Following the Tuesday Night Massacre, which happened after last week's revenge binge from impeached president Donald Trump, intrepid CNN reporter Manu Raju caught up with Sen. Susan Collins to see what she's thinking about it all. She clearly did not appreciate the fact that Raju remembered what she said last week. The part about "I believe that the president has learned from this case," which she downgraded to "hopes" after Trump point blank said there was no lesson to be learned because "it was a perfect call."
Fast forward a week, and she really wants to be done talking about it. Asked by Raju if, after the actions Trump has taken, she still thinks there's "any lessons he heard from being impeached," she snapped. "I don't know what actions you're referring to. I've made very clear that I don't think anyone should be retaliated against." Then she launched into lecturing Raju: "That has nothing to do with the basis by which I voted to acquit the president, as I made very clear to you, Manu, on numerous occasions because his conduct, while wrong, did not meet the high bar established in the constitution for the immediate ouster of a duly elected president." Which had absolutely nothing to do with the question at all.
Because she doesn't want to answer the question. She didn't want to answer it later, either, when she continued to insist that she bore no responsibility at all for Trump being totally unfettered now. Her vote against impeaching Trump, she told reporters, "wasn't based on predicting his future behavior." Which is a hell of a cop-out for the person who once said impeaching him would be enough to make him curb his future behavior.
Collins is completely abdicating responsibility for both her past and her future failures to do her goddamned most essential job of being a check on the president. What she does think is her job is not obvious (besides granting defense contracts to companies that in turn contribute tens of thousands of dollars to her reelection campaign).
Watch:
catch that chyron: "GOP Sen. Collins Won't Say If Trump Learned Any Lessons After Acquittal." of course, last week she excused her vote by saying he did learn from impeachment & would be more cautious.....#mesen #mepolitics pic.twitter.com/QMTKd7g2TJ
— Lauren Passalacqua (@laurenvpass) February 12, 2020
MR: In light of the president's actions, do you think there's any lessons he heard from being impeached?
SC: I don't know what actions you're referring to. I've made very clear that I don't think anyone should be retaliated against. That has nothing to do with the basis by which I voted to acquit the president, as I made very clear to you, Manu, on numerous occasions because his conduct, while wrong, did not meet the high bar established in the constitution for the immediate ouster of a duly elected president. And that was the rationale for my vote to acquit him. That is the reason why….
MR: Do you think he learned any lessons?
SC: … In all the years that … since George Washington was inaugurated as our first president that we have never removed a duly elected president from office. It's because the conduct alleged should be so dangerous to our country and so egregious and proven by the House managers that the person should not remain in office one moment more. That was the standard established by the House managers. It was the standard that I used in acquitting President Clinton and that's the reason for my vote and I don't know why you're equating the two.
MR: Well you said the president learned his lesson. Do you think he learned any lessons?
[Collins’ office door slams shut.]
Barely past the sham GOP-led impeachment trial of Donald Trump, U.S. senators on both sides of the aisle are already bracing for what they expect to be a shorter time period between this removal proceeding and the next one. But naturally, the goals of Republican and Democratic lawmakers are quite different, according to The New York Times.
Republicans hope to enact rules that would limit both the House’s ability to impeach a president and the scope of information that would be considered in a Senate trial. One GOP official is advocating for a way to block consideration of what they called "nuisance" impeachments sent over from the House, as if Donald Trump's attempt to rig U.S. elections with foreign help was just a pesky dust-up. To that end, Florida Sen. Rick Scott is pushing to raise the House threshold for impeachment to require three-fifths support in the lower chamber rather than a simple majority.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley also wants to thwart the House's control over when articles are officially transmitted by simply giving the Senate authority to initiate a trial within a certain period after the House impeaches.
Democrats, on the other hand, want to expand Senate trials by mandating that new documentary evidence and testimony be considered. “I’d like to see witnesses and documents be required,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said of the proposal from Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley.
But at least some Republicans are pulling for a cooling-off period before any new rules are implemented. Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt noted that about a dozen years passed between the anticipated Nixon-era trial that ultimately never materialized and impeachment rule changes made in 1986. “They waited a dozen years before they said, ‘OK, now that things have totally settled down, nobody has an ax to grind, half the Congress that was here in 1972 isn’t here anymore, let’s look at the rules,’” Blunt said.
