USA TODAY International Edition
Trump, McConnell kept a firm front
From top down, GOP maintained discipline
WASHINGTON – In the middle of an impeachment trial, a confident Donald Trump gathered two dozen Republican senators on the South Lawn of the White House for an unlikely celebration.
Touting the completion of his trade deal with Mexico and Canada, Trump called out the senators one by one as “great,” “my friend from the beginning” and – perhaps his highest compliment of all – a “big fixture” on TV.
“Maybe I’m being just nice to them because I want their vote,” Trump said to a murmur of laughter from the lawmakers, who hours later returned to their desks in the Senate to hear the day’s arguments in a trial to decide whether to remove him from office.
For a president who came to power eschewing Washington politics, Trump ran a textbook insider counter-offensive to the impeachment trial, allies and political veterans said. From courting vulnerable senators facing reelection to focusing on the economy, trade and foreign policy, the White House mostly
avoided the confusion and confrontation that has plagued other moments of Trump’s tumultuous presidency.
Trump was guided by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, whose steady maneuvering and relentless calls for patience in closed- door meetings with his colleagues kept the Republican caucus almost entirely intact.
Trump and McConnell viewed party unity as critical not only to the president’s reelection in November but also to retaining the GOP majority in the Senate because it would allow them to delegitimize the effort as partisan.
In the end, the trial fizzled, but Trump did not secure a unanimous result. Democrats fell far short of the 67 votes needed to remove the president from office. The Senate voted 52- 48 to acquit Trump on the charge that he abused his power and 53- 47 on the charge that he obstructed Congress. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who has had an adversarial relationship with Trump for years, was the sole Republican who voted to convict Trump on abuse of power.
From the beginning, few expected the GOP- controlled Senate to remove the president on charges he abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, a political rival. Trump and McConnell mostly avoided new drama during the third presidential impeachment trial in the nation’s history, and the likelihood Trump would be removed became more remote each day.
Republicans said the White House approach mirrored a strategy embraced by President Bill Clinton during his impeachment in 1999 as he fended off charges that he lied about his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.
Setting the table
Soon after announcing she would vote to acquit Trump, Sen. Susan Collins, R- Maine, walked off the Senate floor Tuesday to explain how she reached that decision.
Facing a tough reelection, Collins said she started the trial by reviewing her notes from the Clinton trial, which unfolded in her first term. She wanted Trump’s trial to look like Clinton’s. By joining forces with Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R- Alaska; Lamar Alexander, RTenn.; and Romney she had the leverage to make that happen.
“That’s when I went to ( McConnell) and said that I felt we should have the same kind of schedule, including an up or down vote on witnesses,” Collins said. “That’s how that provision got into the resolution” to create more expansive rules for the trial.
For McConnell and Trump, work on the trial began long before the opening arguments. McConnell sought to craft rules that would allow centrists such as Collins to argue they were giving the impeachment charges a full vetting and not burying them in a “sham trial,” as some critics suggested. McConnell agreed to expand the trial schedule and allow evidence gathered by the House to be automatically considered in the trial.
McConnell, the wily six- term Senate veteran from Kentucky, worked to shut down support within the GOP for calling witnesses.
Some Republicans, including Trump, initially wanted to summon witnesses such as Biden’s son Hunter, who they expected would help exonerate the president or at least fling mud at Democrats. McConnell warned that opening the door to witnesses would introduce uncertainties and lead to “mutually assured destruction” for both parties.
That argument was reinforced for Republicans when The New York Times reported Jan. 26 that former top national security aide John Bolton heard Trump connect his desire for a Ukrainian inquiry into Biden to nearly $ 400 million in U. S. aid he was withholding from Kiev.
The Senate voted Jan. 31 against hearing from witnesses. McConnell and Trump survived their first major test.
On the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, Trump’s trade event Jan. 29 was the culmination of a months- long outreach campaign that began in September when House Democrats opened their impeachment inquiry into his interactions with Ukraine.
The charm offensive, including White House movie nights and personal phone calls, was not aimed at wavering Republicans such as Collins or Alexander but lawmakers up for reelection such as Sens. Martha McSally, R- Ariz., and Joni Ernst, R- Iowa, who would benefit from Trump’s help and had been cautious in their remarks about the pressure campaign against Ukraine.
McSally and Ernst attended the trade event and were recognized by Trump.
Sticking to script
When the Senate trial got fully underway Jan. 22, Trump was 4,000 miles away in Switzerland announcing that the United States would join an initiative to plant 1 trillion trees.
The global effort, intended to offset carbon emissions, met with skepticism from climate advocates. For Trump, those arguments were beside the point.
Between the time of his return from the World Economic Forum in Davos and his acquittal, Trump unveiled a Middle East peace plan, hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, signed the United States- Mexico- Canada trade agreement, attended a manufacturing event in Michigan and delivered his third State of the Union address.
Though Trump often discussed the impeachment at those and other events, he always framed the trial as a contrast to his own efforts on the economy, trade and foreign policy.
“You know, we are having probably the best years that we’ve ever had in the history of our country, and I just got impeached. Can you believe these people?” Trump said to thunderous applause at a rally Jan. 30 in Iowa.
“No, that’s not going to work,” he declared. “Watch. Just watch.”
By trying to shift the focus to day- in, day- out White House events, Trump took a similar approach to Clinton’s in 1999. During his trial, Clinton hosted events on the economy, met with the Palestinian Authority’s Yasser Arafat and traveled to Jordan.
“They ran a sophisticated, Clintonlike approach,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign official.
What Trump didn’t do during the trial was almost as notable as what he did: He didn’t attack wavering Republicans. He tweeted only once about Collins during the trial, saying she was doing an “incredible job” as Maine’s senior senator.
Patience and discipline
After The New York Times reported about an upcoming book by Bolton, senators huddled behind closed doors in McConnell’s office for 90 minutes. They emerged without clarity on how to proceed in the face of growing Democratic demands to haul Bolton before the Senate. The former aide said he would testify if subpoenaed.
Some centrist Republicans, including Romney, signaled they would be open to joining Democrats in that request. With a thin 53- 47 majority in the Senate, McConnell could afford only three Republican defections on any of his votes.
Over the next few days, McConnell calmed his restive caucus by preaching patience and playing for time. The approach appeared to work. When no additional Bolton bombshells dropped, it became clear within days that Democrats didn’t have the votes for witnesses. Only two Republicans joined Democrats on the vote, Romney and Collins.
“McConnell is the big winner,” said Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist. “He held together a fractious caucus despite the remarkably tantalizing Bolton reporting.”