The news today centers on the Senate impeachment trial for the former president, which begins tomorrow, and the Democrats’ maneuvering to pass a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. Both of these issues deal with vital immediate questions. Will there be consequences for Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, a refusal that led to a coup attempt? And will the government help out those suffering from the economic dislocation caused by the pandemic? Behind those immediate questions, though, is a larger question: what direction will the nation take in the years to come?
Incredible that anyone who was in that Capitol that day could even consider voting to acquit. Since that day, even during that day as those six senators continued to object to the count even AFTER a coup attempt -- a coup attempt! -- I have been asking myself how many would have had to have been murdered that day. How many police officers? One was not enough, clearly. How many senators and representatives? How many members of their staff? How many members of their families who happened to be there that day? Two? Five? 10? 20? 50? 100? 200? 500?
It's only a mysterious combination of dumb luck and some kind of cosmic intervention that prevented the deaths of more people. Those rioters were there to kill. Kill our elected leaders. Murder them in OUR capitol building, perhaps hang them in their crude but functional gallows in broad daylight.
What on God's Earth would it take for these senators to impeach (just freakin' impeach -- not indict, not criminally convict, not sentence, not put in jail, not execute, just impeach!) the man who incited those rioters? And yes, he got hot and heavy with his demonic lies after he lost, but that man was inciting this from BEFORE the day he took office. Well before.
I watched the film "The Dig" the other night, which is about the Sutton Hoo archaeological find in Suffolk, England, on the eve of the British entry into WWII, and what I'm feeling tonight is that kind of quiet, dreadful waiting, knowing that tomorrow will start a process that will change the shape of the US for decades to come, for good or for ill. There is no real predicting of the outcome.
What saddens me is that there is a clear path in all this that is right: right for the rule of law, right for the integrity of the government and the nation, right for the people's hope for the future. But the rightness of that path is completely irrelevant to the political calculation that will take place over the next week. The Congress is filled with people who would rather rule Hell for ten minutes, than serve in Heaven, and all their effort is bent to bringing about those ten minutes. They care nothing for what comes after.
Republicans know they will never win another national election without massive turnout from white supremacist organizations. Every Republican vote for Trump acquittal will be a vote for white supremacy. There is no gray area here whatsoever. If Trump is acquitted, from that day forward every American who casts a vote for a Republican candidate for any office from dog-catcher to POTUS will be doing so with the complete self-knowledge that such a vote instantly identifies him or her as enablers (and fans) of white supremacy in America. At that point, they undoubtedly will still continue to insult themselves and decent Americans everywhere by continuing to yap about imaginary Republican principles (taxes, deficits, all the usual ridiculous BS they have gotten away with for decades). But the cat is way out of the bag, the toothpaste is way out of the tube and if it quacks like a racist duck, it IS a racist duck ... as surely as the sentence you just read is the most tortured metaphor you will read this week (lol).
HCR keeps talking about ads that “write themselves”, implying that appeals to facts will sway voters. It’s hard to believe that. The ads for the last election also wrote themselves. Trump mishandled the pandemic badly, causing hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Trump separated babies from their mothers, and put them in cages. Trump gleefully enabled white supremacists. Trump oversaw the biggest plunge in employment in decades. Trump ignored climate change, pushing coal and oil. Trump alienated our allies. Trump lied thousands of times. Trump lined his own pockets at the expense of taxpayers. Trump belittled soldiers and attacked war heroes. Ad after devastating ad. Do ads matter? 74 million people voted for an incompetent, corrupt, dishonest cretin. 10 million more than voted for him in 2016. After Trump’s disastrous first term, 10 million more wanted to re-elect him! The ads may write themselves, but if Republican voters remain as ignorant, bitter and racist as they have been, the ads won’t matter.
"... [For Republican Senators] there will be no escaping the consequences of their choices."
Yesterday HCR posited that a GOP vote not to convict Trump might not be the slam dunk it appears to be. Today she suggests that Democrats might effectively leverage GOP objections to passing Biden's coronavirus relief bill.
I don't pretend to know how either supposition will turn out but I do know this: Unless and until the GOP faces ANY consequences for their four years supporting Trump, their posturing to attract Trump supporters in the future by objecting to the election today, and their failure to police the worst of Trump's transgressions, no reason for optimism exists.
For nearly give years we expected any one of Trump's comments or actions would be the last straw, the point at which Republicans would say "enough." But no straw was ever too heavy. The GOP masterfully bobbed and weaved and deflected, hoping to fatigue the country long enough to complete implementing the laws that would enable them to make minoritarian rule a done deal. Cages, voter suppression, violence against protesters, strong-arming foreign leaders, strong-arming Georgia's Secretary of State to "find" votes, and knowingly working up supporters for at least two months to obstruct Congress's Certification of the election results. None of that mattered. Manafort was jailed for campaign finance crimes only to be pardoned. Still not a peep. Convicted killers were pardoned. Crickets.
