The Devil’s Advocate
The second impeachment trial of x-President Donald Trump was always meant to be all about accountability. To hold not just Trump accountable but also to hold the Republican leadership accountable. It was meant to present the evidence against Trump with accuracy and precision backed with some shocking video footage, test the moral core of senate Republicans, and to let people be their own judges regardless of the legal or constitutional outcome. I am doubtful if any Trump supporters can be dissuaded at this point, but it is the undecided independents who might perhaps finally see the light! Going into the trial Democrats already knew they could not get the two thirds majority required to impeach Trump in a 50–50 split senate of this era. The fact that they managed to get 7 out of the 17 votes needed was a miracle. Yes, a miracle for elected officials to defend when under literal physical attack the very institution they have sworn to serve!! This is the kind of divided times we are living in.
Today Donald Trump may have been acquitted a second time but I believe that Democrats did achieve what they’d hoped to achieve. They presented the evidence to prosecute Trump with absolute clarity and on this President’s Day Holiday weekend they showed the world the true colors of their Republican colleagues.
It is most infuriating to see that barring a handful of Republicans everyone including the most senior Republican members of the Congress are still supporting Trump. For Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell to hide behind the veil of constitutionality in order to caste a not guilty vote to acquit Trump is simply unacceptable. To say that Trump can’t be convicted because he is not the President anymore is unacceptable. It was McConnell who shut the senate down after Jan 6th to avoid a fast track impeachment trial! And now minutes after the resolution to acquit Trump was passed, McConnell had the audacity to take the senate floor and announce that Trump incited the insurrection and that Trump was responsible for the violence!! Truly appalling!!! For why couldn’t he say this during the trial? Why did McConnell not persuade his colleagues to impeach Trump if he was speaking the truth? If he truly meant what he was saying in that speech he certainly was oblivious of his feelings until after Trump was acquitted! Why did he block the impeachment process before Biden’s inauguration? And above all why was he quietly supporting Trump for last four years?
Mitch McConnell was Trump’s biggest enabler by not only being a silent spectator since Election Day of November 3rd 2020 but also by being so for the last 4 years when he was the senate majority leader. In fact he was responsible for converting Trump policies into law and therefore Mitch McConnell has literally been the Devil’s Advocate. McConnell remained tight lipped when Trump was feeding the lies of a rigged election to his supporters. He let Trump’s narrative catch the imagination of his base and let it spread like wild fire. Fires that reached democracy’s sanctum sanctorum and threatened to burn it down. Those crowds who attacked the Congress actually believed in those lies and Mitch McConnell was accomplice to the insurrection by standing on the sidelines and letting them believe in those lies and by not admitting soon enough that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner. And by doing this Mitch McConnell failed to defend the constitution he had sworn to defend. Even after members of Congress and Vice President Pence were exposed to real physical danger he refused to keep the senate in session so that the impeachment process could have been started immediately. Even though insurrectionists were chanting Hang Mike Pence he supported Trump by shutting down the senate. And so did Senators Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruise and Mike Lee and so many others. They too are all as much Trump’s enablers and accomplices as is Mitch McConnell. However McConnell bears more responsibility because he was the senate majority leader all throughout the four years of Trump’s presidency. It was his duty to reign in members of his party.
Agreed Mitch McConnell wanted to accomplish his party’s agenda during the Trump presidency. But once he managed to blatantly squeeze through the last conservative judge to the Supreme Court even while the elections were already under way, why would he still allow Trump to peddle his baseless lies about rigged election theories without a shred of evidence? Mitch McConnell even kept quiet when the Oregon Republican party falsely claimed in a resolution that there is “growing evidence” that the January 6th attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob was “a ‘false flag’ operation”. Meaning it was staged!! He kept quiet when the Hawaii GOP retweeted the same week the anti-Semitic Holocaust denial conspiracy theory which claims that the Holocaust never occurred!! Mitch McConnell also kept quiet when it was brought to light that the QAnon leader Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly spread conspiracy theories that both the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre and Parkland Florida’s Stoneman Douglas High School massacre were staged events… it makes me sick to my stomach. But you Mitch McConnell remained tight lipped! And few weeks ago when the Arizona Republican Party passed official resolutions censuring three prominent party members — Gov. Doug Ducey, former Sen. Jeff Flake, and Sen. John McCain’s widow Cindy McCain — for supposedly not supporting the GOP ideology (read they stood up to Trump), Mr. Mitch McConnell kept quiet again!
So if Mitch McConnell thinks he can double play and appease both sides by voting to acquit Trump one minute and accusing Trump of being guilty minutes after he was acquitted, it’s very clear he is either simply a creature of politics to his core or he is a downright coward and afraid of Trump. Regardless of the reason, the fact remains that he has sold his soul to the devil. And if he thinks he can wash away all his sins of being Trump’s partner in crime with this fake 5 minute speech on the floor now, it’s an insult to the average human intelligence. If there was even a shred of honesty in what he said then there would have been at least one action over the last 4 years that would have suggested anything but otherwise.
The kind of politics Trump has brought to the fore is weakening the very foundations of American democracy. Yet an overwhelming majority of Republican Party leaders are simply sweeping these very serious issues under the rug. Why? Is this purely about party over politics? Or do they “really” believe that the election was stolen? Or are they hard core racists and believe in Trump’s ideology? Or is this pure cowardice — they are afraid to antagonize Trump, they don’t want to face his wrath and jeopardize their reelection? I think it’s a mix of all of the above although more GOP leaders are simply appeasing Trump for the vote bank he commands at this point. I find it hard to believe that all the Republican leaders still agree with Trump 100% after he put their lives in real physical danger on January 6th 2021.
The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump ended on Feb 12th, President Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday. On February 13th it was cast in stone that Lincoln’s Republican Party has been hijacked by Donald Trump. The political party of a President who abolished slavery has been taken over by a President who brought back racial discrimination and xenophobia into main stream America and who in fact promoted these disturbing ideologies as his election platform.
I want to remain optimistic that all is not lost and I want to think of the 10 Republican House Representatives and the 7 GOP Senators who voted to impeach Trump as the silver lining on this very dark cloud that is hanging over America tonight. And I solemnly pray that I am right!!
