Senators and impeachment managers: The trial is over but the work isn’t done

Senators may disagree on the validity of former President Donald Trump's impeachment, but they seem on the same page about one thing: This chapter hasn't closed just quite yet.

Speaking on a host of Sunday shows, senators from both parties agreed that there should be a 9/11-style investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and that Trump had spewed falsehoods relating to the 2020 election. From the lack of law enforcement on the Capitol grounds that day to the seemingly coordinated maneuvers of the rioters, senators pushed to probe into the events that culminated in the attack that left seven people dead.

"We need a 9/11 commission to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again, and I want to make sure that the Capitol footprint can be better defended next time," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

The comments came after a tumultuous final day in the Senate trial, where Democrats voted to have witnesses speak at the trial — then backtracked. Seven Republicans ended up voting with the Democrats to convict Trump — two more than during the Tuesday vote on the constitutionality of trying a former president.

Democratic senators and House impeachment managers defended the flip-flop Sunday, arguing that drawing out the Senate trial with witnesses would not have been necessary to prove their point.

"We didn't need more witnesses," Pennsylvania Rep. Madeleine Dean, one of the House managers, told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week." "America witnessed this. We were in a roomful of witnesses and victims."

"When you look at what people said after the trial, it wasn't more witnesses that were going to change their mind," Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." Klobuchar added that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell did not vote to convict even though he acknowledged in a scathing statement Saturday that Trump was "practically and morally responsible" for provoking the events of Jan. 6. McConnell disagreed with the constitutionality of trying a former president.

"We could have had 1,000 witnesses, but that could not have overcome the kinds of silly arguments that people like McConnell and [West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore] Capito were hanging their hats on," lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told NBC's Chuck Todd on Sunday's "Meet the Press."

Graham, one of Trump's fiercest allies in the Senate, wasn't the only lawmaker who wanted the Jan. 6 riots investigated. Others, including Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a protégé of President Joe Biden, and Dean, agreed that there should be a 9/11-style investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the few Republicans to vote to convict Trump, told Stephanopoulos that there "should be a complete investigation about what happened on 1/6, both why wasn't there more law enforcement, National Guard already mobilized, what was known, who knew it, all that, because that builds the basis so this never happens again in future." But the Louisiana Republican added he wanted to look forward and not have Jan. 6 define the future of the Republican Party.

Coons defended the move not to have witnesses at the impeachment trial by bringing up further possible investigations against Trump outside of the formal impeachment. The Delaware Democrat said an investigation into Jan. 6 could justifiably stretch for months, but added the Senate had to focus on pressing legislative priorities.

"I'm also focused on moving forward with delivering the urgent pandemic relief, the revitalization and strengthening our economy that President Biden has been focused on since becoming president, even during this week of the impeachment trial," Coons said on ABC.

Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said he was happy the impeachment trial provided an accounting of the Jan. 6 events.

"I wanted to make sure that the Soviet-style revisionists on the Republican side who are trying to blame everybody but Donald Trump had a record in front of the American people that was clear," the Illinois Democrat said on "Meet the Press." "I think Jamie Raskin and the House managers made that record with clarity."

Graham demanded an investigation into what leadership in the House and Senate knew in advance of the riots, insisting there was a "pre-planned element to the attack." But he stood by Trump, refusing to assign sole responsibility to the former president. He dismissed Democrats' claims that Trump's bellicose language on Jan. 6 led to the Capitol riots, repeating the former president's defense that fight-like language is common in political parlance.

Though Senators agreed on the future shadow cast by the Jan. 6 insurrection, less clear was the political future of Trump himself. Graham disagreed with McConnell's Saturday statement, calling the minority leader an "outlier" in his party. But Coons contended that had the conviction vote been conducted secretly, the chamber would have obtained the 67 votes necessary to convict.

