By David Amaya
What followed after former President Donald Trump’s instruction to Proud Boys, a far-right group that endorses violence, to “stand back and standby,” telling his loyalists that the only way he’ll lose the 2020 election is if it is stolen from him, and finally, to “fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” before sending his rally off to the Capitol was his second impeachment. This impeachment would not be like any other in our history – the Representatives and Senators are not only the jurors and judges of the trial but also witnesses. In a careful balancing act between justice and incumbency, the Senate vote leaned towards incumbency.
The argument made by Donald Trump’s defense attorneys and most of his Republican backers that a former president can’t be subjugated to an impeachment trial is devoid of merit. It was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, (who has since been demoted to Senate minority leader) who postponed the trial for a date after Trump’s departure from presidency. McConnell’s decision was a hollow strategy that acted as a loophole to our hallow system of checks and balances.
Other than the purported defense that a former president shouldn’t be tried by the Senate, there is no other redeemable quality to the defense made for Mr. Trump. He was indeed guilty both “practically” and “morally” for the invasion of the Capitol, McConnell said after the vote to acquit, but Trump was freed from culpability because he is no longer in office.
In a move similar to McConnell’s expedient “the-end-justifies-the-means” strategy, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy bit his tongue about the pugnacious president and expressed support for the man who is “committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022. For the sake of our country, the radical Democrat agenda must be stopped.” Both Republican leaders are gambling away their integrity for a chance at their party’s re-election and a fundraising cashflow crowdsourced by the man who refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
Although the House impeachment managers were successful in illustrating the cold hard facts of Trump’s insurrectionist intention, they were unified with the Republicans in one way – they both perpetuated Trump’s everlasting war on what truth is and what facts are. Both sides succeeded in expressing how precarious our fragile republic is at the moment. Trump successfully persuaded legislators on both sides of the aisle to deny and strip the ideological opposition of their humanity, their entitlement to truth, and how to put party over country–the antithesis of the very premise that founded our country.
Lead impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, prided himself in being part of the most bipartisan impeachment trial yet, but history may beg to differ. In 1974, President Richard Nixon was days away from being impeached before he resigned from the presidency for his crimes against the Democratic National Committee. Nixon’s Republican loyalists on Capitol Hill assured him he would not pass the impeachment vote–his party rejected him, so Nixon exiled himself voluntarily. Fast-forward to 2021 and the Republican party now defends a twice-impeached president who challenges the validity of our democracy’s electoral system; and for what, but to preserve and reinforce the Republican party’s incumbency.