Former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen on Impeachment

Former Secretary of Defense and Senator (R-Maine) Bill Cohen brings his experience from the impeachment of President Nixon to evaluate the President's actions as offenses clearly warranting impeachment, and hopes for restored civility in the nation's highest office. James and Al discuss the latest research on guns during Christy Harvey's 'Numbers' segment, and we take a look at the polls during the 'Back Page' segment.

Former Secretary of Defense and Senator (R-Maine) Bill Cohen brings his experience from the impeachment of President Nixon to evaluate the President's actions as offenses clearly warranting impeachment, and hopes for restored civility in the nation's highest office.

Al Hunt: 00:06 Welcome to politics 2020 War Room, subscribe rate and review this podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google podcast. Coming up on the show, we have Christy numbers Harvey and our back page. James Carville is down in Louisiana, and our guest today is William Cohen, a three term Republican Senator from Maine, and then he was Bill Clinton's defense secretary, but before that Bill Cohen was a freshman Congressman on the House Judiciary Committee in 1974. He became one of the key figures in listening to, studying, and then making the case for impeachment against Richard Nixon despite warnings that it would end his political career as a Republican. And I believe, Bill, you even got death threats.

Bill Cohen: 00:54 Oh, yeah. Got a lot of death threats. My family did as well. And don't forget, it was a different time than, but the passions were still pretty deep. There was a bomb threat one night where we were holding a hearing and we ended up evacuating the Rayburn building and I ended up in the basement of the Longworth building with the great historian in Teddy White as they tried to clear the building from the alleged bomb. There was no bomb found, but that was the kind of thing that was going on back then. 

Al Hunt: 01:24 But that was the environment. But the environment today is a lot different, the political environment is. Some of the threats are. I mean, back then there was a sense that both sides study ... I remember you telling me once that the Nixon defenders, principally Charles Wiggins, really made a strong, compelling case and made the other side make a ... this time that did not appear to be the case. 

Bill Cohen: 01:45 No. Chuck Wiggins was one of the finest lawyers that I've ever dealt with and a very principled lawyer. I think I've told you the story that when I cast the vote to break a tie, to allow the second letter to go out to compel President Nixon to turn over the tapes, Chuck leaned over to me. All Bedlam had broken loose. He leaned over and whispered in my ear, and people thought he was chastising me. He actually said, "Bill, you're going to come under a lot of pressure. Just be sure to keep your cool." And that was great coming from someone who was the best and strongest defender of the President, and that's the kind of man he was. 

Al Hunt: 02:23 So why is it so different today? 

Bill Cohen: 02:25 It's different now because we're more tribal than ever before. It's different that the world of social media is totally unfiltered, uncensored, and the hate that comes through the social media is pretty intense. And you have a President who's stoking the fear and hatred and identifying members of Congress that are critical of him as being unpatriotic who hate America. In doing so, he's putting a target on their backs because of the anger that's out there. And people can walk around with AK-47s now, and it's a different environment in which the tribalism has intensified to the point where Republicans don't talk to Democrats and vice versa, and they see each other as enemies. And that's something that we did not experience.

Al Hunt: 03:19 But also, sure, everything has changed. The Republican party has really changed. I mean, you and Tom Railsback and Caldwell Butler and Hamilton Fish, it's, there was no chance from the beginning, it seemed to me, maybe this is unfair, but that anybody was going to go because either of the polarization you talked about or fear.

Bill Cohen: 03:41 Well, there was strong pressure. I suspect there's always going to be strong pressure when something of this import, when you're talking about impeaching the President of the United States, the tendency is, the motivation is a rally behind your President. The cry was frequently, he's our President, right or wrong. And I would say, "No, no, he's our President when he's right, but he can't be wrong and have our support." So there was always strong pressure to support the leader of the party. 

In this particular case, I felt I was acting as a lawyer. I had been practicing, prosecuting cases, defending cases, and my focus was not political. It was legal, and it was focused upon the language in the constitution and that was the only thing that was going to that I was going to follow. 

Al Hunt: 04:30 Did the Intelligence Committee and others make the case this time of abusive power in contempt of Congress? 

