0. hello again i'm a and this is the news hour live from coming up in the next 60 minutes. it is tragic that the president's reckless actions make impeachment necessary he gave us no choice preparing to make a u.s. political history the house begins a debate that could see donald trump become only the 3rd u.s. president to be impeached. we don't talk a lot about a president who will talk about to all of these impeachment abuse of power because they can't actually pin anything a factual basis on you know the president did nothing wrong while republicans

continue to stand by their president who has dismissed the move as an attempted coup. i'm known taylor in london with the rest of the top stories including lebanon's assad hariri says he will not seek to stay on as prime minister head of much to lay talks to give the protest wracked country a new government. india's cream court postpones hearings against a new citizenship door to next month as anger against the legislation grows. while it's currently 19 g.m.t. that's 2 pm and washington d.c. and went out 2 hours into that final debate over whether to impeach the president of the united states democrats and republicans in the house of representatives on making their case about whether donald trump violated the constitution he's accused of withholding aid to you. craned to pressure it into investigating his political

rival the democrat controlled house is expected to make trump the 3rd president to be impeached in u.s. history trump has dismissed the process as an assault on america while democratic speaker of the house nancy pelosi opens that debate calling for both sides to put aside their partisanship and to vote in the interest of the country it is tragic that the president's reckless actions make impeachment necessary he gave us no choice but we are discussing today is the established fact that the president violated the constitution is a matter of fact that the president is an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections the basis of our democracy hundreds of historians legal scholars and former prosecutors but darla's of party had stated that the president committed impeachable offenses while trumps republican allies

say the democrats have been trying to impeach the president since he was elected we on the republican side have no problem taking our case to the majority and to the people of this country because they elected donald trump and it is a matter for the voters not this not in this way not in the way this is being done it is trampled everything this house believes and i said it yesterday and i believe it to be this true today i will fight this on process which has been deplorable to use the word of the majority it has been all for the calendar the clock make it impressive that we actually do it quickly we don't care about rules we don't care about minority hearing days we don't care about giving the opportunity for witnesses to be called because the chairman gets to determine what is relevant. well in a moment we'll speak to white house correspondent can really help but fast let's go to capitol hill and castro who's standing there where the vote will happen talk us through what we've been hearing this morning really impassioned statements from both sides but it's really just the beginning of quite

a number of hours of debate. that's why we're only about a 3rd of the way through yes so there's still 4 more hours of debate before this vote is expected and as you heard from house speaker nancy pelosi opening this debate with those wide sweeping historical terms saying that the nation's founders vision of this stablish one of the republic is under threat by the actions of the white house of course the articles currently being debated are abuse of power and obstruction of congress both linked to these accusations that the president used the power of his presidency to try to pressure ukraine to interfere in the upcoming presidential elections in his favor now republicans have of course pushed back against that accusation saying that trump is totally innocent and calling this impeachment a sham from the beginning doug collins the leading republican who's directing the

debate on the republicans be have said that democrats have been trying to remove trump from office since the day that he was elected now all of this is leading up to that vote work spectating by this evening and it's not a question of whether or not democrats will have the numbers to impeach trump they certainly do the question is how many may defect from the party caucus there are a couple democrats who have said that perhaps they will not vote impeach one is certain and there are several others who have been on the fence before there are democrats who represent conservative districts where trump is popular and they a handful of them have said in the previous days that they do intend to vote. trump because they see the constitution so important in giving them this obligation to protect the country protect the constitution against what they perceive as this threat to national security and bobby embodied by the president's actions and they

do so they're going to go forward with this impeachment vote these democrats from conservative districts even knowing they may risk their congressional careers by upsetting the voters at home so again by the end of today we're expecting that historic vote which would make president trump only. limited to the let's go live now to capitol hill where lindsey graham is actually addressing the media let's listen then that would end it i thought it was over with take our cases to the american people but i was wrong so what happened in the house impeachment driven by partisans this is unique it's the 1st impeachment in modern times anyway driven by people within the body where there is no outside counsel with the agree with clint's impeachment or not spent several years looking allegations and made a report to congress detailing abuse by president clinton watergate prosecution was

