JUDY WOODRUFF: Good evening.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: JOHN ROBERTS, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: It is therefore ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump be, and he is hereby, acquitted of the charges in said articles.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Not guilty.

The impeachment trial comes to an end.

Senators vote to clear President Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Then: DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: Three years ago, we launched the great American comeback.

Tonight, I stand before you to share the incredible results.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The State of the Union is divided.

We break down a contentious night on Capitol Hill.

Plus: Australia burning.

After historic wildfires scar the continent, questions arise over how to manage the land.

TRISH BUTLER, Nura Gunyu: I said, no, something doesn't feel right.

And I think it was only like an hour later that this all came through, and we are so fortunate that we weren't here, because we wouldn't -- you wouldn't survive.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."

(BREAK) JUDY WOODRUFF: The United States Senate has spoken, and President Trump will remain in office.

He was acquitted today on both impeachment counts, almost entirely down party lines.

Republican Mitt Romney was the sole senator to break ranks.

Amna Nawaz begins our coverage.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): The president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security.

AMNA NAWAZ: It was five months ago that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered these lines: REP. NANCY PELOSI: Today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.

AMNA NAWAZ: Lines that opened an historic chapter in American history, the third presidential impeachment ever in the United States.

And, today, the final lines of that chapter were written.

MAN: I will vote against both articles of impeachment.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), Presidential Candidate: I will do my part by voting to convict this lawless president.

MAN: I will be voting to defend this president's actions.

AMNA NAWAZ: A conviction would've required 67 votes, but the majority of the 100 U.S. senators voted to acquit President Trump on both charges, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

JOHN ROBERTS, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: Pronounced him not guilty as charged.

AMNA NAWAZ: For most, this was no surprise ending.

During the Senate trial, Democratic House managers spent days arguing for the conviction and removal of Mr. Trump, claiming his pressure campaign on Ukraine for political dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter posed a national security risk.

But Republicans came to agree with the president's attorneys, who argued that Mr. Trump's actions were inappropriate, but not impeachable, that additional testimony from witnesses with firsthand information, like John Bolton, wasn't necessary, and that to remove a president in an election year was undemocratic.

Today's vote in the Senate to convict or acquit was expected to fall along party lines.

But, still, all eyes were on a few moderate senators who had held their cards close until the last moment, among them, Doug Jones, a Democrat running for reelection in deep red Alabama, who, today, stuck with Democrats, voting -- quote - - "reluctantly" to convict the president.

SEN. DOUG JONES (D-AL): The evidence clearly proves that the president used the weight of his office and the weight of the United States government to seek to coerce a foreign government to interfere in our election for his personal political benefit.

His actions were more than simply inappropriate.

They were an abuse of power.

AMNA NAWAZ: West Virginia West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin also sided with his fellow Democrats, saying in a statement that the evidence -- quote - - "clearly supports" the charges against the president.

And Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema announced she too would vote to convict, writing that her highest duty and -- quote -- "greatest love" is to the Constitution.

But it was Utah Republican Mitt Romney, who'd already sided with Democrats in their call for witnesses, who became the first in his party to call for Mr. Trump's removal, voting to acquit the president on obstruction of Congress, but to convict him on abuse of power.

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): The president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.

Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office in perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that I can imagine.

AMNA NAWAZ: In a tweet responding to the senator, Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee chair and Romney's niece, said -- quote -- "This is not the first time I have disagreed with Mitt, and I imagine it will not be the last.

I, along with the GOP, stand with President Trump."

Back on the Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized his colleagues across the aisle, accusing them of supporting the president over the truth.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): The verdict of this kangaroo court will be meaningless.

By refusing the facts, by refusing witnesses and documents, the Republican majority has placed a giant asterisk, the asterisk of a sham trial, next to the acquittal of President Trump written in permanent ink.

AMNA NAWAZ: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hailed the Senate for tamping down what he called the partisan fire.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Whatever policy differences we may have, we should all agree this is precisely the kind of recklessness, the kind of recklessness the Senate was created to stop.

AMNA NAWAZ: With the verdict now behind him, President Trump begins this post-impeachment chapter with an approval rating of 49 percent in the latest Gallup poll, his highest rating since taking office.

JOHN ROBERTS: The Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, stands adjourned sine die.

AMNA NAWAZ: For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Amna Nawaz.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we again turn to our Lisa Desjardins and Yamiche Alcindor.

Hello to both of you.

Yamiche at the White House, tell us how the president, the people around him are responding to these not guilty verdicts, and also to Mitt Romney being the one Republican to vote against the president.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The president has weathered all sorts of scandal and controversy, but impeachment was the biggest challenge yet.

And he is very happy now to put that behind him.

He is taking a victory lap, saying that he was fully vindicated.

He tweeted out this video -- hopefully, we can put it up for people - - just moments after the acquittal vote.

And it shows that President Trump might remain in office well past the constitutional limits.

It says Trump 2024, Trump 2100.

It also says Trump forever.

The other thing to note, the president will be speaking at the White House at noon tomorrow.

We expect that he is going to say that impeachment was a hoax, that this was a witch-hunt, that Democrats were just after him.

But, Judy, we have to note that the president can't say this is a partisan vote, because Senator Mitt Romney voted at least with that first impeachment article with Democrats.

So he became the first U.S. senator to vote to remove a president of his same party.

That has President Trump and a lot of his allies very angry.

Some are even calling for Mitt Romney to be ousted from the party.