Graham also said Trump remained a major force in the Republican Party and that he had his eyes set on the 2022 midterm elections. The South Carolinian said that in a party where support for Trump remains high, McConnell's damning statements about Trump would put the minority leader "center stage" as Republicans vie to take back control of the Senate. Graham added he plans to meet with Trump next week, calling him "the most vibrant member of the Republican Party."

"The Trump movement is alive and well," Graham said.

But a number of his Republican peers have voiced skepticism on that front. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley told POLITICO Magazine that Trump "let us down" and "went down a path he shouldn't have, and we shouldn't have followed him." And McConnell has been trying to push the party away from Trump ever since Jan. 6.

Cassidy told Stephanopoulos on Sunday that he felt Trump's "force wanes" and "the Republican Party is more than just one person."

"The Republican Party is about ideas," Cassidy said. "The American people want those ideas, but they want a leader who's accountable and a leader they can trust. I think our leadership will be different going forward."

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan also said he expected the GOP to move forward once members overcome their fear of Trump. "A lot of Republicans are outraged, but they don't have the courage to stand up and vote that way because they're afraid of being primaried, or they're going to lose their careers," he said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Klobuchar suggested Trump's future legal woes would seriously degrade his hold on the GOP. He is under investigation in Georgia for his attempt to flip the 2020 election results in that state and in New York for alleged financial misdeeds related to the Trump Organization.

"The American people have now seen clear out what he did. He violated his oath of office in what [Rep.] Liz Cheney called the greatest betrayal of a president's oath of office in history, and those memories and those police officers‘ screams will be forever etched in the memories of Americans," Klobuchar said. "He is done."

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Assassination, secession, insurrection: The crimes of John Wilkes Booth, Jefferson Davis, and Trump

Donald Trump broke new ground as the first president—the first American, period—to be impeached twice. However, thinking of him solely in those terms fails by a long shot to capture how truly historic his crimes were. Forget the number of impeachments—and certainly don’t be distracted by pathetic, partisan scoundrels voting to acquit—The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote (Twice) is the only president to incite a violent insurrection aimed at overthrowing our democracy—and get away with it.

But reading those words doesn’t fully and accurately describe the vile nature of what Trump wrought on Jan. 6. In this case, to paraphrase the woman who should’ve been the 45th president, it takes a video.

Senate Republicans acquitted Donald Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors twice. So make them pay: Donate $1 right now to each of the Democratic nominee funds targeting vulnerable Senate Republicans in 2022.

Although it’s difficult, I encourage anyone who hasn’t yet done so to watch the compilation of footage the House managers presented on the first day of the impeachment trial. It left me shaking with rage. Those thugs wanted not just to defile a building, but to defile our Constitution. They sought to overturn an election in which many hadn’t even bothered themselves to vote.

What was their purpose? In their own words, as they screamed while storming the Capitol: “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” Those were the exact same words they had chanted shortly beforehand during the speech their leader gave at the Ellipse. He told them to fight for him, and they told him they would. And then they did.

“These defendants themselves told you exactly why they were here” pic.twitter.com/6HVsD8Kl0M

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) February 10, 2021

Many of those fighting for Trump were motivated by a white Christian nationalist ideology of hate—hatred of liberals, Jews, African Americans, and other people of color. Most of that Trumpist mob stands diametrically opposed to the ideals that really do make America great—particularly the simple notion laid down in the Declaration of Independence that, after nearly 250 years, we’ve still yet to fully realize: All of us are created equal. The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was but another battle in our country’s long-running race war.

As Rev. William Barber explained just a few days ago: “White supremacy, though it may be targeted at Black people, is ultimately against democracy itself.” He added: “This kind of mob violence, in reaction to Black, brown and white people coming together and voting to move the nation forward in progressive ways, has always been the backlash.”