done outside of the political system and that's been missing here so i think this exercise in the house. is beginning to weaponize impeachment the intel committee could did the fact finding elements of it which is unusual the process they use i think is dangerous to the presidency is an institution when it gets here my goal is to have a short trial as possible where does that translate to when 51 people are ready to vote that's when we'll vote the most likely outcome is to use the trial record. what they used in the house to impeach president trump will be the trial record for the senate i am not going to support witnesses being called for by the president i'm not going to support witnesses being called for by senator schumer. who are going to vote on the same product the house used with my vote and i think most senators on our side are ready to move forward in an appropriate time will listen

to the house case well the president make comments that his legal team for them are both in sooner the better for me so with that i'll take some questions and i would like to talk about pfizer's somewhere but let's start with the beach. ok thank you very much for coming in. well that's republican senator lindsey graham there on capitol hill addressing the media he did say that he is pushing for a quick votes in the senate once this actually makes that once the impeachment actually makes it that he said the sooner the better why let's now bring in our white house correspondent kimberly halkett kimberly we've been hearing some reaction from the white house via twitter i magine president trump is watching all of this pretty closely today. he is and since we got

a little bit of time here i want to before we talk about the president unpack a little bit about what lindsey graham the senior sort of statesman up on capitol hill very senior republican was saying there because it gives us a lot of context into why the president is pushing back so hard lindsey graham's making the argument that we saw back in the previous impeachment that i covered back in the late ninety's when it involved president clinton that it came as the culmination of an investigation by the independent counsel kenneth starr and this tie we did have the president in best a gaited donald trump by special prosecutor but the conclusion of that 2 and a half year investigation was that the president had not colluded with russia but there was also the sort of lingering thing that was left out there and that was whether or not the president had obstructed justice and so it was almost passing the baton if you will to the u.s. congress so notable in all of this is the fact that we're now talking about congress preparing to impeach the president but it's not for obstruction of justice

it has nothing to do with that investigation instead it is a obstruction of congress charge which is a very different charge and a very different set of allegations and so that's what lindsey graham is pointing out here what he says that impeachment has been weaponized the notable the us president that was the very last line of his 6 page letter on the eve of this historic impeachment vote he said that the voters will hold democrats in the house of representatives to account they will not forgive this perversion of justice and abuse of power so that gives us a little context into why the president republicans are so angry they feel that there has not been a very concrete case built against this president democrats would say that's exactly what our hearings about we did put forward evidence and in fact this president tried to obstruct when we tried to get further concrete evidence and one of the tweets the president. to get to what he has been responding to throughout

these proceedings and we do know according to the press secretary that he is watching in between his meetings one of the things that he retreated was a quote from the former independent cat independent counsel ken starr who did of course investigate in the impeachment leading up to the impeachment of president clinton the quote the president has retreated the evidence has to be overwhelming and it's not even close this is the case that the republicans have been building towards that they believe that the president has committed no wrongdoing and case the president is going to later today take to battle creek michigan one of those very important swing states where he hopes to win reelection in the state that he hopes will help him do that the vice president is already there and he has been defending this president saying that he marvels at president trump's resilience and determination to go forward what's happening on capitol hill today is a disgrace you know the truth is they're trying to impeach this president because

they know they can't defeat this president. they're trying to run down this president because they know they can't run against our record they can't run against our results they're pushing this partisan impeachment because they know they can't stop you from giving president donald trump 4 more years in the white house. and that's the top accusation that we hear repeatedly is that republicans allege that democrats are trying to undo the results of the 2016 us election and that message seems to be getting some traction with a very divided america not just in the swing states but donald trump's campaign in the last couple of hours has sent out a couple of polls that seem to be favorable for him well there is just 151 percent favor in peaching the president not really a dramatic increase what is significant is support for the president least

according to the polls that the campaign is flagged percentage wise up 6 percent for the president certainly he's trying to make the case and this was the fear for democrats all along that the president would look like he is being is embattled that he is the victim of partisan politics that certainly the message the president is taking when he leaves the white house we expect him potentially to talk but certainly as this vote comes down he will be addressing his supporters making that case making my case at a very big rally i imagine as well kimberly but just going back to something that lindsey graham was saying and pushing for this really speedy voters what do you make of that the speed at which the senate wants to to get rid of this. well you know the argument has been there's a need for the speed because for a couple of reasons on both sides certainly donald trump at one point dangled out there the possibility that he would even be willing to testify everyone thinks that's a bad idea certainly the president often when he speaks potentially would perjure

