The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump officially ended on Wednesday with his acquittal by all but one of the Republican majority members in the Senate, yet these sorts of matters never really end. Historians still argue about the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson and the Sacco and Vanzetti case and the Scopes Monkey Trial and the O.J. Simpson verdict, with their political implications still clearly delineated and intensely felt, so the arguments about Trump’s impeachment trial will surely continue at least until Election Day.
All of the evidence and testimony that led to Trump’s impeachment by Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is still damning, and all of the evidence the Republican majority Senate refused to hear will eventually be heard. Former national security advisor John Bolton’s tell-all book will sooner or later be published in some form despite Trump’s best efforts at censorship, an indicted associate of Trump’s personal lawyer named Lev Parnas will eventually give his side of a very interesting story in what’s likely to be a well-publicized trial, and the silence of such presumably exculpatory witnesses as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of State Rick Perry and White House chief of staff and part-time director of Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney will be deafening.
The testimony and evidence the House of Representatives cited to impeach Trump on counts of abusing his office to withhold congressionally aid from America’s Ukrainian allies in exchange for help in reelection and then obstructed congressional efforts to find out about it went largely unchallenged during the Senate’s abbreviated trial, and was sufficient that a vast majority of Americans told all the pollsters they wanted to hear more. Even such stalwart Republicans as Tennessee’s Sen. Lamar Alexander and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and the damned-if-she-does-and-damned-if-she-doesn’t Sen. Susan Collins of Maine acknowledged that Trump did indeed do what he was accused of, and that he shouldn’t have done it, even though they all voted to acquit because it’s not that big a deal, at least when a Republican does it.
Collins told a national television interview that she’s confident Trump won’t try it again after being chastened by impeachment. Murkowski admitted that Trump’s conduct was “shameful and wrong” but explained her partisan vote by saying that impeachment should be a bipartisan consensensus. Alexander said the American people should decide if Trump should run again in 2020. and Rubio explained his vote to acquit despite understanding of Trump’s guilt by saying “Can anyone doubt that at least half the country would view his removal as illegitimate — as nothing short of a coup d’tat?”
We don’t share Collins’ confidence that Trump has learned his lesson, but instead worry he’ll be emboldened by the once-again-confirmed lifelong lesson that he can get away with anything, and he’ll try something even more brazen and crazier. Alexander surely realizes that only Republicans rather than the broader “American people” will decide if Trump runs again in 2020, and that they are not one and the same. Rubio has a good point about a large chunk of America viewing Trump’s removal as illegitimate, but we’re not sure it’s more than half, and can only guess how it’s spread around the electoral map, and as of now a whole lot of people regard Trump’s presidency as illegitimate, and he must have known his vote wouldn’t settle the matter.
Only Utah Sen. Mitt Romney broke from the Republican ranks to convict Trump on the first article of impeachment, which will surely be a matter of much discussion for some time to come. He made a far better explanation of his decision that we ever could, and we urge to you to listen to it here, and dare you try to come up with a plausible rebuttal, but he’ll no doubt be pilloried in Trump’s “tweets” and the Trump-friendly media. They won’t be able to convincingly say he was selling out his principles for political advantage, though.
How it plays out in the coming months until Election Day is anybody’s guess, given how awful the damned Democratsundeniably are, but over the long run we think that Romney will be on the few involved who comes out looking any good. We voted for him when he ran against President Barack Obama, who we must admit never questioned Romney’s character, and we’re proud of vote that today.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 