Bill Cohen: 04:37 Oh, I think they've made it with very clear and convincing evidence. To look at how the President set out to achieve this result of having the President of Ukraine announce publicly he was going to investigate Joe Biden and his son, I think it's very clear, and it's more than one phone call. The President and his supporters are saying, "It's just a phone call," and you can read that either way. And the answer is, no, it's not just a phone call. It's several months of trying to find a way to get around the established experts in order to carry out something that was fundamentally illegal. And so he removed a ambassador Yovanovitch, he smeared her, pulled her back home, even though she had done nothing wrong. He put in place his own political supporter as ambassador to the EU to work with Rudy. So Rudy became his attorney, circumventing the established experts, professionals in the field and to get around them. 

So it's not just a phone call. Although, I think the phone call was damning. I think just looking at that reconstruction or the partial reconstruction of that phone call, it's clear as glass that what he was seeking to do. So I think they made case I would have hoped they would broaden it a bit, because there is a pattern. There's a pattern that is very clear. When Sally Yates came to the administration said, "You know, General Flynn's got a problem. He's been dealing with not only the Turks, but also the Russians and shouldn't be appointed," they fired Sally Yates. When Comey wouldn't pledge fealty to the President and wouldn't drop the case against General Flynn, fire Comey. McCabe followed out the door. 

So you can see what the President was doing, putting people who will only be loyal to him under all circumstances, and those who do not profess a loyalty to him, they've got to go. So he has the power to do that, but you can't do it in pursuit of an illegal scheme, and I think it was clearly illegal what he did in holding out that money to the Ukrainians before they get a White House visit. 

And isn't it ironic that here's the Ukraine, our so-called ally, who's waging a war against Russia, and on both occasions after the firing of Comey and after the release of this report on impeachment articles, the Russian show up in the oval office. You've got the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador right after the firing of Comey saying, "This Russia things off me now." And then this time we have the filing of the Articles of Impeachment, guess who's in the office?

Al Hunt: 07:25 The Russians. 

Bill Cohen: 07:29 The Russians, right. 

James Carville: 07:29 This is my observation, question for the secretary. We have all of this, the facts around this are really not in dispute. I mean, there's no counterfactual that he was on the call. He held up the aid in return for them to announce the investigation of a political opponent. That is the 178th piece of highly disturbing information that we have received about this President. Yet, it seems like 42% of the country are just unshakable, and no one knows what drives that for sure. 

Bill Cohen: 08:03 I think what's causing it is that we're more of a ... I think the President has some more of a cult following. I think he's a cult figure. I think he is really, he manifests what is the sentiment in this country on the part of those who feel that they have been victimized by the system, who feel that they have lost out as a result of globalization, immigration, and that he has taken the podium to say, "I'm the only one who cares about you." And the irony is that he is a man in a golden cage or a gilded cage saying that, "I'm your leader," to all the poor and middle class people. I think it's totally ironic that they have bought into this, that he is fighting for them. He's putting quote, "America First," and doesn't care about all of the established figures, all of the treaties that we have. 

He wants to know why we're in South Korea. Why are we in Japan? Why are we in Germany? Well, there's a reason why, and there's a reason we've been keeping the peace for the last 70 years, but he feels that everything is a bilateral negotiation that only he can negotiate, and 40% of the people or more have bought into that, and see him as the savior of their lives and their future and the Democrats as being on the opposite side. 

James Carville: 09:20 So this is something that I've noticed, and I started noticing it. So I teach at LSU and of course am fanatical about climate, and oftentimes the students will come see me and say, "Look, Professor Carville, I think obviously the climate is getting warmer and obviously we have a good reason why. I just hate the people that are saying that. I don't want to be part of that secular, anti gun, whatever." So some of it is they're just anti Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton or Maxine Waters or you name it, Bernie Sanders.

Bill Cohen: 09:57 Adam Schiff now. 

James Carville: 09:58 Yeah, Adam Schiff. So what's motivating a lot of these people is they just don't want people like that to win. Yeah. And the thing that they like about Trump is he beats the people that he irritates the people that they hate. It's kind of stupid way to go through life, but I suspect that's a pretty, a lot of people lead their lives like that. 

