USA TODAY International Edition
Politics hits 3- day sprint
Caucuses, Trump speech, Senate vote fall in short span
Get ready for a whirlwind of politics. After Monday’s Iowa caucuses, President Donald Trump delivers his annual address to the American people on Tuesday, and then, in all likelihood the U. S. Senate will acquit him of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on Wednesday.
As House impeachment managers and the president’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 process of letting their choice of candidate be known.
Full results were expected early Tuesday, but on Monday afternoon, the first caucus to report, from the town of Ottumwa in the southeastern part of the state, announced it had chosen U. S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, 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 Tblisi, capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Those results weren’t released, but a site in Glasgow, Scotland, reported nine votes for Sanders, six for Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and three for former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
No delegates were awarded, howev
er, because all the international caucuses will be counted as one precinct.
At least two of the four Senate Democrats, Warren and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, were exploring whether they could swing last- minute campaign trips to Iowa after Monday’s impeachment trial session at the Capitol in Washington, D. C.
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 Constitution’s 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 Sekulow, a private attorney on
Trump’s defense team, argued that House Democrat pursued a partisan impeachment. “It should never happen again. ... This is exactly and precisely what the founders feared,” he said.
Each senator has 10 minutes to speak Tuesday and Wednesday before an expected vote on acquittal.
Trump, who will deliver his State of the Union Address at 9 p. m. EST Tuesday, 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 silent on impeachment.
“I hope Republicans & the American people realize that the totally partisan Impeachment Hoax is exacty 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.