the u.s. constitution is 229 years old in that time 3 u.s. presidents have faced formal impeachment proceedings today president donald trump became the 4th tonight the politics of impeachment i'll ask a former watergate prosecutor if he thinks impeachment can be fair and can the constitution survive the politicians who've promised to protect america from berlin this is the day. this isn't it that anything personal that a president isn't about politics is to doubt patriotism the house's impeachment inquiry has exposed the truth the white house launched a shadow foreign policy president trump led an extortion shakedown scheme over the

ukrainian president abused his power undermine our national security and undermine the integrity of our elections democrats are trying to impeach the president because they are scared they cannot defeat him at the ballot in a blink of an obvious clue to unseat a sitting president of united states that shows telephoning to this process it is. also coming up next month and twitter will ban all political advertising to stop the spread of misinformation but facebook c.e.o. says it's the responsibility of the voters not social media to check the facts and to filter out the law do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of fact checking on political advertisements well congresswoman i think the lying is bad and i think if you were to run an ad that a lie that would be bad that's different from it being in our position the right thing to do to prevent your. to transfer people in an election and seeing that you

at last. were to our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and all around the world welcome we begin the day in which the impeachment inquiry against us president trump became formal and very political not that that was ever in doubt the u.s. house of representatives today passed a resolution formalizing the impeachment process that means public hearings will soon take place for the nation and the world to watch impeachment is a political process but the constitution instructs the u.s. congress to treat it like a legal case the senate conducts an impeachment trial and also acts as judge and jury and that's difficult at best and it is important to note that no president has ever been impeached convicted and removed from office today the world sold the partisan politics of impeachment not a single republican voted for the resolution in the house some g.o.p.

lawmakers accusing democrats of trying to undo the election of 26 team but the democrats they maintain that this is not about politics but rather about a president abusing his power speaker of the house nancy pelosi saying that starting impeachment hearings is no longer a choice it's a constitutional obligation i don't know why republicans are afraid of that should every member should support allowing the american people to hear the facts for them south this that is really what this vote is that pam madam speaker when you look through this resolution you see how one sided house soviet style this is running this is the united states of america don't run a sham process a tainted process like this resolution ensures this impeachment is not only an attempt to undo the last election. is it an attempt to influence the next one as well madam speaker history is testing us and i wary based on what we have heard

from the other side today that some may be failing that test there are no kings or queens in america the resolution is adopted without objection the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. i'm joined tonight by a man who helped build the case for impeachment against a different us president almost 50 years ago nick ackerman was one of the watergate special prosecutors in the case against us president richard nixon mr ackerman is in new york for tonight's and he joins me from there mr ackerman welcome to the program when you look at what has been report under reported from the depositions that have been offered so far what do you think is the case for impeachment now clear cut. yeah i think it's pretty clear cut the congress makes it pretty clear that a president under the constitution makes it clear that

a president can be impeached and then removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors and bribery and we can be a clear case of bribery i would donald trump holding back the funds that were perpetrated by congress for the defense of ukraine holding back a visit to the white house in return and both as this is for an investigation into the biden's a mr trump's chief political rival in the upcoming election so it seems to me this is a pretty clear case as it is now and the congress over the last 3 or 4 weeks has developed a pretty strong actual basis to move forward on. in the year you say that it's clear cut but not a single republican voted to make the impeachment process formal today what does that tell you about the likelihood of impeachment leading to a conviction. well i don't know if that tells us much at this point i mean the

republicans have not in any way attacked the actual underlying allegations and sounds that's the most remarkable part about this but as you said in the opening here this is not just a legal process but it's also a political process and the only way that you're going to get a conviction and i believe that the house members know this is that there has to be a public buy in which is why they're going to the next stage to try and educate the public and bring out the evidence and that they've gathered over the last few weeks do you think it's going to be similar to what we saw with the watergate hearings and i remember what i heard about those from my parents that everyone watched and everyone was glued to the screen and it became very obvious through those hearings that president nixon was indeed guilty of what he was being accused of do you think that that is going to happen with these public hearings that are about to start. oh