Bill Cohen: 10:19 Well, he's bullying everybody. He demeans everybody. He tries to reduce those who are critical of him to something less than being human. They are scum. Anyone who disagrees with them are scum. I mean, I don't think we've ever heard a President of the United States engage in this kind of conduct, in this kind of speech, which is really doublespeak. It's Orwellian. It takes every word that has a specific meaning and turns it on its head. So if he is criticized for being a bully, he calls Adam Schiff a bully. So everything that is really directed to him, he actually reverses it and holds up a shield and it bounces back and he uses a sword. So we have demeaned politics, we have demeaned the process, we degrade individuals, we call them names. We give them nicknames that are certainly not complimentary. We indulge in the reduction in the humanness in the human beings to something less than human beings. 

So I find it astonishing that we have a President who acts like this and talks like this. I go around the world, and frankly, most people are baffled. They don't understand how the American people are so solidly behind that kind of conduct. And imagine if Barack Obama or Bill Clinton got up on a podium and call somebody an SOB or BS, and used that kind of language, or had engaged in paying off a porn star. And there's some real interesting parallels. 

You may recall that Spiro Agnew, he was the former governor of Maryland, who was taking kickbacks from construction contracts. When he got to be Vice President, he was still getting payoffs while he was in the VP's office. Here you had President Trump have his attorney, Michael Cohen, making payoffs to two women and he's actually signing checks to make those payoffs while he's President of the United States. So you've got all of these really doubled standards that the Republicans have latched onto, and I say they have done so out of fear or out of complicity. They either fear him or they agree with him. 

But I dare say, Barack Obama would not be in the White House if he had done any one of the things that President Trump has done. Going back to the Muller report, and I wish the house Judiciary Committee had at least had language that embraces the Muller report, because then you see the pattern. Then you see that when bad news is brought to him, he fires the people who bring him the bad news. When they tell him he can't do something, he gets rid of the people who tell him he can't do something. Yovanovitch, Bill Taylor, and others tried to put up a screen to say, Mr. President this, you shouldn't do this. You can't do this. This is illegal, and in his mind there was nothing that he can do that's illegal. 

Now, this is why we talk about the rule of law, why it's so important that we, not just words. If you don't have the rule of law, you have the law of rule, and I think the American people are not thinking this through. That what sets us apart is that we believe that nobody's above the law. Nobody falls below its protections. We don't always measure up to that, but if we don't hold the President accountable for actual misdeeds, for abusing his power, for using that power to diminish people, to put targets on their backs verbally, from trying to extort or bribe a foreign nation, a friend, who's desperate need of funds. Say, yeah, you get it when. 

And I know that I'm Schiff was criticized for the way he kind of summarized the incident, but the way it is, President Trump has said, as candidate said, "Russia, are you listening?" And Russia was listening. Four hours later they were into the Democratic National Headquarters. He said, "China, are you listening?" So he's now more open. He said, "I do it with everybody." And then he said to Ukraine, "You'd better be listening, because if you're not listening, you're not getting your White House meeting and you're not getting your money." So you can see the pattern from what Muller had laid out, and you need to at least make that case before the Senate to say, it's not just a letter. It's not just a phone call. It's the whole process. 

Better call Michael Cohen. Better call Rudy, better call Saul. You know, it's a whole notion that he never leaves his fingerprints directly on it. He gets his lawyers to do the work. Like Michael Cohen, he gets Rudy to do his work, and so he's always trying to circumvent the law or break it, but have no responsibility for it. Or if he is held responsible, he says, "I have the power. You can't indict me. You can't even investigate me. I have sole and absolute power."

Al Hunt: 15:23 Well, it is stunning. Bill, it moves to the Senate now. It's a place that you know well, you served for 18 years, it's different today than it was 23 years ago, but do you have any hope that there'll be at least a couple of Republicans who could say, "Wait a minute, this is just not acceptable."

