Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Friday morning that the impeachment of Donald Trump in the Senate is imminent. "I have spoken to Speaker Pelosi who informed me that the articles will be delivered to the Senate on Monday," and promised "It will be a full trial, it will be a fair trial." That's a rebuff to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who attempted to dictate the schedule to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schumer in a proposal released late Thursday. McConnell argued that Trump needed time to plan a defense and that "At this time of strong political passions, Senate Republicans believe it is absolutely imperative that we do not allow a half-baked process to short-circuit the due process that former President Trump deserves or damage the Senate or the presidency."
A reminder: Trump sent a mob to the Capitol to hunt leadership, including former Vice President Mike Pence, down and kill them. Which is what the House impeachment managers intend to keep at the forefront. A Democratic source told Washington Post's Greg Sargent that their presentation will include "a lot of video of the assault on the Capitol … to dramatize the former president’s incitement role in a way that even GOP senators cannot avoid grappling with." Maybe that will keep them awake during the proceeding.
Campaign Action"If they‘re going to vote against it, they're going to vote against it knowing what actually happened," the aide told Sargent. "A lot of senators" were "very upset angry about what happened,” the aide continued, saying the managers' goal is to "remind them of why." Among those needing the reminder is Trump's caddy, Sen. Lindsey Graham. Remember Graham on January 6, in the aftermath of the attack when the Senate reconvened. He said the effort to challenge the Electoral College vote was "the most offensive concept in the world." He said that he and Trump had been on "a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh, my god, I hate it." He said Trump's attempt to challenge the result in Congress was "not going to do any good." That's Graham, essentially admitting that Trump set the insurrection in motion.
Here's what Graham said just two weeks later. "For the party to move forward, we got to move the party with Donald Trump." So much for the end of the journey. "There’s no way to be a successful Republican Party without having President Trump working with all of us and all of us working with him. […] [W]e got a decent chance of coming back in 2022. But we can't do it without the President." He's not alone. There'a a whole cadre of Republicans senators who are actually threatening McConnell's leadership if he votes to convict Trump.
They're not going to be able to hide from what Trump did, the House Democrats will make sure of that. "The president of the United States committed an act of incitement of insurrection," Pelosi reminded everyone Thursday. "Just because he's now gone—thank God—you don't say to a president, 'Do whatever you want in the last months of your administration. You're going to get a get-out-of-jail card free' because people think you should make nice, nice, and forget that people died here on Jan. 6."
