The Second Impeachment of Donald Trump: Too Little, Too Late
Former President Donald Trump shows a newspaper report confirming his acquittal in the second impeachment trial earlier this month. Source: AP.
On Saturday afternoon, twenty four exhausting days after President Biden’s inauguration, the United States Senate acquitted former President Donald Trump, ending his second trial for charges of impeachment brought by the House of Representatives. 57 senators voted to convict the former president, including seven Republicans, while 43 voted to acquit. Despite a clear bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress and ”overwhelming evidence", the impeachment process ended with the same result as Trump’s first impeachment, with the Senate failing to reach the 67 votes required to convict.
The explanations given by the 43 Republican Senators for why they voted to acquit outline the key differences between Trump’s two impeachment hearings. In the first trial, the only Republican Senator to break party lines and vote to convict was Mitt Romney. He was joined by six other Republicans in the second impeachment trial, including Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina. While this may be the definition of doing “too little too late,” it does speak to the severity of the former President’s actions and the magnitude of the backlash he has received for them. The charge of incitement of insurrection having almost incontrovertible evidence backing it up with the then-President’s own public declarations and speeches seems to be much clearer violations of the Constitution. The first trial featured significantly more controversy over the validity of the charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
The debate in the Senate this past month was primarily centered around two issues: the intentions of the President’s words prior to the Capitol attack; and the constitutionality of impeaching a former President. Theatrics were on full display, with even Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Senate Minority Leader, flirting with the idea of convicting Trump. Ultimately, Mitch voted in favor of acquittal and was one of 44 senators who decided that it was unconstitutional to convict a former president. The entire spectacle seemed to be a Republican experiment on how to deal with life post-Trump and how strong, if at all, of a rebuke the last four years deserve.
Mitch McConell is perhaps the ideal case study into this political game of cat and mouse. One GOP strategist said McConnell has told people he thinks Trump perpetrated impeachable offenses. McConnell also saw House Democrats’ drive to impeach Trump as an opportune moment to distance the GOP from the tumultuous, divisive outgoing president, according to the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. He even contacted Republic donors about their views of Trump, presumably to input into his continued political calculations. At the same time, while he was Senate Majority Leader, McConell refused to hold the impeachment trial before President Biden’s inauguration. With the Republicans holding the Senate, this refusal effectively ensured that the Democrats would run an impeachment trial that would both lead to an acquittal by the Senate, unless sixteen Republican Senators decided both that Trump’s actions were inciting violence and that it was constitutional to convict a former President.
Mitch McConell and the Senate Republicans who voted to acquit played a game with the impeachment trial that balanced their disapproval of Trump’s actions with their desire to move past the Trump era without convicting a former Republican president. This so-called constitutional issue was simply a facade that allowed its proponents to play both sides. Make no mistake, Donald Trump incited violence with both his words and actions, a fact known to all 100 Senators.