King Donald’s courtiers betray the country and the Constitution
What will they see when they look in a mirror for the rest of their lives?
Marco Rubio, Rick Scott and 49 other Republican senators will need rose-colored glasses. Otherwise, they’ll see the yellow badge of cowardice. They’ll see political opportunists who betrayed our country and our Constitution to continue feasting at the king’s table.
Florida’s senators helped bring the farce that purports to be the impeachment trial of President Trump to its predetermined climax Friday. They voted to end it without hearing any witnesses or seeing any documents that might further strengthen the compelling case presented by the House of Representatives.
Don’t trouble us with the facts, they said. Above all, keep the facts from the American people.
Every day shines more light on what they’re desperate to hide, what John Bolton and Trump’s inner circle might reveal under oath. But of course, Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser, is already saying it in the pages being leaked from his unpublished manuscript.
Only hours before the Senate’s vote, the New York Times reported extremely damaging new details on Trump’s campaign to extort Ukraine into smearing his potential Democratic election opponent, Joe Biden.
Bolton’s manuscript, according to the New York Times, reveals the president tried to involve him in the scheme. He identifies witnesses: Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Rudy Giuliani; acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney;
and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Trump’s lead defender.
That makes them all indispensable witnesses to Trump’s crime.
But by a 51-49 margin, the Senate chose to hear no evil, see no evil.
Friday was a day that will live in infamy.
Though the final vote to acquit Trump was put off until Wednesday, the outcome is not in doubt. It never was.
Only two Republicans, Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, voted to make a real trial out of it. Collins alone knows whether she did so out of conviction or for fear of being denied re-election in a Democratic-leaning state. It’s believed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave her a pass after Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander sealed the deal, making her allegiance unnecessary.
Romney was promptly disinvited to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. But Romney is the true conservative and he puts that cast of puppets to shame. Almost alone in the radicalized Republican Party, he opposes absolute power because it corrupts absolutely.
Trump recognizes no boundaries. That is the paramount issue for the voters, the ultimate jury for a power-mad president and a craven Senate. It is critical to replace the Senate leadership, as well as Trump himself, so that a wiser Congress can salvage our democracy.
In 1776, the American colonies declared their independence from a kingdom. In 1787, the founders adopted a Constitution meant to forever forbid the trappings and perquisites of monarchy.
As Benjamin Franklin described it to an inquisitor, “A republic, madam — if you can keep it.”
The answer hangs in the balance in the November election.
McConnell and the Republican Senate caucus have licensed Trump, and his successors, to do whatever suits them to win an election.
Beg more interference from Russia? Check. Manipulate congressional appropriations for personal benefit? Check. Defy Congress’ constitutional power to investigate, no matter how outrageous the offense? Check. There is no limit.
The 51 senators will make excuses for voting as they did. The most astonishing, so far, was Alexander’s. He said he didn’t need any more evidence because the House managers had proved their case. He just didn’t think Trump’s conduct was bad enough to remove him from office.
Rubio said much the same, with some claptrap about partisanship added on. He fretted that it would worsen the nation’s deep divisions. As if emboldening the nation’s divider-in-chief won’t do just that.
Regardless of how they might try to spin it, the Republican senators failed to repudiate what Alan Dershowitz, Trump’s most outlandish advocate, had advised them on Wednesday.
This is what he said:
“Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest. And mostly you’re right. Your election is in the public interest. And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
There has never been a president who did not confuse his election with the public interest.
By such twisted logic, Richard Nixon could have rationalized the Watergate coverup.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke to the Senate’s shame during a visit with this editorial board on Friday.
“I don’t know how they answer to their children or grandchildren,” she said.
In one of William Shakespeare’s most popular plays, he imagined King Henry V prowling incognito among his troops on the eve of the battle of Agincourt in 1415. He had broken a truce to invade France. Not knowing to whom he’s speaking, one of the soldiers rationalizes that “we know enough, if we know we are the king’s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.”
The obedience of 51 U.S. Senators to a corrupt American president who craves kingly powers does not wipe the crime of it out of them. They stamped themselves with his offenses as indelibly as the impeachment will forever mark him. It will be the lead line in their obituaries.