美国国家公共电台 NPR Impeachment To Hang Over Trump Trip Overseas, Just As It Did For Clinton（在线收听）

Impeachment To Hang Over Trump Trip Overseas, Just As It Did For Clinton

NOEL KING, HOST:

There is an old saying in this country - politics ends at the water's edge. At the moment, that feels kind of out of date, and here's why. President Trump will be in London for a NATO meeting this week at the same time that the House Judiciary Committee holds its first impeachment hearing. NPR's White House correspondent Tamara Keith looks back at the last impeachment and what President Trump could learn from it.

TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: It was September 1998. Clinton White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart remembers waking up in the ambassador's residence in Dublin, Ireland, to unwelcome news from back home.

JOE LOCKHART: There were rumors going around that Joe Lieberman was going to go to the floor of the Senate and make a statement about impeachment.

KEITH: He didn't know what the conservative Democratic senator from Connecticut was going to say, but he knew it wasn't going to be good. Lockhart was waiting for President Clinton to come downstairs for a breakfast meeting - and dreading it.

LOCKHART: Among the staff, we were all basically trying to figure out who was going to tell him.

KEITH: Lockhart says they expected a blowup. But instead, Clinton told them...

LOCKHART: I know this is going to happen. You know, don't try to talk him out of it. Just tell him to say what he thinks. And you know, we all kind of sat there stunned that he was so stoic about it.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JOE LIEBERMAN: I rise today to make a most difficult and distasteful statement.

KEITH: Lieberman did speak his mind, even as Clinton was in Ireland to tout the historic peace agreement with Northern Ireland he had helped broker earlier that year.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

LIEBERMAN: After seven months of denying that he had engaged in a sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, the president admitted that his, quote, "public comments about this matter gave a false impression."

KEITH: As President Clinton's impeachment drama unfolded, going overseas gave him little refuge from the political storm. It's a taste of what President Trump can expect this week as he meets with foreign leaders while the House Judiciary Committee debates the fate of his presidency. Clinton was in the Middle East when that same committee, then led by Republicans, passed a fourth article of impeachment.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ROBIN CARLE: Mr. Chairman, there are 20 ayes and 16 noes.

HENRY HYDE: And the article is agreed to.

KEITH: The next day...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Good afternoon. Please shut off cellphones, beepers.

KEITH: At a press conference standing next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Clinton delivered opening remarks focused entirely on peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: To be a partner in the pursuit of a lasting comprehensive peace.

KEITH: The first question went to an Israeli journalist, who turned straight to impeachment.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: Mr. President, what is your reaction to the decision of the Judiciary Committee of the House yesterday? Do you intend to resign as did President Nixon?

KEITH: Clinton said it was expected - preordained.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CLINTON: And now it is up to the members of the House of Representatives to vote their conscience on the Constitution and the law, which I believe are clear. And I have no intention of resigning. It's never crossed my mind.

KEITH: Then it was time for an American journalist, who also asked about impeachment. When the next Israeli question was about impeachment again, Netanyahu jumped in.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: I think the president has come here on a very clear voyage of peace, and I believe that it would be appropriate also to ask one or two questions on the peace process. I would like to know the answers, too.

KEITH: And so it went. There was no escape. Impeachment hung over everything. On the flight home, Lockhart says the president and his top foreign policy advisers were weighing a military strike on Iraq.

LOCKHART: There was this striking dichotomy on the plane where, in the front, there was a group of people, including the president, on a secure teleconference trying to figure out, you know, when and if to launch this attack on Iraq. And in the back, we were doing a vote count of, you know, how many people were coming out against us.

KEITH: Much like Clinton, President Trump's entire time in office has been clouded by investigations, which means that even as impeachment looms over his trip to London, it won't be Trump's first foreign trip overshadowed by bad headlines back home. It's something all modern presidents have had to deal with to varying degrees. Ari Fleischer was President George W. Bush's first press secretary.

ARI FLEISCHER: It just comes with the territory. Some of those issues spike a little higher. It's a high spike these days.

KEITH: One difference between Trump and his predecessors is President Trump regularly vents on Twitter. This is a reflection of different styles as well as different political calculations about moving public opinion. So there's no question, Fleischer says, that Trump will find a way to weigh in from London.

FLEISCHER: He has to do his job, travel, do the things presidents are supposed to do. And he'll have every ability to fire back, counterpunch, punch and counterpunch again. And my biggest fear with President Trump - and I've said it a million times - sometimes he counterpunches so hard, his follow-through hits himself in the nose.

KEITH: Trump's brand has always included grievance and taking the fight to his opponents. And that's just as true in London as it is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Tamara Keith, NPR News.