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Democrats Should Put Republicans on Trial During Impeachment
Trump built a trap for the GOP. It’s time to use it.
The leading House Democrats responsible for impeachment, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, originally argued Congress should not proceed without bipartisan support for removing the president from office. Based on that proposition, some have mourned Democrats’ failure to “convince” Republican members of Congress to support the impeachment of Donald Trump. This criticism fails to account for the contemporary reality of the GOP’s absolute fealty to Trump. Because of Trump’s control of his party, impeachment simply cannot result in the removal of the president, regardless of the gravity of the evidence against Trump.
But if properly undertaken, the proceedings might well contribute to further delegitimizing the entire GOP, not just its leader. The means for achieving that goal is not “reasoning” with Republican senators during Trump’s trial. Rather, the House impeachment managers prosecuting the case, together with Democratic senators, should treat Republicans as the defendants, along with Trump, by relentlessly highlighting their commitment to defending his misconduct, wholly regardless of the evidence. In accomplishing this goal, Democrats will have a crucial ally: Donald Trump.
In recent weeks, as the depth of his recent criminality has become increasingly clear, Trump has responded by making ever more emphatic demands that Republican officeholders declare that his scheme to coerce the government of Ukraine to provide dirt on his political opponent was not only short of impeachable, but “perfect.”
The House GOP minority’s Ukraine report parroted Trump’s recent assertions that his corrupt conduct regarding Ukraine merely reflected his “concerns about corruption” in Kyiv. GOP officeholders have likewise taken to repeating Trump’s Kremlin-inspired fictional assertions that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. For example, Sen. John Kennedy initially said that Ukraine, not Russia, might have hacked the DNC, and has persisted in falsely asserting that Ukraine engaged in election interference on Hillary Clinton’s behalf. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr likewise said, “Every elected official in the Ukraine was for Hillary Clinton. Is that very…