Bill Cohen: 15:41 I am really disappointed in seeing what's happening to our political process. I never thought I would see the day that the Senate or the House would give up its power, and the power of the purse, the power to challenge the President, the power to investigate the Presidency, the checks and balances. I have been just astonished to see how silent the Republicans are, certainly in the house, but also in the Senate. 

Now, many can say, "Well, I've got to hear the evidence first," but there are a lot of them saying that they know what they're going to do, but where is the responsibility to actually check abuses that they see that are in plain sight? This is not, they're not doing more investigation. This is out there in plain sight. They know that there are key witnesses from Rudy to Pompeo to others who have refused. Don McGahn-

Al Hunt: 16:36 John Bolton.

Bill Cohen: 16:37 John Bolton, have refused to testify because the President said, "No." They know that this is critical evidence, and yet not one of them is saying, Well, we'll subpoena them. We the Senate will subpoena them." They're now talking about having no witnesses at all. Let's just run this thing through. Have them summarize what they have found, and then we vote. Do I think some Republicans will vote against that kind of a procedure? Yes. Will it be more than a handful? No. 

James Carville: 17:04 Well, look at that right now he has the overwhelming support Republican voters, and it's a lot, I guess, that say, "Look, it's a lot to ask of us to vote to convict him when you had your chance in front of the Judiciary Committee. You didn't convince anybody. We're in a business, you're asking us to do something how voters don't want us to do."

Bill Cohen: 17:30 Well, you can't convict somebody if you don't have witnesses and the President's holding them back. So, I think there's a pretty clear inference that you draw from that. Number one, he won't disclose taxes from the beginning. They're under audit. I think that's nonsense. I don't care what the IRS says about your taxes. What have you filed under oath to say, "This is what my taxes are." You don't care what ... The IRS may say, "You need to pay more," or, "You don't need to pay so much," but at least say what you said under oath, what you filed that year. So I think it's just been a policy. "I'm going to ... I say I'm transparent, but I'm not transparent. I say I'm going to reveal everything" ... So, it's doublespeak. It's Orwellian. Everything that you say is contradicted by what you do. 

James Carville: 18:18 Right, and everything you say is true, plus 100 more. But the issue is, he maintains this unbelievable level of support among Republicans, which has the effect of just blocking Republican law makers from doing anything other than supporting him. And that's just where the party is now. 

Al Hunt: 18:36 Well, James, let me just interject for a second, because I went back and looked at some of the data back in '74. Up until the July, late July, Nixon had the support, not as deep, not as solid as Trump maybe, but support the vast majority of Republicans. And what happened back then is different than today, is that those two weeks in late July, that changed public opinion.

Bill Cohen: 19:01 Absolutely. When the June 23rd tape finally came out, and that was the tape in which the President was telling Dean to get the CIA to interrupt the FBI investigation. That's what turned the tide. That's when Chuck Wiggins said, "I can't defend you anymore." That's when Barry Goldwater said, "You're going to get convicted in the Senate." They went down after saying, "This is the last straw. We've defended you all of this time, and this is a clear case of what you've done. We've got it on tape," and therefore they changed. But until that time, he probably would have been impeached in the house, but he in all likelihood would never have been convicted. 

Al Hunt: 19:44 Would you go, you have been very high, I believe, on Adam Schiff. Would you make him ... if you were Pelosi, would you make him the lead prosecutor in the Senate or would you consider using a staff member like Dan Goldman or does it matter a lot? 

Bill Cohen: 20:01 I would take the best lawyer. If it's a staff member, I would use Goldman, but I'm pretty high in terms of Adam Schiff's lawyerly manner, in terms of he's very smart. He is a gifted interrogator. He also carries a lot of weight in terms of the opposition to him. The critics against him are pretty high on the Republican side. So speaker Pelosi may decide she wants somebody else, but if I had to pick a member, I would pick him. I know they're talking about having the only independent in the house right now become the manager, but maybe there are two, maybe there are two or three. 

James Carville: 20:48 Wow. I don't know. Yeah, I can't let this interview go without asking you one question, Mr. Secretary, and I've always been fascinated by the hold that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain still has on the state of Maine. I've never seen one person in a state that command so much reverence, respect. If you could just tell us a little bit about the relationship with Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Maine, because I think it's a sight to behold, whenever you talk to someone from Maine.

