S.

Capitol.

While Republicans are calling the trial absurd and unconstitutional, the stark divide between the two sides is every bit as obvious among ordinary Americans.

DW Washington bureau chief in a Sport has this report.

It's been over two months since Election Day, but Trump seems to be as present as ever in rural Pennsylvania and his upcoming impeachment trial.

ISS Finding little support here Mike Oh, no.

Paul Allen grew up in Piketon, a small village on the outskirts off Harrisburg.

He's about America.

We're not trump followers.

We want somebody that represents long time America and where we came from.

America is at a crossroads, and Pennsylvania is a prime example for the divide between rural and urban.

On the one hand, you have trump supporters who still believe that the election was stolen.

On the other hand, you have Democrats who want to hold Donald Trump accountable for the storming off the capital on January 6, only 20 minutes away.

In uptown Harrisburg, the political landscape changes from deep red to bright blue, a democratic phenomenon which can be found all across America.

I'll be happy to get rid of all of them.

Trump and his supporters.

Why?

Because they you saw what they did it at the Capitol, you know, I mean, you realize that was lost for what?

I talked to Two Pennsylvanian state senators, we assume because of covert restrictions, is it really worth taking the risk to deepen the divide of the country, even Mawr?

With the impeachment, there's a greater danger in not prosecuting him because by not doing it where more or less than saying okay, it's all right that he did that we could move on.

He committed a crime in my view, and he needs to be held accountable for that crime.

You know, the Republicans have a different take.

It's not gonna do anything to heal the nation.

I, you know, obviously we want to.

Joe Biden well, on a great move he could do is to say, you know what, and and talk to his friends in the House and Senate, they stop it.

It's too symbolic.

It's meaningless.

He's out of office.

Back in Piketon, Paula does not feel optimistic about our country's future now that Trump is no longer president.

It will be a big divide.

It's scary, actually.

It's very scary cause we're patriots.

We're not going down easy.

And the next generation might be still living in a fractured nation unless the new president can bridge that divide.

Well, let's bring in.

William grew Crafty is part of our U.

S.

Election team here.

A T W William.

When proceeding start today, what will happen?

First of all, hi.

Get hard.

Yes.

Today is probably gonna be mostly a formality.

The Senate will be debating whether they have jurisdiction to hear this trial at all.

That will likely pass.

That will lead us to opening arguments starting Wednesday, when each side is gonna have 16 or up to 16 hours to present their case.

After that, the impeachment managers, That's basically the prosecutors, Democrats from the House.

I will have the option to call for witnesses.

And then if that were to happen, there will be a vote.

If the Senate Senators want to hear witnesses on, things will go on from there going into next week.

Well, in your view, William, how likely is it that this impeachment trial will come to a conviction off Donald Trump well to convict.

Democrats are going to need their entire party, the 50 Democrats in the Senate, plus 17 Republicans to join them.

That's looking unlikely.

Democrats are hoping to recreate that feeling of anger, of fear, of just shock that many people on both sides of the aisle felt on January 6, in the days immediately thereafter to try to get Republicans to confront the evidence they're going to present of Trump's culpability in that mob on January 6.

But it's unlikely, given the partisan divide in the Senate, on in Washington in general, that they're really going to get 17 senators, maybe a few Republican senators.

But 17 is looking unlikely.

Well, it has been said that this procedure touches fundamental constitutional questions.

How well Republicans will say You can't try a president once he's out of office.

But there is precedent, albeit very little precedent.

And you have to go back quite a ways more than 100 years to find a new example of where the U.

S Senate tried not a president but another high official of the U.

S.

Government.

After resigning and leaving office on, many constitutional scholars will agree that because the president was impeached while he was still in office just a couple of days before he left that it is legal to do this.

And, of course, the whole point is Democrats hope that if they could convict Donald Trump, they could then take the next step.

The Senate could take the next step two, then bar him from ever running from office for office again and therefore not being a threat to US politics in the future.

That's the constitutional claim.

There's also a free speech, claims Republican supporters, and Trump's own lawyers say that you know he has the right to free speech.

And whatever he may have said wasn't incitement.

But was his, you know, constitutionally protected right to stay his opinion, which is something that many constitutional scholars are also rather doubtful about.

Well, in our report, we heard a Republican senator say that this trial will not help heal the country.

Uh, what's your take on this?

Well, it probably won't, but I'm not sure if that is the point.

We also heard in that report from someone on the Democratic side that said accountability is important if you're always just sticking your head in the sand and hoping things will go away that that often will lead to things getting worse because it condones bad behavior to give just one quick comparison.

You know, when Barack Obama came into office, there was a lot of pressure on him to investigate the Bush years.

Whether it was the lies going into the Iraq war, torture allegations, surveillance allegations of extrajudicial drone strikes that were considered by some to be assassinations on the Obama administration basically said, No, we want to look forward.

We don't want to divide the nation.

We don't want to dig all of that up.

And what Barack Obama not as a result, but but by basically was irrelevant, because the country remained extremely divided under his eight years in power and Republicans used every possible moment to further divide the nation and turn people against him regardless, if they investigated or didn't.

So I'm not sure how much the impeachment, ah, process plays in healing or not healing the nation.

For Democrats, this is about accountability, Thank you very much.