President Trump will definitely have a lot to say about that as well.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Lisa, what are you picking up about that, talking to senators and others on the Hill?

LISA DESJARDINS: There are certainly some arrows within the Republican Party being aimed at Mitt Romney, but not from his fellow senators.

I have to say, Republican senators speaking to myself, Daniel Bush and Saher Khan, our producer, said they actually respect Mitt Romney, respectfully disagree, is what we heard from them time and again.

We heard also from Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader that he thinks what Mitt Romney did, and especially his speech, talking about his reasoning, reflects what he believes many Republicans might believe, but actually didn't vote on.

Now, who says whatever everyone believes?

But, in the end, given the speeches, Judy, those who voted to convict the president, like Mitt Romney, of any abuse of power, it seemed their argument was, they feel this president thinks he is above the law.

Those who voted not guilty, their argument was that the House's case didn't rise to the level of impeachment.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Yamiche, back to you.

I mean, now that the president has been found not guilty in the Senate on both of these articles, how does the White House see this going forward?

Do they have plans for how to deal with it?

What is their attitude?

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The president wants to go forward and feels emboldened by this acquittal.

He now feels that he can do whatever is needed to win the 2020 election.

And he and his lawyers have made it clear that he is fine and feels comfortable reaching out to foreign governments, including Turkey or China or Ukraine, to go and pick and look at political opposition research or political dirt on his opponents, possibly Vice President Biden or Bernie Sanders.

So, what we will see from the president is a continuation of him calling for other foreign countries to give him information on his political opponents.

I also want to read a statement the White House put out tonight.

I want to read it to you.

It says: "Today, the sham impeachment attempt concocted by Democrats ended in the full vindication and exoneration of President Donald J. Trump.

One failed Republican presidential candidate" - - talking about Senator Mitt Romney of Utah - - "voted for the manufactured impeachment articles."

Now, Democrats, of course, are pushing back on that idea that the president was fully vindicated, because they say, because new witnesses were not called in the Senate trial, and there were no new documents introduced, they say the president actually can't claim that he was fully vindicated.

But that is not going to stop the president from taking this large victory lap that he has been eager to take ever since word of this whistle-blower was made public.

He is now very, very happy to do that, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And just quickly, Lisa, in terms of Congress, where does it go from here?

LISA DESJARDINS: Let's quickly remember what we have all just been through, Judy, since really the late fall, or the early fall.

We have had 17 witnesses in this impeachment proceedings, 3,000 pages of their testimony alone, nearly 70 hours of public hearings, largely in October of last year.

And, of course, we just finished 12 full days, 13 days of Senate trial.

Judy, I think that what we're left with is an exhausted set of lawmakers who may have wrestled with principles.

But, in the end, politics seems to reign large at the Capitol.

And we saw this in some of the votes.

Those swing senators ended up voting with their party.

Some of them, that's a risky move.

Some of those Democrats who are vulnerable, like Joe Manchin, voted to convict this president, even though that probably is more risky for him.

So we saw some examples of moral courage, and, of course, Mitt Romney also doing that.

But the rest, we saw sort of political winds perhaps helping philosophy and the divide growing deeper.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A lot of examination to come over these votes.

LISA DESJARDINS: That's right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Lisa Desjardins, Yamiche Alcindor, thank you both.

And we will continue with our look at the impeachment trial later in the program.

We now move to the other end of the Capitol, where, in the U.S. House of Representatives chamber last night, President Trump addressed the nation.

The deep political divisions of our time were on clear display.

Yamiche Alcindor is back to unpack the speech.

PAUL IRVING, U.S. House of Representatives Sergeant at Arms: The president of the United States!

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Last night, President Trump made history.

He became the second man ever to deliver the State of the Union as an impeached president.

The night began with President Trump seeming to decline a chance to shake hands with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: Thank you very much.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: It ended with the speaker ripping up her copy of the president's address.

DONALD TRUMP: The state of our union is stronger than ever before.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Throughout the night, Republicans cheered on the president.

They even called for his reelection with chants of four more years.

CHAMBER: Four more years!

Four more years!

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Democrats often sat silently in their seats.

At other times, they loudly voiced their disapproval.

CHAMBER: HR-3, HR-3, HR-3!

DONALD TRUMP: Jobs are booming, incomes are soaring, poverty is plummeting.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The president touted bipartisan themes, like a strong economy and low unemployment.

He also invoked the country's cultural and political divisions.

President Trump spoke at length about his signature topic, immigration.

DONALD TRUMP: Days later, the criminal alien went on a gruesome spree of deadly violence.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: He railed against so-called sanctuary cities.

He also recognized the brother of a man who had been killed by an undocumented immigrant.

Then there were the made-for-TV moments of the night.

DONALD TRUMP: Rush Limbaugh.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: President Trump awarded conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh with the Medal of Freedom.

Limbaugh, who was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, got a standing ovation from Republicans.

But Democrats and many others voiced outrage over the move.

The radio host for years pushed the racist conspiracy theory that President Obama wasn't born in the United States.

They also criticized Limbaugh's history of derogatory comments about women, like this remark on his radio show in 2012: RUSH LIMBAUGH, Radio Talk Show Host: So, what does that make her?

It makes her a slut, right?

It makes her a prostitute.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: In true Trump style, the speech was part campaign rally and part reality TV.

DONALD TRUMP: Janiyah, I have some good news for you.

An opportunity scholarship has become available.