i think there's a good shot that there will people really haven't focused on it yet we've been getting sort of 2nd hand accounts of what's been going on in these committee hearings so i think it's important that people hear all the evidence i mean don't forget with watergate and it wasn't a sure thing that nixon would be removed from office and in fact he resigned instead of being removed knowing that the votes were against him and had happened only 7 days prior to you know his resignation i mean up to that point it was just like you know the republicans were sticking like glue to him and then what happened was the smoking gun tape was released in which nixon was overheard on asking his aides to have the cia instruct the f.b.i. to stop the investigation into the watergate burglary on the basis of national security you know so it's a bit early to predict what's going to happen but i think the evidence is going to

be pretty powerful here what happens if and when the house passes articles of impeachment and then the senate tries the president and acquits the president what then. then he continues on as president i mean that has happened on you know 2 other times in the course of our history it happened with andrew johnson it happened with bill clinton so yeah i mean i think if that happens we will continue on donald trump will remain president just what his position will be and how strong he will be at that point i have the going into a another election a presidential election next year and it's hard to believe that even if he is not convicted by the senate that ultimately that the voters want will not in the end will pass on what he did into the u.s. president retreated recently a threat of civil war like conditions in the u.s.

if he is impeached and removed from office did you ever think anything like that could happen or a threat like that would come from the white house when you were working on the impeachment pietschmann case against president nixon. not never i'm fact i never thought any of this would ever happen again but this president has been off unhinged has basically done everything your counter to our enormous with respect to our president acts i has undermined almost every policy that we've had with respect to our allies in europe and other parts of the world and what he's done with ukraine is absolutely outrageous that he's essentially trying to undermine an ally who worked in in europe that stands against russia and it to me the whole thing is being done we're glad i'm here putin he's the one that's gaining

from all. earlier this month the u.n. 16 other watergate special prosecutors you wrote and signed an open letter calling for impeachment and the final paragraph of that letter it cult our attention i'm going to read this to our viewers you write in 1904 it was a group of republican senators who put national interest over party loyalty and informed nixon that his conduct was indefensible and would compel conviction by the senate and removal from office we hope the current senate would similarly put on or and integrity of the partisanship and personal political interest on mr ackerman integrity over partisanship we didn't see much of that today in the house did we. no we didn't but we didn't see much of that and so almost the end of you know that until the point that nixon was forced to resign i mean i think what's

going to happen here and it could very well happen the same thing that happened in watergate is that as the evidence comes out and people realize that there is no factual defense to what he did in fact the republicans don't either raise one at this point all of their defense has been above procedure and that there hasn't been a fair opportunity for the president to meet these allegations all of which happens in the senate anyway that's not supposed to happen. that somehow you're going to have to get 20 republicans who are going to have to justify what trump did and i think that as the house keeps developing these facts and keeps boxing in they were trying would trump did it's going to be very difficult for senators to say that this conduct was ok i think you make a good point there there is though a big difference between now and watergate and that has to do with the media you know richard nixon he didn't have twitter he didn't have social media to reach the

all americans with messages that may or may not have been true but president trump does are you concerned that that will that will change the ability of the evidence to influence the senator's that's that's clearly one difference but one other big differences are that richard nixon had a much more loyal political following he had been involved in american politics going back to 1952 prior to his resignation or forced resignation in 1984 there aren't too many people that are going to you know take a bullet for donald trump i mean you can see by virtue of the various white house people that have been testifying in the last couple weeks. and these are people all around him people in the white house that have come forward and that's a big difference here i think a lot of us senators are going to be struck by that at the end and the public is

going to be struck by that powerful testimony that we will probably hear over the next few weeks well you were faith in the power of evidence that is certainly inspiring mr ackerman we we appreciate you sharing it with us tonight nick ackerman former watergate special prosecutor joining us tonight from new york thank you very much for your time in your insights. thank you for having me. for the reelection campaign of the trump has reportedly already spent tens of thousands of dollars to place political ads on facebook but twitter will not be getting any of that kind of money anymore twitter has announced that it will ban all political advertising starting at the end of november now explaining the decision twitter c.e.o. jack dorsey said that political ads force targeted political messages on to people and because of social media's vast reach political ads can then be used to spread

