Dan Rather is reflecting on the first day of public impeachments hearings saying, “We are in a period of history that people will be writing about two or 300 years from now.” Dan told CNN’s Don Lemon:

“I thought the two witnesses who are frankly terrific, no matter where you are on the political spectrum. These are the kind of people you hope will be in the foreign service. And I thought they were very strong, very good, and also, the overall demeanor of the way the whole day went down. The concentration was on the facts, as the Democrats would say they would try to concentrate. It was more a day of just the facts.” 

And on MSNBC, Dan emphasized the behavior of the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee.

“What jumped out to me today is the effort by the Republicans to sort of say, ‘listen, everybody knows all of this,’ they seek to have people become numb to what we already know. That’s what jumped out to me today because we already know that the evidence we’re talking about now, the solicitation of a foreign power to get involved in our election, the evidence is strong. the President’s behaving… what he said is outrageous, the complicity of the Republicans is depressing, and it’s a serious moment for the country. We know that. What the Republicans sought to do today and others likely judge whether they were successful or not was trying to convince people, this is no big deal.” 

As for how this matches up two other impeachments Dan has covered, here’s what he says:

“In terms of comparison with the Watergate period and the Clinton impeachment, this is completely different for a long list of reasons… First and foremost, this is the first time in which we’ve had an impeachment proceeding in which it involved questions of a foreign power involved in elections or sought to be involved in elections and very serious military national security issues. That didn’t exist with the Clinton impeachment. It didn’t exist with the impeachment effort against Richard Nixon who resigned.” 

Watch the full appearance with Ari Melber above.