himself so that's not a good idea in terms of the other witnesses this is the big argument but you heard that counter to the house of representatives when the. the man that was arguing on behalf of the republicans made the case representative doug collins what he was saying is right now there's been an attempt by the top republican the senate to shut down any further witnesses he goes yeah welcome to the party essentially that's what happened when we tried to put in witnesses in this case in the house of representatives there's no question at the end of the day americans are frustrated with their government they're frustrated with what's happening on capitol hill that's why they're divided but we have to remember that's also why donald trump got elected in 2016 he came here to disturb and disrupt that's exactly what he's done he's kept his promise with regard to that and he believes as he continues to fight

and battle forward even as he knows this will be a stain on his legacy that he is keeping that promise to voters kimberly we were talking a little earlier about impeachment fatigue there and you were talking about the frustration amongst the public and i wonder as this continues and we potentially see a debate around the witnesses that may or may not be cooled in the senate and this trial continues how do you see this playing out in an election year particularly for the occupants of the house that you're standing in front of right now. it's notable that in this very divided nation when you leave this white house campus when you even drive just 2 and a half hours from washington it's a very different tone and temperature people on both sides are really frustrated they're tired part of the big problem with this impeachment inquiry has been it's not easily digestible at times the words used to describe the crimes that donald trump had allegedly committed were latin quid pro quo that does not play well with

the ordinary american who is simply trying to pay their bills and put food on the table that's been a challenge for democrats you've heard our reporter on capitol hill heidi show castro describing though the feeling of democrats that they believe it is incumbent upon them to hold this president to account so the message can be sent to future presidents that there cannot be any potential abuse of power it will not be tolerated but the bottom line is this is a very inside the beltway as we like to say that ring of highway around washington where many of the more establishment in government live and work this is something that consumes the those voters but outside the beltway not so much so this is been the challenge for democrats to make their case to the american people and i think as we've been describing here in al jazeera the polls seem to show it hasn't been working can reallocate that white house correspondent we'll be talking to a bit less about finale thank you candy.

well let's briefly take a look at other news from across the world before returning to our pietschmann special coverage lebanon's former prime minister has announced for the 2nd time that he does not want to lead a new government saad hariri resigned back in october after weeks of anti-government demonstrations on monday the president planned to hold consultations with political parties to decide on a new prime minister but that's now been postponed until thursday people have been voicing their anger against corruption and sectarian politics governing the country for decades protestors have rallied again in new delhi after india's top court postponed hearings on a controversial new citizenship law until january and says it needs more details from the government the new makes it easier for non muslims from afghanistan

bangladesh and pakistan to gain indian citizenship and major merges been announced in the car industry that creates the wilds of 4th largest manufacturer fit cries and p.s.a. they are the owners of persia and france have agreed on a freshly $4000000000.00 tie up both companies of a short production line work is the nerve factory closures are planned a stray a has experienced its hottest day on record the average temperature across the country on tuesday was nearly $41.00 degrees celsius and that record could be broken on wednesday as it's only the start of the southern hemisphere summer in the searing temperatures have made things worse for crews dealing with more than $100.00 bushfires in the eastern state of new south wales shipowners are proposing a $5000000000.00 fund to reception loan mission fuels and kenya engine designs the industry is under pressure from the united nations to haul that c o 2 emissions from so-called dirty fuel shipping associations are calling for

a mandatory contribution of $2.00 per tonne on fuel bund to help to develop a technology. a disabled palestinian man has watched israeli demolition crews destroy his home for the 4th time in 20 is how tim reality is vowing to rebuild again saying the land in occupied east jerusalem is his rights groups say israeli demolitions increase this year the estimate is a couple of months ago was more than $200.00 palestinians have had their homes flattened. this is my land i have the right to live in it and i will rebuild it whether they agree or not i will keep building my home on my land for as long as i live. paula back to our special special coverage of the impeachment now and we're about 2 hours into the debate it's up to 4 more to go before the voters in the house let's

just remind you of the process so once the charges are approved by the house the president is then impeached but it doesn't mean he's automatically forced from office next a trial is held in the senate and that could be as soon as january it's overseen by the chief justice of the supreme course then the senators will act as jurists while members of the house of representatives will be the prosecution is there at least 2 sets or $67.00 senators need to vote guilty on at least one article of impeachment in order to have donald trump removed from office and if this happens the vice president then becomes president. well let's now speak to clyde wilcox who's a professor of government at georgetown university here into how he joins me cried the democrats didn't really want to do this did they nancy pelosi was reluctant to even begin this process they had their hand forced yes they really did mean the evidence is overwhelming here we had the trumps the ambassador to the e.u.