lies and misinformation twitter saying it will not be part of a situation in which politicians have the right to lie to the public simply because they pay for the advertising. i'm joined now by a man who is not shy about sharing his opinions about the news media and social media jeff jarvis is a journalism professor and author of several books including what would google do he joins me tonight from new york good to see you again you posted earlier today your thoughts about twitter banning political ads and you wrote that you're not going to please anyone with what you think why is that. well you just the popular opinion these days which we see on twitter itself that people should these services should ban political ads because there are some bad apples out there i think that's a mistake i think the intent that jack dorsey has is very good i think he's very

thoughtful about this is trying to figure it out but i think that in a way it's an abrogation of responsibility similar to facebook's on the other end where they're going to keep political ads and not take any of them down kind of for no reason both technology companies are trying to make no judgments here these companies are rather allergic to making judgments they see themselves as platforms but the problem is that by taking down political ads including both candidate ads and issue based ads it i think limits the the ability in the future for a candidate who comes out of nowhere to start a campaign i fear that this is going to favor the incumbents over the insurgents because the incumbents have the money and the recognition and the power i also think it's possible for new movements to use the targeting that internet purchases provide to spend very little money for very efficient advertising to find the people who are with them and they've lost that now so i would want them to be ok

let me pick up the point about the money here jeff twitter says that we don't want to be where you have to pay to play and spread lies and the c.e.o. of twitter he posted this we're working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading information but if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad well they can say whatever they want to mean doesn't he have a point there facebook doesn't really care about free speech it sounds like facebook only cares that you pay for the space in which that free speech takes place. i don't know that's fair because i think that the political advertising that if you look at the you can look at facebook has a database of political ads now because they require this and the amount spent on each ad is fairly small the amount that donald trump spends in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a week or a month is minor compared to what they spend on television so i don't think this is

about money if and when the i suggested today was fine donate the money to a campaign against voter suppression it's not about the money it is about the speech now in terms of this idea of pain well yes both twitter has an algorithm that promotes certain things facebook has the same thing and so pain is a way to get around that algorithm and be able to reach people directly i think that that's something that should be in their power again especially if it's inexpensive no a lot of people are going against targeting and same targeting is bad and evil because it was used badly targeting is also good it goes to people who are going to care about climate change are going to care about internet privacy and other things and you can go directly to them and organize peaceful speeches just about speeches about assembly as well you told me several years ago jeff that facebook and other social media platforms need to realize that they are not just platforms they also are gate keepers and thus they they need editors working for them facebook now has

you know a whole staff of editors they've got content mediators but they're not using them for political ads and doesn't doesn't that bother you. well no i don't think anyone would have editors over political ads don't forget that the analogy here in the united states is that a network cannot refuse and cannot take down a political ad when they're when they're regulated by the federal communications commission so there's no precedent for that no i think when i said that they needed editors i think it's not so much to edit content though they're going to be doing that and getting content i think they need to bring in that sense of public responsibility that we journalists believe we have you assume here too that the public is informed well enough to decipher the messages and to determine which ones are real and which ones can manipulate the one about the situation though where the public cannot do that what happens when people are easily manipulated as it appears the case is in many places including in the united states what do you do that. well

apart me my lights go out and i think i'm dead. as i am. the problem here is that i think that what you just said presumes that people don't have their own agency and their own intelligence if we don't fundamentally believe in the intelligence and goodwill of our fellow men and women and citizens then we don't believe in democracy or free markets or education or journalism i reject all of that at the end of the day i think we've got to accept the idea that we helped me in journalism to win the platforms to serve the public conversation that conversation is a catalyst it is meant to be it's been controlled for a century by big old media but now the internet comes along and takes away that control and i celebrate that for now we can hear voices that were always there but couldn't be heard before that's what led to me to that's what led to living while black and black lives matter in the united states so no i don't what it keepers over that i want the conversation we're just getting used to the could happen again

