Reflections on the First Impeachment of Donald John Trump
In January of 2020, the impeachment of President Donald John Trump went to trial in the Senate. After weeks of preparation – daily briefings, reports on procedure, party priorities, public relations lectures, special sessions on constitutional law, raffles for sought after gallery passes, etc. – Speaker Pelosi sent the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. Months of Congressional bickering, between and among parties, preceded a predictable political tenor to the impeachment trial. Unsurprisingly, a party-line vote (53-47) acquitted President Trump of both charges of impeachment, obstruction of Congress and abuse of power. This outcome, complete absolution of wrongdoing for Trump, is likely to repeat itself in the second impeachment trial.
The internal workings of the first impeachment trial were similar to the external ones – partisan motives were apparent as both sides claimed to be warriors of democracy and righteousness. The Senator I worked for at the time, a moderate Democrat, cautiously supported the impeachment inquiry and professed her role as an impartial juror in the impeachment trial. On February 3rd, she joined the rest of the Democratic party in her explicit and publicized support of conviction. This decision was one she made carefully – knowing the political makeup of her district. Despite her consideration, this decision cost her thousands, if not tens of thousands of votes. All elected representatives faced a conflict between voter demands and conscience. Senators and Representatives overwhelmingly chose party politics and retaining power. Thus, the entire impeachment process was a foregone conclusion.
The first impeachment of Trump underscores the inherent fragility in our democracy. The evidence of Trump’s crimes was overwhelmingly viewed as grounds for removal from office, but what mattered in this trial was the massive and unwavering support for Trump from conservative voters nationwide and the performative motives on both sides of the aisle. At the time of impeachment, Trump was utterly untouchable.
In January of 2021, President Trump was impeached by the House for a second time. Although unprecedented, there is little mystery in the inevitable outcome. The Senate will almost certainly fail to reach the two-thirds majority needed to convict former President Trump. This trial struggles to navigate the same political dynamics as the previous – Senators and Representatives must balance the overwhelming party-line consensus with the potential consequences in election seasons. The fervor and zeal surrounding the Trump presidency have not lessened or softened, and the Republican and Democratic parties will grapple with this for elections to come. How can members of Congress unite the competing tides of American politics? This question becomes more salient in light of impeachment charges this time around: incitement of violence in the United States Capitol. The implications and consequences for representatives who do not concede to the angry wave of Trump supporters, willing to commit acts of violence, are significant and move beyond election consequences. Real, mortal danger has been a part of public office for decades. However, the violence on the doorstep of America’s legislative house presents an urgent and increasingly hostile situation for legislators. This danger echoed through the anger and resentment in the calls that I took every day of the first impeachment trial in my role as a Senate staffer. Anger and resentment have only grown since January 2020.
My time as a staffer prepared me for the violent insurrection of January 6, 2021. It was still unsettling to see my former boss and colleagues facing the terror and danger of the riots, but not surprising. The rioters are the same folks who swore at me, hurled unrepeatable slurs at the Senator, yelled at undergraduate interns, and they are the cause for the bulletproof glass and complex security system that I walked through every day to get to work. This anger has existed. This anger has been building. This anger – and the fear of its imminent manifestation – is the same reason that Republicans will not break party ranks, as a whole, to remove a president from office after he has left office. This anger is why the immediate response to public insurrection in the Capitol building was talks of censure and impeachment from the Democratic party. The American public is angry. In fact, they are so angry that they are willing to tear down the whole system. This anger exists on both sides, regardless of political beliefs. The anger from the left is directed at a Trump presidency, and this vengeance-seeking manifests in the second impeachment. The anger from the right is directed at the rejection of Trump as part of a larger sense of marginalization among conservatives. This does not make the actions of our elected officials morally permissible, but it does make them understandable. Beholden to the roiling anger from all directions across the country, coupled with the real and present threat of losing their careers, the motivations of legislators are anything but opaque. Bipartisanship is complicated by the performative anger from the left and the violent anger from the right.
Trump didn’t create this anger; he just capitalized on it. This is the same anger that Senators and Representatives of both parties have been manipulating, stoking, and encouraging for years. The second impeachment of Donald John Trump will end similarly to the first. This should not be a surprise to anyone. The hope that this could be anything other than political and personal expediency for representatives is a farce – they have too much to lose.