yamiche: a mob storms the u.s. capitol. american democracy tested but unbroken. president trump: you have to show strength and you have to be strong. yamiche: president trump'ss woad to a riot on capitol hill. >> this temple to democracy was desecrated. yamiche: his supporters breakin congress. >> broke the glass -- yamiche: and lay siege. but they failed to stop the will of the people.wm akers still certified president-elect joe biden's win. >> they tried toisrupt our democracy. they failed. they failed. miche: howid we get here? president-elect president- enough is enough -- president-elect biden: enough is enough is enough. >> by inciting sedition as he did yesterday he must be removed from office. yamiche: next.

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additional funding is provided by the estat of arnold adams and koo and patricia yuenth ugh the yuen foundation, committed toridging cultural differences in our communities, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. yamiche: good evening. i'm yamiche alcindor. welcome to "washington week." it has been an historic and traumatic week iwashington, d.c. president trump encouraged a violent mob to storm the u.s. capitolyiercing t v heart of our democracy. after falsely claiming he won th 2020 election, there are just 20 days left in president trump's term. but amid them there are growing calls for him to rign or to be removed. house democrats are drafting ticles of impeachment again. and some on president trump's cabinet are talking about invoking the 25th amendment to force him out. my sources tell s it'ry

unlikely that vice president pence would aee to that. those close to the president say he is embarrassed and isolated. on thursday, house speaker nancy pelosi didn't hold back. >> the president has committed an unspeakable assault on our nation and our people. i join the senate democrat lead ining on the vice president to remove this president by immediately invokinghe 25th amendment. if the vice president or cabinet do not act, the congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment. yamiche: t joining usight are the best reporters covering congress andhe white house. nancy cordes, chief congressional orrespondent for cbs news. tead herndon for "th."new york tim and jake sherman, founder of the new punch bowl news. jake, today, araft of the articles of impeachment have been certificate lating. the question on everyone's mind, could president trump be removed fro office in the final weeks of his term?

jake:oet't seem likely, yamiche. thanks for having me. it doesn't seem liky. ere are only a couple of days left here. but the house is undoubtedly inl the next c of days going to move toward an impeachment vote. w potentially nek, most likely next week. e 25th amendment is really not a live option for removing the president. there's a lot of hurdles between invoking the 25th amenentnd gettinghe president out of office. but -- so the house will pass ipeachment. th goes over to the republican and currently the republican senate. you would need a lot of republicans to agree to remove the president. i will say this, though. in my time covering congress,na and trumpas presidency, this is the most angry that republicans have been with donald trump. the most disappointed, most diszpwufted, pick yourey word. re very, very tough with donald trump at the moment. they believe that he incited is violence. he sent his protesters to the hpitol. we done to guess that.

he told his protesters at a rally we're going to m ch up to the capitol. so they did. i was in the capi they were loud. they were inappropriate. they were violent. people died. so i just think that republicans are going to say listen, there's 10, five, however many days when this starts lt of donald trump's presidency. and we should spare him and let him finish out his days and move on to joe biden on january 20. yamiche: jake just indicated that it's going to be super hard to get president trump. it sms out of office with just 12 days left in office. nancy, what is the calculation here whe it comes to all the things that we're sesing, cially of course as these articles of impeachment have been circulating? nancy: well, i interviewed david sicilini, one of the authors of these articles of impeachment. and i asked him, you know, essentially, why do this now when the president is about to leave anyway? and what he said was first of all, they need to send a message to this president and

to future presidents and to other countries and to future generations that the some things that congress just will not accept. and the fact that this president is about to head out the door matter what happens isn't a reason not to send that message. as far as republicans are concerned, not all o them, but some of them, there is a silver lining here. and that is that if the senate does vote to convi this president, even after he has left office, and that is a this up even after he's gone, if they're successful in stering two thirds of the senate to vote to convict him, he cannot run f president again. and for many republicans, the notion of not having this president and the specter of another trump run for office four fearsm now is pretty appealing, pretty motivating. yamiche: nancy saying it's pretty appealing to res public to have trump be out of the way. you've been covering the senate

race in georgia. what has losing the contr of the senate done to republicans, especially when it comes to the political calculations ahead? astead: i think there was a political messa and a more policy concerns going forward. the political message certainly is that the replicansha in race made a bet with trump. that faile and that is a warning sign for republican party that cannot put together this trump coalition without him at the top of the ballot. more importantly, you had thecr deic motivated base that really overwhelmed that. and i think that for those republican senators, the mes that trumpnaused i that race, the split between the governor and the senators, try secre of state, the in-fighting among republicans and that core maga base was not one that was worth it. and so i think that just -- crystalizes the political problems republicans have going forward. but it obviously expands the

