Photo Credit: Evan Vucci / Associated Press
Trump
President Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden as President, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Even though Donald Trump’s acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial for inciting a violent insurrection against American democracy on January 6 was never much in doubt, many Americans watching couldn’t help but wonder what was going through the minds of Senate Republicans as they relived the sheer terror of that day through the powerful re-creation by House impeachment managers.
Everyone knew both impeachment trials against Trump were rigged because the jury was loaded with Republicans who believed their political careers were dependent upon excusing every wrongdoing by Trump. But the outcome was slightly less assured in the latest trial because Republicans also were witnesses to that frightening insurrection and only narrowly escaped becoming its victims.
Trump’s most rabid supporters have never really liked conventional politicians, Republican or Democrat. They also despise the multitude of politicians Trump hates. Unfortunately, Mike Pence, after groveling and praising Trump daily as the most magnificent president in American history, had to tell Trump he had no constitutional power as vice president presiding over the January 6 joint session of Congress to stop the certification of President Joe Biden. That was all it took for Pence to shoot to the top of Trump’s hate list.
“Hang Pence!” They Shouted
Trump’s incendiary speech on the mall sent thousands of his angry supporters, many armed with weapons, to try to prevent Biden’s election. One of the first things they did was erect a gallows outside the Capitol and carry a rope with a noose inside chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” Even after Secret Service evacuated Pence and his family for their safety, Trump sent out a tweet intentionally stoking the rioters’ anger against his own vice president: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
In the end endangering every lawmakers’ life, murdering a Capitol police officer and injuring 140 other police officers didn’t matter. Only seven Republicans joined the 50 Democratic Senators voting to convict Trump for encouraging that violent insurrection. It was 10 short of the two-thirds vote required for an impeachment conviction that could have barred Trump from ever holding office again.
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In a cruel irony immediately after the vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he voted to acquit Trump on a technicality because Trump was no longer in office, but that the House impeachment managers essentially had proved their case. “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” McConnell said. “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.” He said the insurrection resulted from “the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”
Most Despictable
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had a more succinct description of the deadly insurgency incited by Trump. Schumer called it “the most despicable act that any president has ever committed and the majority of Republicans cannot summon the courage or the morality to condemn it.”
Republicans appear to believe they have a good chance of regaining power in the House or Senate in 2022 if they can just hang onto all those violent extremists Trump attracted to their party. Depending on dangerous people who could decide to start killing you at any time doesn’t seem like a well-thought-out political strategy for future success. It could easily be the final nail in the coffin of a political party whose unpopular one-term president was just rejected by the most enormous vote in American history.
Neither Trump nor many of his supporters have anything resembling a coherent conservative American political philosophy. There is nothing conservative about violently destroying American democracy or throwing out millions of legally cast votes won by your political opponent. That’s actually the authoritarian form of government of America’s most dangerous political adversary on the world stage. For decades opposition to that form of government was a driving force within the Republican Party. In the last four years after Russia helped their candidate win the presidency, not so much.
Now that Trump’s gone, the next step is to remove elected Republican officials who exonerated Trump for inciting a violent insurrection. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson publicly advocated throwing out his own state’s election results to allow Republican legislators to appoint electors to keep Trump in office. Every Republican Congressman—Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Tiffany, Mike Gallagher, Glenn Grothman and Brian Steil—voted against the House impeachment resolution. Gallagher was cited positively during the impeachment trial for publicly begging Trump to call off the insurrection while it was raging. But after Trump ignored him, Gallagher fell back in line with 196 other House Republicans to oppose impeachment.
Now’s the time for Democrats to recruit high quality candidates to win the midterms and continue restoring American democracy.
