Despite Republicans’ depravity, Donald Trump is and shall always remain guilty of treason

The Unit­ed States Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus today had a rare sec­ond oppor­tu­ni­ty to put coun­try ahead of par­ty and hold Don­ald John Trump account­able for vio­lat­ing his oath of office and betray­ing the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion through his incite­ment of the attack on the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6th.

They declined.

Forty-three of fifty Repub­li­cans vot­ed not to con­vict Trump of the sin­gle arti­cle of impeach­ment exhib­it­ed against him by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, result­ing in Trump going uncon­vict­ed for the sec­ond time in two years.

As the House man­agers not­ed, this was the first impeach­ment tri­al in his­to­ry in which the Sen­a­tors were not only jurors sit­ting in a court of impeach­ment, but wit­ness­es to the alleged crime com­mit­ted by the defen­dant. The vio­lent mob sent to the Capi­tol by Don­ald Trump came per­ilous­ly close to find­ing and poten­tial­ly harm­ing mem­bers of Con­gress on Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021. As the man­agers con­clu­sive­ly proved, they were there because Trump had told them to be.

The col­lec­tive response from the Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus today was we don’t care, affirm­ing Trump’s infa­mous 2016 state­ment: “I could stand in the mid­dle of Fifth Avenue and shoot some­body, and I would­n’t lose any vot­ers, OK?”

That’s exact­ly how it went in this impeach­ment tri­al. No minds were changed. The sev­en Repub­li­cans who vot­ed to con­vict had all pre­vi­ous­ly sig­naled their will­ing­ness to do so ear­li­er, before House man­agers fin­ished mak­ing their case. Had ten more Repub­li­cans joined them, Trump would have been con­vict­ed, becom­ing the first pres­i­dent ever to be found guilty in an impeach­ment trial.

But it did­n’t hap­pen. The major­i­ty of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus decid­ed not to go against Trump and his rabid move­ment of white suprema­cists, like they have so many times before. Their deprav­i­ty seem­ing­ly knows no limits.

It was near­ly five years ago that Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz of Texas declared on the cam­paign trail that Don­ald Trump was “a snivel­ing cow­ard”. While Trump is indeed undoubt­ed­ly a snivel­ing cow­ard, Cruz might have just as well been prophet­i­cal­ly describ­ing his own future behav­ior. He was one of the forty-sev­en peo­ple who vot­ed not guilty. But, as some­one also cul­pa­ble for the events of Jan­u­ary 6th, he should not have been sit­ting in the Sen­ate as a juror at all.

It was also in 2016 that Sen­a­tor Lind­sey Gra­ham of South Car­oli­na prophet­i­cal­ly said: “If we nom­i­nate Trump, we will get destroyed… and we will deserve it.”

Gra­ham’s pre­dic­tion did­n’t come true on Novem­ber 7th, 2016, which is when he was think­ing it would. But it did come true on Novem­ber 6th, 2018, when Democ­rats recap­tured the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and on Novem­ber 3rd, 2020, when Democ­rats recap­tured the pres­i­den­cy, and on Jan­u­ary 5th, 2020, when Democ­rats gained con­trol of the Unit­ed States Sen­ate — a fed­er­al trifecta.

Gra­ham nev­er attached a date to the afore­quot­ed state­ment, which means it can be con­sid­ered a ful­filled pre­dic­tion. The Repub­li­can Par­ty did nom­i­nate Trump, it did get destroyed (at least elec­toral­ly) and it did deserve it.

The Repub­li­can Par­ty still calls itself the Repub­li­can Par­ty, but it is no longer a polit­i­cal par­ty in any mean­ing­ful sense. It has become a cult… a house of adu­la­tion and wor­ship of one man. Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene spoke the truth for once when she defi­ant­ly declared that the Repub­li­can Par­ty belongs to Don­ald Trump, and no one else. Sure­ly there is no bet­ter proof of that state­ment than the forty-three Repub­li­can votes against con­vic­tion of Trump that we just saw.

The eyes of his­to­ry were upon these Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors, and they did­n’t care. Only sev­en had the mod­icum of courage to hold Trump accountable:

• Susan Collins of Maine
• Mitt Rom­ney of Utah
• Ben Sasse of Nebraska
• Richard Burr of North Carolina
• Lisa Murkows­ki of Alaska
• Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania
• Bill Cas­sidy of Louisiana

Of the sev­en, Rom­ney was the sole Repub­li­can to vote to con­vict Trump a year ago in the first impeach­ment tri­al (he vot­ed for one of the two arti­cles). All Democ­rats and all inde­pen­dents vot­ed guilty then, as they did today.