It's going to you.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: There was the bid to drum up support for school choice efforts.

DONALD TRUMP: Your husband is back from deployment.

He is here with us tonight.

And we couldn't keep him waiting any longer.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The president also reunited, on live TV, a military wife and family with their father, Sergeant 1st Class Townsend Williams.

He came home after his fourth deployment to Afghanistan.

But President Trump's speech was also filled with false or misleading statements.

DONALD TRUMP: We will always protect patients with preexisting conditions.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) YAMICHE ALCINDOR: He again claimed that Republicans are protecting health care coverage for preexisting conditions.

But his administration is currently urging federal courts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, and protections for preexisting conditions along with it.

DONALD TRUMP: The years of economic decay are over.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The president also claimed that he pulled the U.S. out of an economic tailspin.

But the U.S. economy has been expanding for a decade.

And monthly job creation was higher under President Obama's last three years in office than during President Trump's first three years.

One word the president didn't mention last night?

Impeachment.

And with his party loudly behind him, the president made clear he's ready for his 2020 reelection fight.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And Yamiche and Lisa are back with me now.

So, let's talk about last night, Lisa.

You were telling me this morning that what you saw in the chamber was even more divided than we typically see there.

LISA DESJARDINS: The only context I can give is, it reminded me of sitting in the chamber for the Kavanaugh hearings.

It was that intense.

Judy, I have never seen from Democrats that kind of look, not just of anger, but sort of deeper, personal offense at what the president was doing.

You could see they were gritting their teeth the whole time when Rush Limbaugh was recognized and throughout.

And that exploded into some of their chanting.

Members who have never chanted before in the chamber on both sides were chanting.

That is completely new.

For Republicans, that roar of approval was a wave I had not heard before.

Of course, Republicans loved that.

But it seemed like it was reacting to almost anything this president said.

And, of course, Speaker Pelosi, a woman who sort of runs on her own dignity, she's someone who thinks about that a lot.

For her to make - - to take that step was a very big one.

So it tells me, Judy, that now this kind of governing by emotion is something that's dominating for both sides.

And it is not temporary.

It feels like this has gone more deeply into lawmakers.

It was something that I could feel physically in the chamber.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Where the president appeared to decide not to shake her hand when he first walked up, and where she then clearly tore up the speech.

Yamiche, what more do we know about what you call those made-for-TV moments, where they recognized the 100-year-old former Tuskegee Airmen?

And there were several moments like that, visitors in the gallery.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: To fully understand last night's State of the Union, one has to remember that President Trump has a deep history in reality TV, and at one point was part of the very successful reality TV show in "The Apprentice."

I'm told by White House sources that President Trump in part came up with the idea to have these made-for-TV moments.

It felt in some ways like the famous Oprah Winfrey show where she was saying, you have a car and you have a car, giving away cars to her guests.

And that's what the president was going for.

He was going for this feeling of emotion.

He wanted people watching to feel like he was doing something for this country.

And that's why you had scholarships given away.

You had a wife reunited with her husband on live television.

You had a conservative radio host who some see as racist and others see as a darling in the conservative movement be given that Medal of Freedom.

So, what the president was doing there was really going back to his roots, his deep roots in reality TV.

I should also note that I have asked the White House about Rush Limbaugh, because it was very controversial to give him a Medal of Freedom award.

And they say they understand that he's a controversial figure, but that the president sees him as someone who's worthy of that medal.

Of course, Rush Limbaugh is someone who had a lot of -- a lot of controversial statements, to say the least.

But, tonight, the White House is sticking with that decision.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Lisa, coming back to what you and I were just discussing, the move by the speaker to tear up the speech, the chanting, how much of that do you think was planned ahead of time?

What do you know about the motivations there?

LISA DESJARDINS: We have some reporting.

I have been reaching out, of course, to Speaker Pelosi's staff.

And they have passed on what she told her House Democrats this morning in their private meeting.

She told them that she felt that every page of that speech contained lies, and that that is why she ripped it up.

She told them and the understanding is that she did that on the fly, that she made that decision while she was standing there.

She also made some very interesting comments, Judy, that might have more long-term consequences.

She said she felt liberated by the speech, meaning, this is the president saying things that she knows to be false or she believes they're false, meaning, to me, she feels liberated to be so openly at odds with him, vs. a speaker who's trying to work to compromise, vs. a speaker who reached her hand.

By the end of the speech, she felt liberated to be the speaker who ripped up the speech, a big change just in the course of one State of the Union.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And quickly, Yamiche, to you.

You referred in your report to what you call - - what's been referred to as either misleading or inaccurate statements the president made during the State of the Union.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: That's right.

The president has been someone who has not shied away from bending the truth if it suits his political will.

And this speech was no different.

He talked about a lot of different things that were misleading, including the fact that immigrants were committing a lot of crimes.

Study after study shows that undocumented immigrants do not commit more crimes than American citizens.

He also talked about the border wall.

It's clear that, even though the president is saying that he's building a lot of border wall, only about a mile of new border wall has been built.

Most of the wall that he talks about is actually existing fencing, where exactly -- where existing fencing was.

So we saw the president really lean into that.

And he has leaned into that, because he has millions of social media followers who only believe what he says.

And that's part of the - - what the president's been doing.