possibilities for joeiden going ahead. cabinet posons, and policy are just expanded by the idea that he will now be able to ge a tie breaking vote with vice president kamala harris through the senate. there are those policy concerns and really a political rebuke, jus as big as we saw in november with biden's victy. yamiche: we now have phil rucker, white house bureau chief for "the washington post," thanks so much for bei here, phil. astead was talking about the calculions and the publicans losing control of the senate. i want to talk to you about what's going on inside this white house. this -- georgia is seen as a rebuke. but there's also of coursell these resignations. twitter suspending the what are you hearing about what's going on in the white house? i'm hearing that there's chaos, th tensions ares high as they've ever been. philip: yeah. i'm hearing the exact same, yamiche. our sources are telling us that the president feels under siege and he is in an alarmingly

fragile emotional and psychological state right now. he spentay most of wedne fuming about vice president pence, a hry with loyal number two, not responsive to the needs of the capitol. he was not engaged in the cision to deploy the military, the national guard up there tol help qu the unrest. he resistedis pleas from advirs to tell his supporters to go home and to stand down. he resiste t recording video that he ultimately grudgingly agreed to do last night for the very first time acknowledging his electoral fate which is that he losle theion. and that there's going to be a new president come january0. but this is a difficult te for the president. and the reality is there are very few advisors left around him. 've seen a number of resignations and those who a now,losest to him rig mark meadows, the chief of staff, among others, are his biest enablers. they're the people who are giving the president misinformation who are helping

him believe these fantasies that hs believed for the last two months about t electio and that has a lot of other people in the administration very concerned about how dangerous he might be as prident in his final 12 days. yamiche: and phil, you're saying it's a difficult ment for t president. also a difficult moment of course for the nation. let's take a closther look a breach on capitol hill wednesday. the violence left five people dead. that as a pandemic continues to kill thousands of every day. president trump now faces allegations that he inced riot. in a speech an hour before violence broke out, he encouraged march to the capitol. president trump: we won in a landslide. this was a landslide. all vice president pence has t do is send it back to the states to recertify. e're going to walk down to the pito you'll never take back our country with weakness. and you have to be strong. yamiche: what president trump said is not true.

he did lose the election. and the vice president's role was onlyon cerl. jake, you were inside the capitol as all this was wppening. i our videos of the chaos as it was reporting from the white house. what did you see inside the building, the protesters, and with capitol police who dme say fai to do their jobs? jake: well, you know, clearly it's a failure of a lot of people when a crowd, a mob, not up in the capitol running free and roaming free throuout the otherwer the previously secure hallways. i was sitting in these h periodical press gallery where i sit every day, everyone here knows where that is. and i -- i wald out to down the mallway and i knew that people had gotten into the building. and people were smashing feet from me, smashing their way through this glass door.ee we've the images all over. a police officer fell.

and they were -- next thing i knew, we werekered down in an office for three hours. people were banging on our doors. people were armed. people -- there was a swat tea goin throughout the hallway. we weren't actually evacuated, yamiche, it's fascinating, for several hours. we were like sitting ducks a bunch of reporters and kept saying to ourselves what should we do? and i kept saying nothing. we don't have -- we're not armed. we have no way of defendingou elves against large crowds of people. so i mean, it was -- it was an alarming episode to say the least. and the scary thing is we al iys talked aboutn the capitol whether, you know, if people got in, would we -- would police ever be able theo get out? it's such a large and sprawling building.u ow, seven buildings put together. it's a large complex. thankfully, with thee help of f.b.i., a.t.f., capitol police, secret svice, d.c. police, they were able to clear the place out and secure it on again. but really, an episode that

i'll never forget. yamiche: wwill never forget this episode. and what you're describing just it's so scary.bumps because nancy, you've been in that building, that capitol building so many times. 's one of the most secure buildings in the world. when i go through there i have get checked and all my stuff gets scanned. how did this mob get in? n?w did this hap nancy: well, in some ways, it may have simply been a failure of not just intelligence but of manu raju nation. e everyone at pitol is used to huge protests. that's just sort of a fact of plife here o capitol hill. but they are usually peaceful protests and people are willirr to getted and almost asking to get arrested. they want to make tir point peacefully. this was the absolute opposite. you had hundreds if not thousands of peopleanging on those doors. they came with weans. and they just simply overwhelmed the capitol police force. and i think, you know, when i talk about af failure o imagination, i just don't think

