Week In The News: Trump Impeached, Trump Supporters Rally, Democrats Debate

Published December 20, 2019 at 9:00 AM CST

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., strikes the gavel after announcing the passage of article II of impeachment against President Donald Trump, Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

Donald Trump becomes only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached. He rallies his loyalists in Michigan. The 2020 Democrats debate. The roundtable is here.

Guests

Juana Summers, political reporter for NPR. ( @jmsummers)

Katie Rogers, White House correspondent for The New York Times. ( @katierogers)

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst. ( @JackBeattyNPR)

From The Reading List

The New York Times: “ Impeachment Day in Washington: History Emerges From the Routine Chaos” — “It’s not as if anyone was expecting a normal Wednesday to materialize on Capitol Hill. Presidents don’t get impeached every day, just like they generally don’t write six-page harangues charging Democrats with ‘declaring open war on American Democracy'(that was Tuesday) or tweet that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ‘teeth were falling out of her mouth’ (that was Sunday).

“This is what Washington is dealing with now: the daily acceptance that whatever notions of normal and not normal that used to exist have been scrambled beyond recognition. It has been like this for nearly three years.

“Still, Wednesday — a clear and cold December morning — hit with a special punch. It was one of those ‘step back’ days when history stands out from the pile of routine chaos. The 45th president of the United States would be impeached on Wednesday. Even in a nonstop news cycle, that’s a full-stop sentence. ‘Impeachment’ can’t be brushed off like a subpoena.”

NPR: “ How Demographics In Iowa, The First-In-The-Nation Caucus State, Are Changing”

NBC News: “ Trump makes ‘hell’ crack about deceased Rep. John Dingell; widow hits back” — ”

Republicans are calling on President Donald Trump to apologize for a macabre quip about the late Democratic Rep. John Dingell at his rally in Michigan on Wednesday night, suggesting that Dingell was “looking up” from hell.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top Trump ally, and two House Republicans from Michigan called for the never-penitent president to say he’s sorry. “If he said that I think he should apologize,” Graham told reporters Thursday morning. He said he hadn’t seen the remarks, but “that would be a bad thing to say.” “John Dingell is a fine, fine man,” Graham said.

Dingell’s widow, Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., responded on Twitter, saying: “I’m preparing for the first holiday season without the man I love. You brought me down in a way you can never imagine.”

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.