Al Hunt: 21:19 Yeah. He was the President of some obscure college too.

Bill Cohen: 21:23 Yeah. Well, he's revered. In fact, when I was at the Pentagon I had a very large portrait hung in the outer office so that everybody who came in saw that picture of Joshua on his horse, and even those from the South paid reverence to him because of his courage and absolute undaunted a will to prevail. He was from a small town or brewer, which is exactly one mile across the bridge from where I grew up in Bangor. He was a professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College. He had never had any military experience. Both he and his brother joined the Northern forces and fought, and at Gettysburg he is given credit for having turned around the civil war with his stand where he ran out of ammunition and he was about to be overrun and he just said, "Okay, no ammunition but fix bayonets." And they charge down the Hill and won that battle. 

And then he went on. He had been wounded several times. One time he was taken home to die, and he stayed there for several months and then his parents wanted him to stay, and he got up out of his sick bed, went back and fought again. And eventually after the war was over, became President of Bowdoin College, then Governor Maine. So he was quite a hero to all of the soldiers, southerners as well. Remember that. And what they remember about him, in addition to his a warrior status and capability, was when he was picked to accept the surrender of the Confederates at Appomattox, when the Southern soldiers laid down their arms, he had all of his forces salute them. And pay tribute to them as warriors, and that is as much that's in the minds of those who fought on the other side, of the South that he was truly a man of great honor. 

Al Hunt: 23:23 Boy, what a wonderful story end, another distinguished graduate of Bowdoin College is William Cohen. Bill, this has been terrific. Thank you so much.

James Carville: 23:33 Thank you, sir.

Bill Cohen: 23:33 It's always a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. Thanks, James. 

James Carville: 23:35 We needed a happy ending. 

Al Hunt: 23:38 Joshua Chamberlain provides it. Great. Thank you. And now for the segment that everyone wastes for every week, Christy numbers Harvey, take it away. Christ. 

Christy Harvey: 23:55 I love when you call me numbers, it makes me feel like a 1930s bookie. Like I'm running numbers down at the local bar. Love it. All right. I got two numbers for you guys this week. The first is $25 million. This is the amount of funding that's going to be included in this year's congressional spending bill that is going for gun violence research. And it may not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but this is the first spending on gun violence research in more than 20 years after that long standing provision that basically blocked this. So I just wanted to ask you guys, how much of a victory is this in your eyes? 

Al Hunt: 24:33 This, as Joe Biden would say, is a big effing deal. I mean, it really is. Only $25 million. But what the gun lobby has done for decades is they haven't just blocked sensible gun legislation like background checks and assault weapons ban, they blocked any kind of research that the CDC or anyone else does on the correlation between guns, violence, and deaths. And they've done it for a very good reason, Christy, they'd done it because they know what it'll show. So we can't even research it and this. 

So, therefore, this is a whatever cliche you want to use, this as a start, $25 million, terribly important. One other point I'd make is, I'll tell you what else it says, at the end of a session with this President who doesn't believe in a thing. If you're a Democrat, you can get a lot of stuff through because this is the kind of stuff that I'm not even sure Trump or anybody running knows it happened, but it's happened and it's a good deal. 

Christy Harvey: 25:22 Do we need more research though? I mean, don't we know what we know about gun violence? I mean, how much more research do we need to do? 

James Carville: 25:29 Well, there's a ton of private research that goes on. I mean, it all shows the same thing, so this is very symbolic that you get the $25 million from the government and hopefully you'll keep getting this money. But it's pretty much like climate. You've got all the studies are going to show some variations, slight variation on the essential truths. I think that over a period of time and as demographics change, it can have a big impact. 

Al Hunt: 25:54 Yeah. James is right, there are other studies. Why this is important, however is most of the other studies are studies that either have been supported by gun control groups or they're academic studies, which the crazies can say is wrong. When you get something from the CDC during a Republican administration, you say, "Oh, I'm sorry, that's just some kind of left wing conspiracy." At least the case is harder. 