testify explicitly it was a quid pro quo everyone was involved now he's not just clumps nominee he's a man who gave trump a $1000000.00 for his inaugural ball right so this is a strong trump supporter admitting if there was an explicit quid pro quo for foreign policy they had no choice really but this may not play out very well for the democrats heading into an election so i don't think it will really hurt them it is true i listened to your correspondent say the quid pro quo is a technical term but in so what that's the law right here so i don't think it will hurt the democrats i don't think it will help the republicans it's you know this is a year from the election so it will be a wash i think we've been looking at all these opinion polls that say that public opinion is incredibly divided but just how engaged is the american public on this process presumably no one's really in the mood for a very long trial i mean i've been looking at some numbers here and the teacher

will say it was saying that people want to talk about health care in an election year they want to talk about jobs in the economy so how does this impeachment trial play out. well so i don't know what the public would prefer honestly is sometimes a trial can be gripping as your legal expert was saying earlier you know during the trial with witnesses come forward with the porton information that could be useful if they just vote quickly then you know it's done. the public is more concerned about health care but the government's not doing anything on that right the house has passed 400 bills that the senate hasn't taken up so it's not as if this is getting in the way of policymaking so just to recap on what happens when we go to the senate there there will be a debate on witnesses potentially being called in this trial and president trump himself to choose to testify or not what do you make of that are we likely to see anything explosive come out and once this this actually makes its way to the senate

my guess is they're republicans will not allow any witnesses they will have a very quick vote as quick as they can possibly have. but there are some republicans who are negotiating about the possibility of witnesses and if they win their negotiations basically mcconnell has 53 votes but if 4 people say no we're not willing to support the rules you suggest then he doesn't have a majority and he can do what he wants one really interesting thing that mitch mcconnell has said very recently and to remind our viewers he's the republican leader in the senate mitch mcconnell has said that in his mind this is a partisan process and he's not even going to try to be impartial he is there to support the white house how's that going down well so what do you guess that earlier that you know everyone's made up their mind and that's partially true but that's different from saying i'm coordinating with the defendant if a jury is coordinating with the defendant that's a little bit over the top i think. well ok at this point i want to bring in

a couple more guests we have 2 more experts to help us break down what's happening in washington so he will talk to philip others who is the associate counsel to the office of the president under president casa he's in new york but fast let's chat to alan baron he's a former special impeachment counsel so the house of representatives and he joins us now from washington d.c. mr baron i've just been having this conversation him with clyde about the partisan nature of this process now potentially was that what the founding fathers had imagined when they wrote these impeachment proceedings will that when they laid the foundations for that probably not. i mean they weren't naive and they there were even in those early days factions rather than parties as we know them today but there was more of a common purpose i think i don't think we've seen even in our lifetimes partisanship that it's so. absolute on both sides of the aisle i mean it's very

very disturbing there is no center left there's nobody there to reach across the aisle and try to work out a compromise the fact that mr mcauliffe senator mcconnell could make some of these statements about how well you know this is this is partisan and that's the way it is that's it's very disturbing i want to bring in mr bobbitt here at this point because there has been lots of speculation about whether or not. impeaching the president at this point could then lay the groundwork for this to happen again and again is impeachment now weaponized essentially going forward are we likely to see other parties take on future presidents in this mama. well that sort of assumes the idea that the 2 articles are so vague or so without foundation that they are no more than a weapon and i think that's going too far it remains to be seen whether or not the senate sitting as a jury can be persuaded of the factual basis for these charges but they're not so

flimsy that they're just party propaganda that the president really did have these communications his own administrators and appointees really did testify to that and he has unlike any president before him not simply objected to a single subpoena or asserted executive privilege he has completely frozen up the congress from testimony by executive officials on a new piece of matter so i think you could mean for of what's happened so far that the future bar for presidents will be too low at least not what is to impeachment but mr bobbitt despite all of the fact that you've just laid out where really unlikely to see senators publicly switch sides right so what do we expect in the senate when the trial plays out midst of all this if it is as brief as i think