He's been able to kind of really galvanize his supporters, to make sure that they believe what he's saying, and to create an enemy of the media and others who say -- who point out when he's wrong on the facts.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yamiche Alcindor, Lisa Desjardins, we thank you both.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In the day's other news: Delayed results from Monday's presidential caucuses in Iowa keep trickling in, and Pete Buttigieg is holding on to his narrow lead; 86 percent of precincts have reported, and the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has more than 26 percent support.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is running second in the caucuses just behind him with 25 percent, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former Vice President Joe Biden running third and fourth.

Biden said today he is counting on New Hampshire's primary next Tuesday, but he acknowledged that -- quote -- "We took a gut punch in Iowa."

The last 24 hours have seen the most cases yet in the coronavirus outbreak in China.

The death toll there topped 550 today with more than 27,000 cases.

In the U.S., officials confirmed a 12th case.

And, in Geneva, the head of the World Health Organization appealed for $675 million to fight the virus.

TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, Director General, World Health Organization: This is not a time for panic.

It's a time for rational, evidence-based action and investment, while we still have a window of opportunity to bring this outbreak under control.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Meanwhile, nearly 3,700 people are quarantined on a cruise ship at Yokohama, Japan, for two weeks.

Some 3,600 others are being screened on a cruise liner in Hong Kong; 350 Americans were flown from China to California today to be quarantined, and officials confirmed a 12th case in the U.S.

There's word that 130 Salvadorans were killed in after being deported from the U.S. between 2012 and 2017.

Human Rights Watch says that it also found at least 70 cases of sexual assault or other violence.

The Trump administration has taken a number of steps to bar Central Americans from seeking refuge in the United States.

Israeli forces today killed a Palestinian teenager, the first death amid protests over a U.S. peace plan.

The 17-year-old was shot in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Israel said that troops fired at a demonstrator who threw a firebomb.

Earlier, Israeli planes struck Hamas militants in Gaza, after rockets were fired into Israel.

In Turkey, dozens of rescuers searching for survivors of an avalanche were themselves killed in a second deadly snow-slide.

The overall toll has reached 38.

It happened on a mountain road near Turkey's eastern border with Iran.

Soldiers and residents climbed to the site to dig victims out of the snow.

They included the local emergency operations chief.

OSMAN UCAR, Emergency Worker (through translator): We wanted to move the minibus to rescue the last two people, thinking they could be under the minibus or near it.

As we worked to pave a path, we were trying to direct the excavator to help, and then we heard a noise.

And then I was half-buried under snow.

I managed to get out on my own.

JUDY WOODRUFF: At least 53 emergency workers were injured, and officials said some are still trapped.

The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East traveled to Iraq today, amid calls for American forces to withdraw.

Marine General Frank McKenzie arrived as news accounts said the Iraqis have cut cooperation with the U.S. coalition.

That follows the U.S. killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani outside Baghdad.

The clock began running today on the last remaining arms deal between the U.S. and Russia.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires one year from now.

It limits long-range nuclear warheads.

The U.S. withdrew from a treaty on medium-range weapons last year, and has also begun deploying low-yield nuclear missiles.

The governor of California has pardoned the late civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, who was jailed for homosexual activity in 1953.

Rustin died in 1987.

And the state law that he was convicted under is no longer on the books.

Governor Gavin Newsom says that he also wants to pardon others who were prosecuted under the statute.

In economic news, the U.S. trade deficit fell last year for the first time in six years, due largely to the ongoing tariff war with China.

And, today, Wall Street shot higher on strong earnings reports.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 483 points to finish at 29290.

The Nasdaq rose 40 points to a record close, a new one, and the S&P 500 added 37, also hitting a new high.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": response from the White House and a leading lawmaker on the impeachment trial; analysis of the Senate's vote to acquit the president of high crimes and misdemeanors; and Australia burning - - the fires today and the fires to come.

We return now to our top story, and that is the impeachment trial.

We start with a view from the White House.

Kellyanne Conway is a counselor to the president.

Kellyanne Conway, welcome back to the program.

Let me ask you first.

You have -- the president was impeached by the House of Representatives.

He was acquitted by the Senate.

How does he read this?

KELLYANNE CONWAY, Counselor to President Trump: I was just with the president, Judy.

He sends his regards.

The president is acquitted forever.

It wasn't even close.

The Senate, of course, under the Constitution, needs 67 votes to convict and remove a president from office.

It wasn't close.

He has not been removed.

He will be reelected.

And I think it's time for this Congress, this city and this country to come together, the way the president was making that call to action to so many Americans yesterday.

The guests in the first lady's box, the words in that State of the Union were meant to paint a picture of an American comeback that is optimistic, an economic buoyancy, a growth, a job rate and a blue-collar wage boom, but also really celebrating people, figures in history who are still with us, thank God, the Tuskegee Airman, his great grandson, showing the arc of history between those two men.

You had the little girl Ellie from Ohio -- from Missouri who was born at 21 weeks six days.

You have a military family being united.

You have the president calling on Congress to celebrate Soleimani and al-Baghdadi's extermination from this country.

So, so much for us to be happy about.

And I think one thing we are pleased with tonight at the White House is that the president has been acquitted.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And yet, at the same time, this is a president who has been impeached, just as President Bill Clinton lives with the label of impeachment forever.

KELLYANNE CONWAY: Well, Judy, that is what the critics and naysayers want to keep saying.

I think what is most important, if we're going to talk about President Clinton and his impeachment, he had already been reelected.

So this is a different situation.

The president's campaign has said publicly that this impeachment trial and the protracted arguments about the waste of time and money by Congress, in their view, had helped them to raise money, has helped the president's approval rating, according to Gallup, is at an all-time high at 49 percent.

