My attitude towards the trial was summarized in a subhead to a Slate piece by Dahlia Lithwick: “The facts of the case are nearly impossible to take in, but worse is the knowledge that nothing will be done.” I preferred watching giddy clips from old Graham Norton chat shows.
And sure enough, on Saturday, the US Senate had its vote on conviction, its harvest of shame. Once again, Trump was acquitted of impeachable offenses he clearly and publicly committed, having presented nothing in defense, but depending on naked politics.
Republicans quaking in fear of essentially the same mob whose stormtroopers viciously attacked unarmed police in the capitol (that mob including it seems the rabid leadership of many state parties), voted their cushy jobs rather than the Constitution or their country, which are consequently more endangered and less steady than they were yesterday.
Some hid behind a vapid pseudo-legal argument with no substance, that because the penalty was removal from office, Trump could not be tried. This hypocrisy was headed by the master of hypocrisy, Mitch McConnell, who prevented the trial from happening while Trump was in office, and Saturday said yeah Trump is guilty but the Senate couldn’t try him because he’s no longer in office.
Those voting for acquital including the Senators who were essentially unindicted co-conspirators, who not only got to be the judges of their own case but advised the Trump defense lawyers, including the one who specialized in personal injury claims. Of these Tom Scocca writes in Slate: "The managers had to pretend Cruz and McConnell and the other Republicans were not complicit in Trump’s abuses, because their goal was to get 17 Republican senators to join the Democrats in convicting him. At trial’s end, only seven of the 50 members of the minority conference took the managers up on it. The rest of the Republicans didn’t care what rhetorical gestures the impeachment managers had made toward separating them from their president, for the sake of granting them independence from the president and his mob. They chose to stay bound to him. They are the mob."
If Republicans were nakedly and repulsively political, Democrats held back from making the full devastating case also because of politics. They could have called witnesses and put faces on the infamy, especially regarding what happened in the White House as the violence against the government was happening in the Capitol. But they didn’t, simply putting on the record corroboration of the story that broke Friday, that when House R leader McCarthy told Trump on the phone that killers were pounding on his door and threatening to murder the vice-president, and pleaded for help, Trump blew him off.
So, apparently because one Trump lawyer frothed at the mouth and threatened weeks of deposition, and because everybody’s votes were decided and they all wanted to get out of Washington for Valentine’s Day, and comfortably celebrate President’s Day on Monday after doing to the Constitution and the Presidency what some of the stormtroopers did on the floors and walls of the Capitol, a deal was made, no witnesses called, and the vote was taken.
Afterwards a number of writers tried to find the bright side: Trump was damaged, the law enforcement apparatus and the courts could take over and now had more ammunition, etc.
Among them was Atlantic editor and former GW Bush speechwriter David Frum in his Atlantic piece titled, It’ll Do. It begins by praising the “courage worthy of historical honor” of the seven Republicans who voted to convict, plus one Democrat in a state that voted heavily for Trump. He pointed out that a majority of the Senate voted to convict, with a small but significant number of Republicans. “It wasn’t enough to formally disqualify Trump from ever again seeking office in the United States. But practically? It will do as a solemn and eternal public repudiation of Trump’s betrayal of his oath of office.”
The Republicans who voted for conviction, Frum writes, destroy the argument that the vote to convict was partisan, and so took the wind out of the political sails. Republicans who indicated that Trump was at least partially guilty, especially McConnell, may have some weight with prosecutors and the courts, he wrote.
Frum’s summation:
" If you looked to the U.S. Senate for a full measure of accountability, you did not receive it, of course. Donald Trump, the twice-impeached president, is also a twice-acquitted president. He lives in a palace on the sea, supported by unconstitutional emoluments from foreign governments, unethical payments from the U.S. Treasury to his businesses, and gullible donations from the suckers he duped. Almost half a million are dead from the plague he promised would go away by itself, even as he received the benefit of miracle treatments available only to the most favored few.”
“But if justice failed, democratic self-preservation is working. Trump lost the presidency, and that loss held despite all his attacks on the vote and the counting of the vote. His party split against him on this second round of impeachable offenses. He has lost his immunity to civil suit and his impunity against federal indictment. The world is crashing down upon his head.”
“The impeachment did not prevail. But Trump still lost.”
Well, maybe. Time will tell. I’m not persuaded that facts will dissuade the rabid right and the state Republican parties from seeing this as rigidly partisan. Why start now? Trump’s response to his acquittal in his first impeachment trial was to double-down on wrongdoing—he was committing impeachable offenses every week, and didn’t bother hiding it. The wheels of justice grind slowly, and Trump has plenty of time to gather his forces before he faces prison. He may have little more than a third of the country behind him, but under the right conditions and the right moment, that could be enough. We’re not done with the danger of Homegrown Hitler. And now there is nothing stopping him from running for President again.
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