we all agree it's likely to be that i don't think you have much change. if there are witnesses if for example 4 of the republican senators said. we insist on bringing these witnesses or we're not going to adopt the set of rules proposed by the majority leader well that will change things and we just make one point about impartiality dissenters each take an individual oath before the senate proceeding begins. that oath is is not just a. is done like signing a driver's license or even an affidavit this is a personal matter of conscience the oath is something we do before god and i can't help but think that sinners will take that. ticket more seriously if they were given the kinds of facts that new witnesses could provide mr barron we're

talking now about this oath of conscience do you see in the process i mean you've been involved in several impeachment yourself of federal judges is that this oath of of conscience that really holds true especially now in a process that's become as as pot as and potentially is this one is vitriolically potus and as we've seen in the house well obviously i can look into the minds and consciences of the members of the senate i venture to say that it doesn't weigh too heavily on any of them. you don't hear much talk about that what you hear about is partisan rhetoric and they're going to defend the republicans are going to defend this president down to the to the to the nth degree and our i don't think that oath is much of a damper on their willingness to go down the road with the president i must say i believe that the actions by this president with regard to ukraine in withholding

the. weapons and the funding for the weapons that the congress and authorize that is far more serious. then anything that happened in watergate which was essentially a 3rd a 3rd re break in and then a ridiculous but ultimately damaging coverup all domestic here we're now talking about international affairs a country that is aligned with us that is being attacked by the russians and the president is playing games for his own well being for his own elect reelection with the aid that they desperately need that goes so far beyond anything that was at stake in watergate. clyde i'm going to come back to you now because president trump has called this a coup and we've had about these very serious allegations and and some of the facts have been laid out and he actually has less as nancy pelosi ahead of today he said

that she was a violation of office and declaring open war on american democracy what do you make of his reaction to all of this typical trump right broad illogical angry rhetoric right it is herb responsibility to consider impeachment here the house could go could god gone either way but certainly it is the constitutional role of the house to bring impeachment hearings it's certainly not a war on democracy it's certainly not a war and even on donald trump it's about some of his behavior well now that we know potentially well that this would go to the senate and we're going to have this potentially public trial and we've talked a little bit about public opinion here today and i'm curious because the democrats know that they're unlikely to get this 2 thirds majority in the senate so what are they thinking now what's the political calculus moving forward into this election year they've they've done this because they felt it was their constitutional jussi

how do they hold their supporters together as this trial proceeds will i think their supporters are pretty strongly supportive right how am i think that we are polarized that there are trump supporters and there are non trump supporters i don't think there's going to be any problem with trump opponents suddenly become a trump supporter because of this trial so i don't think that's an all or even issue we've seen a small uptick though and support for the president you're seeing in some polls and some polls down them in polls are all over the place the typical poll gets a one percent response rate now so so we're not necessarily thinking that this is going to galvanize the riots bring together the republican party and and tom has been the term supporters will be galvanized by this the 40 percent or so that are there will begin. denies the people in the middle wall you know will be affected depending on what what happens will continue talking about this in just a moment clyde wilcox from georgetown university here in doha thank you for joining

us as well as the rest of our panel alan baron in washington d.c. and philip bobbitt in new york while you are all watching special coverage here on al-jazeera as the final debate continues over whether to impeach the president of the united states you're watching live pictures now of that debate from capitol hill by trump is facing charges of abusing his power and obstructing congress that impeachment version is expected in the coming hours and will obviously bring that to you live as it happens but for now to other new us. and i meant a 100 over to lauren in london at our european broadcast center. this as if it very much and starting with lebanon's caretaker prime minister saad hariri say he's not putting himself forward as a candidate to head the new government but says a day before formal consultations which take place between a president and parliamentary blocs does it designate the next leader harry resigned as prime minister in october following weeks of nationwide protests

against the country's ruling elite demonstrators accuse the government of rampant corruption and a calling for a complete overhaul of the post civil war secular political system rami khouri is a senior public policy fellow and professor of journalism at the american university of beirut he says harry reid's decision is a signal that lebanon's political leadership is starting to listen to public opinion well he's done this several times before is the mouse's candidacy that said his luck of the week that it was working by the same sort of prove the candidate so with leaders who are not order of the old girl or long system that has ruled lebanon for many decades you never know what is the real significance of what they are doing one thing is clear though there is a new element in the political arena and it's the end.