In that same Gallup poll, 59 percent of Americans reported they are financially better off than they were a year ago.

And, in a separate question, 74 percent say that they predict they will be financially better off a year from now.

President Clinton, after he was impeached, enjoyed similar numbers.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me... KELLYANNE CONWAY: People said the economy's doing great, and I feel like those who were putting upon him were on the wrong side.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let me ask you, though, about one Republican vote to convict the president, found him guilty on the article abuse of power.

And that's Senator Mitt Romney of Utah.

What's the president's message to him?

KELLYANNE CONWAY: Well, it's disappointing, maybe unsurprisingly disappointing.

And Senator Romney stands alone in that regard.

I don't think he should be much of a headline today.

He ran for president and lost.

He got about 100 electoral votes less than President Trump when he won.

And we have counted on Senator Romney's help on any number of issues in this White House.

He has voted with the president most of the time, the vast, vast majority of the time, and people should recognize, that, when it comes to the agenda, Mitt Romney has been a solid yes vote for President Trump's agenda, for these policies.

I will leave that for the people of Utah to sort out.

I know the other -- the senior senator - - senior senator from Utah, Mike Lee, certainly voted to acquit the president and is a constitutional scholar.

But I guess it was a little unsurprising and, at the same time, irrelevant because the vote - - it was not a squeaker.

The vote wasn't even close.

JUDY WOODRUFF: There are other Republicans, though, Kellyanne Conway, who, while they voted to find the president -- to acquit the president, in effect, who also said that they found his actions in reaching out to the president of Ukraine, asking him to investigate a political rival, that they found it wrong, they found it inappropriate.

Senator Susan Collins said that she hoped the president had learned a lesson from that.

These are not the words of Republicans who approve of what the president did.

KELLYANNE CONWAY: Well, these are words of Republicans who voted today to acquit him, though, Judy, because they didn't see this rising to the level of the high crimes and misdemeanors that is constitutionally warranted to take such a drastic and unusual, really rare action, to remove a duly and democratically elected president from office at any time, let alone just months before the next election.

So, I respect their opinions, and I respect their right to voice some of their concerns.

But I'm also very happy.

I join the president in the delight that they found the way to vote for him -- vote for acquittal.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Will the president in the future - - does he feel comfortable in the future reaching out to other governments, as our Yamiche Alcindor reported officials around the president are saying today, feel comfortable reaching out, asking them to investigate a political rival?

KELLYANNE CONWAY: Well, I don't see the word investigate in that -- in that phone call transcript.

I don't see the word aid.

I don't see 2020.

I don't see the word elections.

I don't see the word demand.

And, in fact, the Ukrainian president and foreign minister had confirmed many times they had no idea that a demand was being made or aid was being held up.

They certainly had their meetings.

President Zelensky of Ukraine met with Vice President Pence, which is like meeting with President Trump.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, are you saying the president feels... KELLYANNE CONWAY: And then he met with the president in UNGA.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I'm sorry to interrupt.

(CROSSTALK) KELLYANNE CONWAY: Go ahead.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You're saying the president would do this again and feel it was the correct thing to do?

KELLYANNE CONWAY: Judy, what I'm saying is that there is that -- and even those senators who voted to acquit, many of them, did not see in this phone call an explicit demand to investigate the Bidens.

If the president were listening to people like me, he wouldn't even worry about the - - Joe Biden.

I think that the president has every right to want to investigate corruption, and the president Ukraine making good on his stated campaign promise that led to his overwhelming victory at the polls to be an anti-corruption president, to be a corruption fighter.

We don't choose who sits on the board of Burisma, a well-known corrupt, ethically compromised energy company in Ukraine, any more than we choose who's running for president on the Democratic side in 2020.

But I don't know who's worried about the Bidens.

Joe Biden is struggling to hang onto fourth place now in these partial Iowa caucus results.

So we don't want anybody to interfere in our elections, Judy.

That includes the Democrats, who seem to interfere in their own elections in Iowa.

That includes many in the mainstream media who put their thumb on the scale last time, unfortunately, and said they had polling that showed Donald Trump couldn't win.

I don't want anybody to interfere in our elections.

I went free and fair elections.

And I don't - - I certainly don't want other countries to be involved.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Kellyanne Conway, adviser, counselor to President Trump, thank you very much.

KELLYANNE CONWAY: Thank you, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And now to a man who has been central to the impeachment of President Trump from the start.

In his first interview following today's historic vote, Congressman Adam Schiff of California joins me now.

He is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

He was the lead House manager during the impeachment trial.

Chairman Schiff, welcome back to the "NewsHour."

I don't know if you heard, but Kellyanne Conway is saying, in effect, the president feels exonerated, and that all he was doing in his interactions with Ukraine was seeking to root out corruption.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Well, that's, of course, not what the senators found.

On a bipartisan basis, you had many Republican senators acknowledge that, not only did the president do something wrong, but he held up hundreds of millions of dollars of aid in an effort to pressure Ukraine into doing political investigations into his opponent.

I have to say, I was really -- I found it breathtaking to listen to Senator Romney today, to see that display of moral courage, to see someone put country above party.

I said earlier in the week, on Monday, during our closing arguments, that a single person, a single vote could change the course of history.

I think Mitt Romney did that today.

I know, for many of us, we will look back on that vote.