anyone had ever conceivethat something like this could happen because it had never happened before. and wh i started the day on hidnesday, here at the capitol, the last on my mind was the possibility that this ge crowd -- and i saw people gathering in the streets on my way to work before dawn -- they hundreds. dy out there by the it never occurred to me that they might en masse storm the capitol. and clearly law enforcement officials hadn't considered that, eitr. but we'e now in a really unusual situation, yamiche, where thhouse sargeant at arms, the senate sargeant at arms and the capitol police chief have all stepped down a week and a half before the inauguration. so you've got all the power at theop here on capitol hill and law enforcement gone before one of o biggest high security events, the inauguration of the next president, a time when there are great concerns that the se individuals could try to strike

again. so yes, tonight the capit is secure. but i can tell you loofment still feel very nervous because they're worried that something like this could happen again. and they themsels are stl being hounded at the airrt, on airples, wherever they go. lindsey graham had to have a full complement of law enforcement around him at the airport today. because people were screaming this is not going away. yamiche: astead, you've been doing so mun repting w it comes to right wing extremism. did you see this coming? what isou -- has reporting told you whether or not a moment like this could happen? astead: yeah. in some ways, i think for some of us who have been not i washington, but across the country, over the last three or four years, not only at trump rallies, and that kind of smaller events, organized online, you've seen this violence. u've seen this type of mob activity before. it has been a feature of the trum t presidency and trump era. it's been frankly, though, out of the mainstream case.

this is communities that have organized locally. and have been really motivated and really potent mix of conspiracy and bigotry. a kind of mess ofor misition. but also one that does not kind of believe in the real tenets of multiracial democracy and does not respect those folks' right to really have their say on this government. you ow, i remember being in northwest arizona last year, the event called trump stock and a man putis gun on the table and said if donald trump civil we'll have anoth war. that's the type of language you've heard at these type of things for a. whi what happened yesterday was a culmination of knows events that came to washiton, to the seat of democracy, to the kind of hollow places where we don't think this is possible. but it has been growingnd fermenting around the country for years. yamiche: afthe this week, split in the republican party is growing. almost every republican i s talked to t week was obsessed with this question, goes to what astead was talking about, what is the path forward for the party?

the g.o.p. divisions will be on full display on inauguration day. vice president gence isng. president trump is not. my sources tell me that tensions inside the g.o.p. are as high as it gets and that trump is furious at vice naesident pence and the congressrepublicans. nancy, you've been reporting on this all week. what is going on inside the g.o.p.? nancy: well, there's a finger pointing to put it lightly.a number of republicans outright turning on some of the individuals who really led the charge this week to vote against the eleoral college sults, to challenge them. they were accseed olling their supporters and president trump supporters on thisas fathat perhaps he had won the election after all there was massive voter fraud, that the election could be overturned and they are really coming under withering attack not just from some of their colleagues here on capitol hill, some democrats have directly called on individuals like ted cruz and josh hawley toesign.

but from the business world, book dealt -- lost a and even from some of their republican mentors. we have seen a lot of and say that they're very ut concerned with what the president has said. iea haven't too many republicans come out and say that they themselves wish that they could take some of the things they had done back. that they wished that perhaps they had't joined this movement to try to challenge the electoral college results. so, you know, a lot of fger pointing. i'd say just yet. oul searching yamiche: soul searching. phil, there haseen a lot of soul searching since president trump got into office. we've covered him together. we've seen his false allegations, his false information. talk to me a little bit about what you repkrted ts w which is that president trump was raging uncontrollablype abo eived acts of betrayal and

president trump in some ways never really truted establishment republicans. philip: he neverid, yamiche. part of his whole political brand has been that he's the victim, righ that the elites, the people who are in power in washington, but also in the business world, in new york, that they were out to get him. and that he was an outsider. that's how he developed so much support around the country and how he got elected president and -- what he's seen right now that it's all coming home to roost in these final couple of weeksu he is losinort. he's losing members of his cabinet. he's losing members ofists f. but he's also losing allies on senator lindsey graham one of his closest friends, golfing partners, fierst defenders in the senate, over these last four years, basically said it was an interesting ride but it's over. i'm donh trump. i'm moving on. senate leader mitch mcconnell hasr told otenators according to our reporting that he does not intend to ever onspeak tod trump again. the two have been estranged