In that first impeach­ment tri­al, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Schiff pre­scient­ly warned the Sen­ate of what would hap­pen if they did not vote to con­vict. Schiff said last year:

“We must say enough — enough! He has betrayed our nation­al secu­ri­ty, and he will do so again. He has com­pro­mised our elec­tions, and he will do so again. You will not change him. You can­not con­strain him. He is who he is. Truth mat­ters lit­tle to him. What’s right mat­ters even less, and decen­cy mat­ters not at all.”

Adam Schiff may have been think­ing specif­i­cal­ly of the likes of Susan Collins when he spoke those words; Collins, who vot­ed not to con­vict, would lat­er go on absurd­ly claim that she thought Trump had learned his les­son.

Collins, to her cred­it, vot­ed to con­vict this time around, after over five years of utter­ly and com­plete­ly fail­ing to stand up to Trump and his minions.

But she and Rom­ney were joined by only five oth­er Repub­li­cans. That’s it.

If this was­n’t an impeach­able offense, noth­ing is. If Trump did­n’t deserve con­vic­tion on what­ev­er basis, then impeach­ment has no mean­ing and no one can ever be con­vict­ed in an impeach­ment tri­al no mat­ter how grave their crime.

Mitch McConnell, the top Sen­ate Repub­li­can, who prob­a­bly could have deliv­ered the ten addi­tion­al votes need­ed to con­vict Trump, once again tried to have it both ways. He has repeat­ed­ly deplored and lament­ed the events of Jan­u­ary 6th, but he could not be both­ered to hold account­able the man pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for them. In the end, for McConnell, polit­i­cal cal­cu­lus won out, as it so often has.

McConnell would real­ly like to have the pow­er he just lost back, and if the Trump cult does­n’t show up for his slate in the 2022 midterms, that can­not happen.

For McConnell, not putting the coun­try first has a his­to­ry of pay­ing off. He obstruct­ed Barack Oba­ma’s agen­da for years and was reward­ed for it. He then enabled Don­ald Trump for years and was reward­ed for it.

It was not until Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won last month in Geor­gia, strip­ping McConnell of his title and a sig­nif­i­cant degree of his pow­er, that McConnell got his first real evi­dence that his strat­e­gy could be polit­i­cal­ly prob­lem­at­ic. Up until that point, it had arguably been work­ing great for him.

We were told by Repub­li­cans through­out Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­cy that he could not be held account­able for any­thing because he held the office. Now Repub­li­cans say that he can’t be held account­able because he does­n’t hold the office. Ridicu­lous. They speak of mov­ing on and let­ting bygones be bygones.

That is a recipe for the destruc­tion of this coun­try. We can­not move on with­out account­abil­i­ty. The Unit­ed States Sen­ate sad­ly did not deliv­er any account­abil­i­ty in this impeach­ment tri­al, but that does not mean the tri­al was mean­ing­less or point­less. The tri­al afford­ed the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives the oppor­tu­ni­ty to recount for the coun­try what hap­pened on Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021.

Even though many of us expe­ri­enced those events as they hap­pened, watch­ing in sick­en­ing dis­gust from in front of our tele­vi­sion screens at home, we did not have the facts that we have today. The sto­ry need­ed to be told again in a set­ting that would allow it to be prop­er­ly record­ed for his­to­ry. It was, and that’s some­thing that our team at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute takes com­fort in.

Don­ald Trump is guilty. He may not have been con­vict­ed of his treach­ery by the req­ui­site two-thirds of the Sen­ate as the Con­sti­tu­tion requires. But he did the crime and he will right­ly be remem­bered by his­to­ry as a crim­i­nal and a traitor.

As for Trump’s many Repub­li­can enablers, we can expect they’ll go on enabling him until they pay a polit­i­cal price for doing so. They can­not be expect­ed to do the right thing, ever. They can­not be expect­ed to vote their con­sciences or serve as a loy­al oppo­si­tion to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and con­gres­sion­al Democrats.

These Repub­li­cans have sad­ly cho­sen — cho­sen! — to be ene­mies of the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion, and they should be treat­ed as such every­where they go.