When we find ourselves in a situation calling for us to put country first in really difficult votes, we will be inspired by the courage that he showed today.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, at the same time, Congressman Schiff, you have put a lot of effort, a lot of energy into this process over the last several months.

And to see it fall, the articles of impeachment fall, one of them 19 votes short, the other one 20 votes short of convicting the president, removing him from office, what does that say to you?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: Well, what it says -- and I talked about this earlier in the week -- is, we are at a place right now where one political party is willing to tolerate a level of misconduct in a president unsurpassed in history, as long as it is a president of their party.

That is a very dangerous trend for the country.

The fact that so many senators of that party were not willing to fulfill their oath in the same way that Mitt Romney did, I think, is a real indictment of today's GOP.

But notwithstanding that, we felt in the House that we needed to do our constitutional duty and appeal to that optimism the founders put in our ability to have self-governance.

I think Mitt Romney validated that faith of the founders.

And I will say also there are a number of Democratic senators from very difficult states who made an equally courageous decision today.

So, I find myself at the end of this trial very optimistic about the future.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you think there is something you and the managers could have done differently, argued differently, in order to have a different outcome here?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: I don't.

In fact, I think, had we done anything differently than we did, we wouldn't have enjoyed the unanimous support of the Democratic senators and been able to convince a former presidential nominee, the former leader of the Republican Party, that his oath required him to convict Donald Trump for such an egregious abuse of power.

So we feel that we put the best case forward possible.

We appealed to the best instincts of the senators.

And I'm just tremendously moved that one of them displayed -- really, several displayed such incredible courage.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But two other questions.

Number one, was this a fair trial?

You -- your side very much wanted there to be witnesses, more evidence.

You didn't get that.

Was -- I mean, is this in the end of process that the American people deserved?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: No.

And the American people recognize that.

Overwhelming majorities of Americans wanted to hear from witnesses.

They wanted to have John Bolton testify.

They recognized that it is not a trial if you have an opening statement and a closing argument and nothing in between.

So, we made unfortunate impeachment history, when the senators decided to have the first impeachment trial without witnesses.

So it wasn't fair.

It makes it all the more remarkable that we had senators show the courage that they did, you know, as Mitt Romney did, as a number of Democratic senators did.

But, no, I think history will record the Senate didn't live up to its constitutional responsibility, didn't try the case, instead, just heard arguments in the case.

And that is, I think, a dangerous precedent for the future.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And where does the House go from here, Congressman, with -- we are hearing that there are going to be -- that there are calls to subpoena John Bolton, the president's former national security adviser.

Will there be more investigations?

Could there be more impeachment charges brought against the president in the House?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: We have made no decisions about any next steps.

We wanted to take this trial to completion, make the best case possible.

I think we did that.

I think we got the best result, under the circumstances of a trial/nontrial, that we possibly could.

It's a -- now a bipartisan vote to convict the president, even though it didn't meet the two-thirds threshold.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But you are leaving the door open?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: Well, I am not saying one way or another.

I really can't underscore enough that we didn't look beyond the end of this trial.

And so what we will do is, we will get together as a caucus with our leadership and discuss what the future holds.

But we were not prepared to make any judgments about that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Chairman Adam Schiff, who was the lead House manager in the impeachment trial of President Trump, thank you so much.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We continue our look at impeachment on this closing day with two political and legal experts.

They are Victoria Nourse, former special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the early 1990s.

She now runs Georgetown's Law School Center for Congressional Studies.

And John Hart, who worked for Congressman Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, during the impeachment of President Clinton, he now runs the public affairs and communications consulting firm Mars Hill Strategies.

Hello again to both of you.

JOHN HART, Mars Hill Strategies: Thank you, Judy.

VICTORIA NOURSE, Georgetown Law: Thanks, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You have been with us virtually through this entire impeachment trial process.

Let me come to you first, John Hart.

You just heard Kellyanne Conway saying, the president views this as exoneration, in so many words.

And you heard Adam Schiff saying, given what they were up against, a Senate with a party majority in the other direction, they feel this was, in so many words, the best they could do.

How do you see this outcome?

JOHN HART: Judy, I don't see this as a win for either Republicans or Democrats.

It's a loss for democracy and the republic.

And this -- remember the Clinton impeachment.

Republicans paid a very dear price for that in terms of the opportunity cost that -- and the Senate -- or, rather, the president's legal team warned against that.

Republicans lost seats in the House election following that.

And President Clinton was more popular after the impeachment went through.

And we have already seen the -- President Trump's poll numbers go up after the impeachment.

So I think -- the challenge, I think for Democrats especially, is to do the soul-searching that they should have done after President Trump won in 2016.

Republicans who supported other candidates certainly did that.

And Democrats have chosen resistance over reflection.

(CROSSTALK) JUDY WOODRUFF: Loss for the country?

Excuse me for interrupting.

Loss for the country, Victoria Nourse?

VICTORIA NOURSE: Well, you have to look at the alternatives here.

If the alternative is violence, then this is better than that.

It is the separation of powers working, in some sense.

But I was sad.

And my son texted me.

And he said: The Senate is broken.

There are going to be too many young people out there who are going to say that this trial wasn't fair.

The big vote here wasn't today.

The vote was on witnesses.

JUDY WOODRUFF: On witnesses.

VICTORIA NOURSE: And that vote will have enormous resonance, I think, in the events that are going to follow here and how it will be understood by the American public as the days to come and how history will judge it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, what have we learned from this process, then, John Hart?