these last few weeks. not been on speaking terms. but mcconnell's finished. and his wife, elaine khao, transportation secretary, resigned on thursday. and i think we're goi to continue to see this. we just in the last hour or two saw that lisa murkowski, the republican senator fm alaska, has said that she's done with trump. she thinks he needs to leave officeight away. and we very well could start hearing from some more in the days a hours to come. yamiche: yism is talking about that strange rtwationship n president trump and congressional republicans. jake, you wrote in punch bowl news this week that kevin mccarthy and president trump got into a screaming match. is this bond between president tr republicans and even maybe the vice president, is it broken? jake: you know, the tatransacti hey had relied on for many years to kind ofmooth over at least internally their relationship or in their minds, their relationship, that transaction is up. that transaction was put up

with kind of disgusting behavior and behavior that we really can stomach. in exchange for conservative judgesnd conservative policies and things of that nature. that's up. donald trump is going to be president for another couple of days and he's gone. the incentive structure has changed. now, kevin mccarthy, the top republican in the house of hpresentatives a different calculus he wants tin the majority back. he believes there's a lot of people in his conference, apublican members of the house, who from districts that donald trump is very popular in.an who frankly support donald trum and he doesn't want to get but a lot of people would argue, and i think this is a fair argumt to make, that the reason at that his rank suspect file is suprtive of -- and file is supportive of donald trump they have no alternative. if commargy doesn't split with trump they don't split with trump. so it's a complicated situation. but i think -- i think

everyone's right here which is n republare just -- they're tired of him. and this was the final straw. yamiche: just t weeks before the inauguration came, these deadline events, present-elect joe biden h condemned this week on thursday, biden said this. president-elect biden: no one can tell me that if it had been a group of black lives matter protestingesterday there wouldn't have been -- they wouldn't have been treated very, very differently thanhe mob of thugs that stormed the capitol. we all knows tharue. and it is unacceptable, totally unacceptable. yamiche: now in both the house and the senate, democrats have control. that comes after democrats john osoff and raphael warnock won the georgia senate races. that would have been our top story this week in any other week. astead, preident-man elect joe biden is talking about unity and healing the soul of the nati and will it wor after all thief witnessed? astead: you know, this is a

real core believe of joe biden. this is something that is not just a kind of political move from him. but it's how he kindanf sees understands the universe. and hasnderstood his negotiating of washington in his decades in the senate. and so this is t not --s is something that is going to be ound and has frustrated some. ani've talked to people who hee in those meetings with him in transition who are trying to get him to budge to embrace kind of unilateral executive orders, to prioritize things like combating racial injustice or other sues over the idea of bipartisanship and kind of washington civility. but j h biden responded to them in those meetings saying he is certain that there is going to be a break from kind of trumpism among republicans. and that he is going toold on to that belief. that is something that we're going to have to see where that goes. and -- in the next couple of tonths. is this a movem where he is going to be able to really see that? but you know, jon ossoff and raphael warnock served him a

big step ont front. because he does not have to deal with the mitne mccon senate anymore. the question is whether he will be so concerned with kind of heing hearts and minds in a he -- or there will be a focus on the picy change that can happen. because whether congressional republicans break with trump or has been with him. and the american people on the conservative side have still been motivated by him. i don't know if that's something thatoe bidenan heal in rhetoric. but that is something that he can target in terms of policy. yamiche: 10 seconds left, but il, i wan to go to you. what do you make of just what things look l te now with g.o.p. at one point wanting to look at president trump for midterms just 10 seconds left. philip: you know, yamiche, we're goi to have to see because this is such an evolving story but i wouldn't we've seen through history that politicians can disappear for a while and have a resurgence

later. so we'll see. yamiche:'s thatt for tonight. thank you to our panel, nancy cordes, astead herndon, phil rucker --, jake sherman. this i a heart brking time of the images of this week's vetack are burned into our collecouls. but democracy persisted. united wetill stand. thank you so much for joining us tonight. be sure to check out our "washington week" extra. we'll continue this conversation. oyou'll find it online o social media and on our website. i'm yamiche alcindor. stay safe. good nightsh from gton. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visincicap.org]

announcer: corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- boeing. kaiser permanente. consumer cellular. additional funding is provided by the estate of arnold adams and koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed tora bridging cul differences in our communities, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station ouom viewers like thank you. ♪

candy: i grew up with the american dream. erika: but all asian immigrants were denied the right of naturalized citizenship and with the exclusion act, inese became the first undocumented immigrants. candy: the american dream is a lovely dream to have and so people continue to aspire; enduring whatever it is that they've got to do as immigrants. helen: japanese americans fought on the side the united states, while the rest of their family was incarcerated. erika: legal challenges were so important because they did not have political power. and as much as tragedy is ge a part of our heritaere, so is possibility. man: asian voices are coming out. alex: you've gothese young people fighting to