From Iowa to D.C.: A wild 48 hours
Get ready for a whirlwind of politics.
After Monday's Iowa Caucuses, President Trump delivers his annual address to the American people tonight, and then, in all likelihood the U.S. Senate will acquit him of abuse and power and obstruction of Congress on Wednesday.
As House impeachment managers and Trump's defense team made their closing arguments in the trial, which is now in its third week, voters in Iowa gathered Monday to begin the arcane process of letting their choice of candidate be known.
Full results were expected late in the night, but on Monday afternoon, the first caucus to report, from the town of Ottumwa in the southeast part of the state, announced it had chosen Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had taken the lead in some late polling.
But with 1,677 sites and 99 satellite locations around the globe left to report, there was plenty of room for surprises.
This was the first year that Iowans were allowed to caucus outside the state, including several international locations. The first site to caucus was in the city of Tblisi, capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Those resorts weren't released, but a site in Glasgow, Scotland, reported nine votes for Sanders, six for Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and three votes for South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. No delegates were awarded, because all the international caucuses will be counted as one precinct.
At least two of the four Senate Democrats, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, were exploring whether they could swing last minute campaign trips to Iowa after Monday's trial session.
In that session, House impeachment managers and Trump's defense team each spent two hours making their final arguments, invoking everything from the Framers of the Constitution to Irving Berlin's “God Bless America” to Harry Potter to the King James Bible.
Lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the framers envisioned impeachment as one of “the tools to do the job, a remedy as powerful as the evil it was meant to constrain.”
Jay Se ku low, aprivate member of President Donald Trump's defense team, argued that House Democrats pursued a partisan impeachment that the country's founders feared
and “it should never happen again. ... This is exactly and precisely what the founders feared.”
Each senator now has 10 minutes to speak ahead of an expected vote on acquittal Wednesday.
Trump, who will be delivering his State of the Union Address at 9 p.m. ET, did not make any public appearances Monday and was relatively quiet on Twitter. He did exhort Republicans to caucus for him in Iowa, even though he was expected to cruise to an easy victory over former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld and conservative talk show host Joe Walsh.
And he wasn't completely silent in impeachment.
“I hope Republicans & the American people realize that the totally partisan Impeachment Hoax is exactly that, a Hoax. Read the Transcripts, listen to what the President & Foreign Minister of Ukraine said (“No Pressure ”). Nothing will ever satisfy the Do Nothing, Radical Left Dems!,” he tweeted.