down.
"I got my questions right here."
"Okay. Can you read some of them?"
"Yeah. Y-You bet."
[ Light laughter ]
[ Laughter ]
"I don't have any questions."
[ Laughter ]
Today was a historic day and a major step forward
in the impeachment process.
Republicans can't defend Trump on the substance
and they can't complain about the process,
so now all they have left is...
-Bull [bleep]
-This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]