The one GOP principle: Protect Donald Trump
But interviews with Paul and other Republicans on Sunday made clear that all the objections to a trial are a smokescreen for the real Republican principle here: Trump cannot be held accountable.
On the mainstream Sunday shows, Republican senators complained instead about the process, the precedents and their political rivals. On “Fox News Sunday,” Paul tried to change the subject, complaining that Sen. Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) had never been held accountable when he warned antiabortion Supreme Court justices last March that decisions that limiting a woman’s right to choose would release “the whirlwind.” Whatever one thinks of Schumer’s comments, though, invoking “the whirlwind” is a far cry from telling people “we’re going to walk down” to the Capitol on the day of electoral college certification.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) complained that “under the Watergate, under the Clinton impeachments, there were truckloads of information. Here, there was a video. There was no process.” Yes, previous impeachments came with detailed reports of special committees and counsels. In this case, the video of Trump on the Ellipse was the only report the world needed to see.
As for the constitutionality of the trial, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) argued on ABC’s “This Week” that “overwhelming weight of history and also precedent indicates that this is not proper.” But he almost immediately admitted that “constitutional lawyers can make an argument on either side.” Paul tried a similar argument on Fox News, only to backpedal when host Chris Wallace pointed out that in 1876 the Senate conducted an impeachment trial of an ex-official.
Meanwhile, on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) were feeding a new conspiracy theory: Blame Nancy Pelosi. Referring to the failures of Capitol security, Meadows told Trump-friendly host Maria Bartiromo, “There’s all kinds of blame going around, but yet not a whole lot of accountability. … And those decisions did not come from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It came from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“Wow,” replied the always-credulous Bartiromo, “We will talk more about that coming up to find out what Senator Johnson has uncovered.” All that Johnson could produce, though, was evidence-free speculation: “Is [impeachment] another diversionary operation? Is this meant to deflect away from potentially what the speaker knew and when she knew it? I don’t know, but I’m suspicious.”
The Sunday performances are probably a fairly good preview of the upcoming defense of the president’s case: Pelosi is guilty, but we can’t say of what. And if Trump is guilty, then so is Schumer. And Trump can’t be tried in the Senate in any case.
What this really boils down to, in the view of the still-loyal GOP, is that Trump must be shielded from any accountability. When ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Wicker whether Trump should be held accountable at all, even outside of impeachment, Wicker dodged three times. Sharing Wicker’s view was his colleague Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). The day after the riot, Graham (R-S.C.) had declared, “The president needs to understand that his actions were the problem, not the solution.” But pressed Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” about whether any of Trump’s actions deserved reprimand, Graham replied, “I think I’m ready to move on.”
“I’m ready to get on with trying to solve the nation’s problems,” added Graham. But one of those problems is Trump himself, who has in turn exacerbated quite a few of our other problems: the pandemic, systemic racism, climate change and so on. Had the rioters gotten their way, “Hang Mike Pence!” wouldn’t just be a chant heard around the world; “putting a bullet in [Pelosi’s] noggin’” wouldn’t just be a text in an FBI court filing. The country would have been destroyed. And until the man who cultivated and incited that mob faces justice, the country will continue to suffer.
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