I mean, we had a very -- a House came out - - you saw the House come out with a very strong recommendation of impeachment by the majority.

Yes, there were two -- a couple of Democrats who voted against the majority, but a strong -- and then the Senate, completely the opposite.

JOHN HART: Well, Judy, I think we have learned a lot consequences of going against the golden rule of impeachment, which is that you don't - - you don't move forward on impeachment without the support of the country behind you.

If there is not supermajority support in the country, it's unreasonable to expect there to be supermajority support in the Senate.

And at the very beginning, we all discussed which votes would be up in the air.

There were one to four.

And in the end, there was one vote that went against party.

So I hope the warning is, is that we don't go down this road again, without the support of the electorate behind it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But the one person who did cross party lines was -- as we just heard from Adam Schiff, Victoria, was Republican Mitt Romney.

So the vote -- the vote that moved over was one of the president's -- a member of the president's party.

VICTORIA NOURSE: Well, now the former three Republican candidates for President, George H.W.

Bush, George W. Bush, et cetera, have all -- and now Mitt Romney -- have all come out against this president's style, if not policies.

I do think that's important to note in terms of the idea that we should have a bipartisan basis for impeachment.

But I will note that this incident is different than Clinton and closer to Nixon, because the claim here is that the president was trying to interfere in an election, which is the bedrock of our system.

We just saw chaos in the Iowa caucuses.

The country is on edge, because it is true that the Russians interfered.

It probably had nothing to do with Trump's election.

But we know that there was interference in our elections.

So that makes this impeachment what -- I do agree with the bipartisan role.

Joe Biden agreed with the bipartisan role many years ago.

But this problem with elections is not going to go away.

And it would be better if the president didn't tweet out things like, oh, I'm going to stay here until 2040, and come out with some election security bill.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, John Hart, we did -- and I asked Kellyanne Conway this question, because Yamiche Alcindor, our White House correspondent, reported that White House people are telling her the president may very well reach out to other countries for help investigating a political rival, that they don't see anything wrong with it.

JOHN HART: Well, Judy, I don't -- I don't, frankly, take that seriously.

I think with this president does is, he is very, very effective at emotionally manipulating Democrats.

So, his State of the Union address was point after point after point designed to elicit a reaction.

So when he says that, I don't take it seriously.

His tweet after -- moments after -- we all sat here -- moments after the vote happened that Trump would be in office forever.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes.

JOHN HART: That is -- that shows him being our satirist in chief.

And he's critiquing a political culture that doesn't accept humor.

(LAUGHTER) JOHN HART: And he's criticizing the illiberalism of liberalism.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But he still was impeached... JOHN HART: He was.

JUDY WOODRUFF: ... by the House of Representatives, the third president in our history to have been so.

VICTORIA NOURSE: Yes.

And I was proud of Mitt Romney to -- for standing up.

It was, as he said, the most consequential event of his entire lifetime.

This is a man who's run for president.

And he knows that that vote is going to subject him to abuse by those partisans of the president.

So, Mitch McConnell, who said that the fever has broken, strikes me as being a little bit too optimistic.

I don't think the fever has broken at all.

I think you're going to see the fever mount as we get up to the next election.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you see that?

JOHN HART: Well, yes, I do think there's going to be more and more animosity.

And I think, Judy, the challenge is, it wasn't long ago that Republicans and Democrats were passing great legislation.

And to his credit, the president last night did a good job of describing some of his accomplishments that involved Democrats.

Chris Coons was in the Oval Office praising the president.

That's what the American people want.

They want more of that.

My former boss Tom Coburn physically embraced President Obama at his first State of the Union.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But you're saying you're not sure that's where we're headed right now, is more togetherness.

JOHN HART: Well, I do think -- I think the country wants that.

I think -- I think the electorate really does want that.

And I -- hopefully, there's going to be a reaction against -- there's -- hopefully, there will be outrage fatigue in this country.

JUDY WOODRUFF: John Hart, Victoria Nourse, we thank you for being with us throughout this process.

JOHN HART: Thank you, Judy.

VICTORIA NOURSE: Thank you, Judy.

JOHN HART: It was a pleasure being with you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Australian bushfires are still burning in parts of that country.

The fires have claimed the lives of more than 30 people, including three American firefighters who died in an air tanker crash.

Tens of millions of acres of land have burned so far this season.

The toll on the forest and the wildlife has prompted new conversations about how the land should be managed.

That's the focus of Miles O'Brien's latest piece, produced in collaboration with the weather app MyRadar.

It's for our Leading Edge series.

MILES O'BRIEN: With help from an eager platoon of volunteers, Noel and Trish Butler are taking the first steps back on a long road to recovery.

The day they lost nearly everything is seared forever in their minds.

TRISH BUTLER, Nura Gunyu: We did come out here a couple of hours before, maybe even one hour before, to collect some more items.

Noel wanted to hose everything down again, and... NOEL BUTLER, Nura Gunyu: But you said no.

TRISH BUTLER: I said, no, something doesn't feel right.

And I think it was only like an hour later that this all came through, and we are so fortunate that we weren't here, because we wouldn't -- you wouldn't survive.

NOEL BUTLER: We would have never got out of here.

MILES O'BRIEN: Before the fire, their now denuded valley looked like this, lush, green, home to some friendly marsupials, their little patch of paradise, and even more.

Noel Butler is a proud Budawang elder, a famous artist, teacher and practitioner of Aboriginal culture.