do you think that this what we're talking about here is maybe a very american problem where the news is not treated like a public good but rather as a as a commodity and facebook treats political ads the same way you know it doesn't care what kind of impact it has on democracy i mean do you think that's something that you see exacerbated in the u.s. . no i think we do see journalism as a public good of sorts we don't necessarily see it as a tax supported good and indeed with the government we have in the united states right now i want government as far away from journalism and media as possible and so i'm delighted that we have no government supported media because god knows what donald trump would do so no i don't think it's just purely an american thing yes we have for profit media here and it's has supported journalism and we've got to figure that out in new ways and i think eventually we will these are early days for

the internet in gutenberg time it's only the year 1475 we're about 25 years away from the interaction of the commercial web 50 years away from the birth of the internet this week you know so this is brand new and we're still figuring it out all right jeff jarvis joining us tonight from new york jeff it's always good to talk with you we appreciate your time and your insights valuable stuff thank you thank you. he was whimpering screaming and crying and frankly i think it's something that should be brought out so that his followers and all of these young kids that want to leave various countries including the united states they should see how he died as president trump there earlier this week saying that the world should see the footage of the raid that killed yes leader abu bakar al baghdadi well now the pentagon has released the 1st images taken during that takedown of the world's most wanted terrorist the grainy

footage recorded by an overhead drone shows us special forces slowly moving towards the compound where al baghdadi was hiding they were supported from the air by a 15 fighter jets once the compound was cleared a drone blew it up with a missile. well one of the key members of the special forces team was a dog baghdadi attempted to escape through a tunnel but killed himself by detonating a suicide vest when he was cornered by a us military canine on the u.s. president has retreated an altered image of the canine putting a medal around the neck of conan the dog trump wrote simply american hero he later announced that he would invite cone into the white house some time next week the dog was injured during the raid but has reportedly recovered and is back in active service some people say this is an example of politics going to the dole.

in the u.k. campaigning has begun ahead of pre christmas general elections on december 12th some lawmakers are calling it quits and will not be running for reelection and that includes arguably the most 4 throated of them all the speaker of the house of commons john bercow today was his last day in the chair and from that chair he generated a cult following thanks to his. voice and his not so gentle gesticulations and who can forget that one word for which the name bercow has become synonymous. 6 with. nothing only shows him john bercow has become a british household name. very interesting. and spare

a student yet trace ok yourself. back i was 1st elected to the role of speaker of the house of commons 10 years ago it's been his job to chant abates and to king i want to hold. oh there were a politician himself the speaker must also remain impartial at all times that beck who has been accused by some of showing political bias particularly when it comes to bracks it my ruling is therefore that the motion will not be debated today as it would be repetitive and disorderly to do so i know that the dynamics you face mean that on occasion you will sometimes have to please some and not others but it is becoming remarkable how often you please one lot and not the other. when he was sketching the decisions in his favor. grumbling he's grumbling now because he

doesn't like the judgment but his rulings have also divine did the public is clearly on the remains side and he's a lawyer who sort of man lives through whose sole aim is very obviously to stop. well i think he's actually standing up for democracy and for parliament. on the very day breaks it was supposed to happen but didn't a colorful politician is bowing out of british politics while some may applaud his departure others will miss the man who try to put this house in. well the day is almost done but it's also callaway to before we go we want to continue with the tradition here on the day with our hello wayne guests. and remember whatever happens between now and then tomorrow is another day we'll see that everyone have a happy hello

a. complete . the 1st. to the point of strong opinions clear positions from international perspectives. there's a growing sense that war torn syria is censoring a new phase with the u.s. apparently ambivalent about its role in the region russia and turkey have stepped into the vacuum so what now lies ahead for syria to find out to the point.

cut next on t.v. to look for. the small stuff he wrote it. he passed it on. and he read it to the last. ever 9989. the story behind one of the most remarkable days in recent german string and schabowski is known to the night the wall came down going to be faked. luxury behind the mirror humans are exploited and animals cruelly slaughtered. big brands have committed to fair working

conditions and sustainable production. but who is monitoring the subcontractors. and investigative documentary goes to italy and china and looks behind the glamorous for signs of fashion houses. maturing behind them her starts no membership on t.w. . there's a growing sense that waltz on syria is entering a new phase that could mean new opportunities but also new dangers well the situation on the ground changed dramatically when u.s. president donald trump made the unexpected decision to in large measure at least withdraw american forces from syria in doing so the americans abandon their erstwhile allies the.