Christy Harvey: 26:18 Yeah, that's true. True. All right, I'm going to quickly go into my second number then. That number is 400. This is the number of America's largest corporations that paid an average federal tax rate of about 11% last year. 11%, that's half of the official rate that was just established under the 2017 tax law, which was 21%, which dropped from 35%. So, it's all the way down to 11%. 

Here's my actual question on this. You've got corporations paying 11% on average, you hear some paying down to 0%. And then you've got some of these democratic candidates who are proposing giant tax hikes. Is there no golden mean here, is there no in between? 

James Carville: 27:03 Well, of course there's an in between because eventually something is going to happen. It's not going to stay there. It is not going to go to 75%, so it's some somewhere between the two. The Democrats need to make a more sustained effort is, who made money in this recovery? And the truth of the matter is this recovery has not touched probably two thirds of the people in the United States, and in all of the fruits of the recovery have gone to the obvious people who the fruits of everything had gone to in the past. And I thought that Elizabeth Warren's campaign started out very much on that, and I was hopeful that that would be what she would be remembered for, what voters would think about. Unfortunately, she's now trying to justify single payer or open borders or whatever else there is. I think that was a great lost opportunity. 

Al Hunt: 27:54 Yeah, I agree. And taking the corporate rate to 21%, that's more than they asked for. It really was, it was just a pay off. It was absurd. And I would raise it, but I'll tell you, more important than what the rate is, is to broaden that base, do away with all, many at least, of those loopholes that just they don't serve any economic purpose and many of them are just pay offs to contributors, so I would certainly raise the corporate rate. I don't know what to, 30%, 32%. If you broaden that base and you do away with a lot of those loopholes, you can raise a lot of money and create a fairer system and give some of that money in return to the people that James pointed out have not benefited from this recovery at all.

Christy Harvey: 28:35 From Hunt's mouth to God's ear. I guess that's our plan. All right. Those are our numbers this week, fellas. Hope that you learned something new. 

Al Hunt: 28:43 Whenever we're around numbers Harvey. 

James Carville: 28:45 Whatever it is, they stick in our mind. They're easy to understand. They're important. They're relevant. 

Christy Harvey: 28:52 All right, guys. See you next week. 

James Carville: 28:53 Like a true baseball fan, you bet.

Al Hunt: 29:04 Now James for the back page, polls can be misinterpreted. There are polls and there are polls, and Donald Trump still does not do terribly well in polls. But, as you look at it, he seems to be doing a little bit better. 

James Carville: 29:18 He does. And I think I've seen enough to say there's an upward trend for it. You know, I generally don't like to react to one, but if you look at the averages, you've got to say that. And I mean it might be the economic numbers behind it, could be impeachment behind it. Not exactly sure. Could be the Democrats are demoralized and not answering the phone as much. I don't know the reason, but I am comfortable in saying that he has had an uptick. 

Al Hunt: 29:47 Yeah. There again, I'm looking for some of the better polls to come out, but yeah, look at all the others and you combine them and you say, "Okay, there's some kind of message here." And most general election polls still show that Biden would beat him in most of the key states, but a few don't show that. So it seems to me it should add to the Democratic concern that we have to not get distracted. We can't do a Jeremy Corbyn, if you will. We have to focus on what will be a winning message to beat this guy because it's not an automatic 

James Carville: 30:24 That's correct. Like I said, the UK experience is very instructive, and kind of what's happening now is instructive. I think these voters see that and I think they're nervous. I think that they're very, very involved. They don't need us to tell them that. They have a sense of that and they have a sense of what their obligation is. Okay. So let's see. This thing is going to be, it's being watched very closely by voters all over the country. This is a very, very high interest, high engaged electorate. 

Al Hunt: 30:55 It is. And they, as we said a minute ago, if you're a Democrat or you're a Trump disliking, hating independent or Republican, what matters most of all is winning. So let's see how it evolves. All right, what matters most of all now is we have to go James, but it's been grand and I'll see you next week. 

James Carville: 31:14 All right. 

Al Hunt: 31:15 Hey, thanks for listening. Please subscribe, rate, and review. Be generous. This podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google podcast. Happy holidays to everyone. See you next week.