Barber is right on all counts. White supremacy’s centuries-long opposition to true democracy in America is also the through-line that connects what Trump has done since Election Day and on Jan. 6 to his true historical forebears in our history. Not the other impeached presidents, whose crimes—some more serious than others—differed from those of Trump not merely by a matter of degree, but in their very nature. Even Richard Nixon, as dangerous to the rule of law as his actions were, didn’t encourage a violent coup. That’s how execrable Trump is; Tricky Dick comes out ahead by comparison.

Instead, Trump’s true forebears are the violent white supremacists who rejected our democracy to preserve their perverted racial hierarchy: the Southern Confederates. It’s no coincidence that on Jan. 6 we saw a good number of Confederate flags unfurled at the Capitol on behalf of the Insurrectionist-in-Chief. As many, including Penn State history professor emeritus William Blair, have noted: “The Confederate flag made it deeper into Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, than it did during the Civil War.“

As for that blood-soaked, intra-American conflict—after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, 11 Southern states refused to accept the results because they feared it would lead to the end of slavery. They seceded from the Union and backed that action with violence. Led by their president, Jefferson Davis, they aimed to achieve through the shedding of blood what they could not at the ballot box: to protect their vision of a white-dominated society in which African Americans were nothing more than property.

Some, of course, will insist the Civil War began for other reasons, like “states’ rights,” choosing to skip right past the words uttered, just after President Lincoln’s inauguration, by Alexander Stephens, who would soon be elected vice president of the Confederacy. Stephens described the government created by secessionists thusly: “Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

In the speech he gave at his 1861 inauguration, Lincoln accurately diagnosed secession as standing in direct opposition to democracy.

Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.

Davis, Stephens, and the rest of the Confederates spent four long years in rebellion against democracy and racial equality. In 1865, Lincoln was sworn in for a second term. On the ballot the previous year had been his vision, laid out at Gettysburg, of a war fought so that our country might become what it had long claimed to be, namely a nation built on the promise of liberty and equality for every American. Lincoln’s vision won the election. He planned to lead the Union to final victory and, hopefully, bring that vision to life. Instead, John Wilkes Booth shot the 16th president to death.

Why did Booth commit that violent act, one that sought to remove a democratically elected president? Look at his own written words: “This country was formed for the white, not for the black man. And looking upon African Slavery from the same stand-point held by the noble framers of our constitution. I for one, have ever considered (it) one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us,) that God has ever bestowed upon a favored nation.”

As author and Washington College historian Adam Goodheart explains, Booth was “motivated by politics and he was especially motivated by racism, by Lincoln’s actions to emancipate the slaves and, more immediately, by some of Lincoln’s statements that he took as meaning African Americans would get full citizenship.” When Booth opened fire, his gun was aimed at not just one man, but at the notion of a multiracial, egalitarian democracy itself.

Trump may not have pulled a trigger, bashed a window, or attacked any police officers while wearing a flag cape, but he shares the same ideology, motive, and mindset as his anti-democratic, white supremacist forebears. They didn’t like the result of an election, and were ready and willing to use violence to undo it. Secession, assassination, insurrection. These are three sides of a single triangle.

I hope, for the sake of our country and the world, we never have another president like Donald Trump. I hope we as a people—or at least enough of us—have learned that we cannot elect an unprincipled demagogue as our leader.

A person without principle will never respect, let alone cherish, the Constitution or the democratic process. A person without principle can only see those things as a means to gain or maintain a hold on power. A person without principle believes the end always justifies the means.

That’s who Trump is: a person without principle. That’s why he lied for two months after Election Day, why he called for his MAGA minions to come to Washington on the day Joe Biden’s victory was to be formally certified in Congress, and why he incited an insurrection on that day to prevent that certification from taking place. His forces sought nothing less than the destruction of American democracy.

For those crimes, Trump was impeached, yes. But those crimes are far worse than those committed by any other president. Regardless of the verdict, those crimes will appear in the first sentence of his obituary. They are what he will be remembered for, despite the cowardice of his GOP enablers. Forever.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of  The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)