If there’s a Republican left in Congress who doesn’t yet understand the real point of the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, I hope they were watching Thursday’s edition of Morning Joe on MSNBC.
For about 20 minutes, the show’s long-winded host Joe Scarborough and panelist Michael Steele droned on and on about how it wasn’t just Trump who was on trial, but any Republican who showed a hint of skepticism about the integrity of the 2020 election.
“This happened on your watch,” Steele said of the Jan. 6 riot in Washington, D.C. “And some of your colleagues who are in this chamber with you, they’re complicit as well. So, it’s not just the Donald Trump piece. … [Utah Sen. Mike Lee] had a role in this, too. [Missouri Sen.] Josh Hawley, you had a role in this, too.”
Scarborough then started one of his tortured soliloquies. “If you’re Josh Hawley, you actually are the person who led that insurrection,” said a squinty Scarborough. “You’re the person most responsible other than Donald Trump for that insurrection. You’re the person most responsible for a police officer being beaten to death. You’re the person most responsible for the cop killing, for the cop beating, for the abusing.”
Note that Hawley is being demonized for giving a sign of approbation to a protest which, at the time he did it, was completely peaceful. The idea that he “led an insurrection” is ridiculous.
But you can see how this works. The point of impeaching Trump and trying him after he is already well out of the White House has never been to preserve democracy. We did that in November, with an election wherein the voters chose not to undergo another four years of a Trump presidency. No, the impeachment was about burying Trump’s legacy, which includes revolutionizing an entire political party with just one campaign. Sensing a new threat from the reinvigorated GOP, Democrats are pursuing its end.
Trump was impeached for allegedly inciting a riot. The most compelling evidence behind that accusation is his comments on the day of the riot directing his supporters to literally march to the Capitol and “fight.” Whatever you make of this comment, you won’t find Republicans in Congress who made similar remarks on that day or even prior to it.
No, what Republicans are supposedly guilty of is suspecting that there may have been legal issues with the 2020 election, whether by fraud or by shifting voter deadlines and ballot access that really did create a confusing mess on Election Day. Democrats are far from angelic when it comes to complaining about the fairness of elections that they lose. They spent months ahead of November accusing Trump of trying to steal the election by tinkering with the Postal Service. And they’re even worse when it comes to retaliating against the candidates who beat them at the ballot box (see “Russiagate”).
The difference between Republicans and Democrats is the same difference between Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell and House Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters. Well into Obama’s first term, two days before the midterm election of 2010, McConnell said his goal was to make Barack Obama a one-term president. In contrast, right after Trump won the election in 2016, Waters said she would immediately try impeaching him.
Democrats will counterargue by saying, Yeah, but none of our election doubting caused a riot!
I live in Washington, D.C., where every single restaurant and store downtown was boarded up in anticipation of mass rioting that would endure for perhaps weeks following the election. I can promise you that it’s not Trump supporters whom business and property owners were afraid of. They don’t live here. But liberals and Black Lives Matter activists do, and they destroyed and torched dozens of city blocks across America last year, causing billions in damage. Had the election gone a different way, they’re the ones we’d be living in fear of.
At the end of the trial, Republicans can vote to convict, which Democrats will cast as an admission of guilt, or they can vote to acquit, which Democrats will cast as cowardly partisanship.
That’s a pretty easy choice for Republicans who realize this isn’t Trump’s impeachment trial. It’s the Democrats’ attempt to swallow the Republican Party whole.