Their home was also a widely known educational center focused on history and traditions that date back more than 100,000 years.

With the fire approaching, they frantically filled this shipping container with artwork, tools and ancient artifacts, hoping they would be protected.

But this is all that survived.

Is it kind of hard to fathom it all?

TRISH BUTLER: It still is.

I don't know.

I guess, it's still a bit surreal that we're here and we're looking at it.

NOEL BUTLER: And we're alive.

TRISH BUTLER: And we're alive.

And we're very grateful for that.

MILES O'BRIEN: For Noel Butler, the loss is a poignant reminder of the lessons of ancient Aboriginal history.

Fire is a part of a natural cycle in the forests of Australia.

NOEL BUTLER: This whole continent is designed to burn, and 80 percent of our flora needs and benefits from fire to regerminate the seeds, crack the seed pods, or regenerate.

MILES O'BRIEN: His ancestors used that insight to their advantage by setting low-intensity fires, prescribed burns, carefully considered and controlled.

NOEL BUTLER: When you think, for 100,000 years, Aboriginal people have more than kept this in such perfect environment by managing it correctly by the use of fire, by burning it when it needs to, and knowing what animals live where.

You never interfere with a breeding cycle.

MILES O'BRIEN: As Australia burns this horrible, historic summer, there is much debate about land management, or mismanagement.

Noel Butler is among those who wonder if a return to the Aboriginal practices might have deprived the megafires of fuel, reducing their intensity.

Perhaps.

MIKE CLARKE, La Trobe University: It's not the panacea people are hoping for.

The trees all around you have been planted.

MILES O'BRIEN: Mike Clarke is a fire ecologist at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

He says large-scale forest thinning and controlled burning is widely recognized as a good idea, but it is neither cheap or easy to implement.

MIKE CLARKE: No, it's not.

Australia has changed profoundly.

We have added another 20 million people to the landscape.

We have got infrastructure all over the countryside of bridges and power lines and reservoirs.

We can't simply have large-scale burning.

That may have been possible when indigenous folk were in charge.

MILES O'BRIEN: The media here is dominated by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

It usually omits or discredits the impact of climate change.

MAN: This is not chasing facts and applying rational scrutiny.

This is an insult to our intelligence.

MILES O'BRIEN: Instead, it focuses on arson statistics and falsely alleges environmentalists are to blame for blocking controlled burning.

MIKE CLARKE: They're not being constrained by some mythical powerful green movement.

They are being constrained by climate change and the weather.

The window in which you can do safe controlled burning has got shorter and shorter.

It's either too dry and it's dangerous to light a controlled burn, or it's too wet and you can't get the darned thing to ignite.

And the window in which you can safely do it is down to handfuls of days in spring and autumn.

DAVID KAROLY, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization: Look, Australia has been described as the country that is likely to suffer the worst impacts of climate change over any developed country.

MILES O'BRIEN: David Karoly is a climate scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia's national science agency.

DAVID KAROLY: 2019 was the hottest year in recorded history in Australia, hotter than any other year.

And it was also record low rainfall.

It didn't start the fires, it didn't light the fires, but it provided the background environment for extreme fire danger.

MILES O'BRIEN: Concern that facts like those are not getting enough public attention prompted sociologist David Holmes to find an alternative means of communication: TV weathercasters.

DAVID HOLMES, Monash University: And why they are important is because not only are they trusted, but they also a skilled communicators, and they have access to a very big audience.

You see them every day on your television screens.

You get to know them.

And they are skilled at talking about climate change.

They are the most important people to communicate the science.

MILES O'BRIEN: Holmes and his team from the Monash Climate Change Communications Research Hub are developing presentations linking weather events to climate change for 14 Australian weather presenters, reaching a third of the nation so far.

WOMAN: Our average daytime temperature for September was 24.9 degrees.

This is an increase on the long-term average, which is quite substantial when you look at our top temperature history trend, dated back to 1995.

MILES O'BRIEN: Weathercasters like Paul Higgins of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation say the data alone speaks volumes.

PAUL HIGGINS, Australian Broadcasting Corporation: We just basically provide evidence-based scientific facts, peer-reviewed scientific facts, and present those to the audience, without saying, hey, this is climate change.

Look what's happening.

We just simply show what has happened over the last, say, 50 years, and people can then make up their own minds.

MILES O'BRIEN: It's an important message, and they are convinced this is moving the needle on public opinion.

And in this hot, dry Austral summer filled with inferno after inferno, people are looking for answers, while looking for the strength to start over.

TRISH BUTLER: It certainly is really daunting, and I have had moments where it's not that I don't want to live on this land again here on our property.

It's just that whole daunting feeling of how long it's going to take at our stage in our life.

But I'm pretty sure that we can bring it back.

I don't want to be negative about it.

I think, that, you know, we're positive, and we will rebuild it together.

NOEL BUTLER: We can.

I know we know we can, because we're still here.

MILES O'BRIEN: This is a country on the front lines of the climate emergency.

What's happening this summer could be a crystal ball to a future world.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Miles O'Brien in Southeastern Australia.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And a passing to note before we go tonight.

Acting legend Kirk Douglas died today.

His son actor Michael Douglas confirmed it to "People" magazine.

A star of Hollywood's golden age, Douglas appeared in some 75 movies, from classics like "Spartacus" to the critically acclaimed "Champion."

Kirk Douglas was 103 years old.

And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

Thank you, and we'll see you soon.