Trump's supporters probably don't realize that the tax cuts received in 2018 begin getting taken away in 2021, scheduled so the blame for the increase was laid at Biden's feet. The Senate refused to hear witnesses at the first impeachment trial. Senators reversed themselves on the propriety of filling a SCOTUS opening just weeks before an election, despite Lindsey Graham's recorded vow that we could hold him to his word that'd never happen again.
There's more. Of course there's more, yet they've lied and obstructed and deflected with impunity and many won reelection in spite of that. Congress and the wealthy have done what they want without concerns for the ethics, the legality, or the likelihood of consequences.
Our system is broken. We've lost any culture of accountability, of it ever really existed. Representatives represent money, not constituents. HCR's cautious optimism is no longer sufficient reason to believe. I, for one, fear that Biden's Administration is but a speed bump for those who wish to rule America, not lead it. I'm tired of McConnell and Paul and Cruz and Hawley and Gaetz and Gohmert and Greene and Jordan and DeVos and Ross and Meadows and all those who've either condoned or failed to speak up. I'm losing my faith that Americans can or even want to rebound from this era of paucity of character.
Show me that some or all of these bad actors will have to face the music. If not, I'm out.
It’s helpful to remember that almost half a million American have died due to Covid over the last year. If only we had had a true leader in that time. I salute and have a great gratitude for the healthcare professionals who are now mobilizing to get shots in arms. Not so many would’ve had to die and many more would’ve been inoculated by now if we had only had an effective administration over the last 12 months. President Joe: keep doing what you’re doing, don’t let up, and Professor Richardson, please keep us up to date.
There seems to be no acknowledgement by anyone involved that the impeachment trial will have deep historical resonance as well as immediate impact. The immediate impact seems to have declined into a messaging battle between the parties, almost as it would for any other issue.
It has been pointed out to Americans frequently in the past two weeks the precedent of an historically obscure Senator and Secretary of War - William Belknap being tried after he left office.
I find it galling that Biden waves Trump’s trial off with what could almost be described as petulance, because it interferes with his hard-driving agenda. “I’ll let the Senate sort it out”, is his dismissive point.
Whatever else one may say about Trump, he is not going to be an obscure historical figure. His *second* impeachment and trial are a watershed moment in American history. Yet, both Democrats and Republicans seem to regard it as a wearisome duty or, in the Republican case, an improper action. I would expect that of the Republicans. Not so the Democrats, especially those in the Executive Branch.
I do think the impeachment managers are putting heart and soul into it. The fact that the party as a whole is not astonishes me.
In many ways Trump supporters are in a moment of near ascendancy. The Arizona Senate came within a single vote today of imprisoning election managers for not turning the ballots over, so they could discover the corruption in Arizona’s presidential count and, presumably, turn the state back to the “45th President”. Michigan has got rid of the single Republican electoral official to vote to certify their results.
Trump himself feels assured he will be acquired and is planning vengeance on those Republicans who have not supported the brazen lie that he won.
The Democrats need to acquit themselves in this trial in such a way that they will be remembered historically as having unanimously seen the grave assault on democracy that was January 6.
Perhaps, if they weren’t attempting to rush this trial through, they might galvanize the public and make it a dire risk for anyone to vote against conviction. This would deliver a sharp rebuke to those actively plotting to conduct a resistance campaign against the legitimacy of Biden’s win.
I fear that history will judge the Democrats harshly if this trial gets resonance as only a pro forma attempt. There is a battle on for the soul of America. Trump’s forces need to be thoroughly routed by a complete delegitimizing of Trump himself. They do not seem to be headed in this direction.
Perhaps the “business and finance” Republicans will grasp that this is their last chance to wrest the party from the populist racist Republicans and allow themselves to be convinced of the obvious guilt. Look for early clues from Mitch M.
Since day one of this series of Letters from an American, I have admired Heather's mad skills that include, but are not limited to, her ability to look at situations in both micro and macro focus. In this letter, she analyzes how a trump acquittal could/would affect things in 2022 and 2024. I find myself nodding agreement, even as I try to calm myself each time I read any variation of the word "acquit." Re the outcome of this trial, I LONG FOR SOME INSTANT GRATIFICATION!!! Ooops. That just slipped out. Ommmmm...
My grandmother had a statement that perfectly fits with statements made by Republican senators: “my mind is made up stop trying to confuse me with facts”
It would be interesting to take away paychecks and health insurance from the senators and see how fast they get us coronavirus stimulus. They don't care that we can't pay rent or bills or buy food. This is not political it's a matter of survival.
I was struck by your comment last night that senators are not required to be present during the vote. I'm hoping at least 17 will not be present to vote against conviction, to give themselves some wiggle room. It will be interesting to watch.
Despite the long range precedent of the Impeachment Trial, I find I am more worried about the Republican state legislatures like Arizona and Michigan who are still trying to overturn the election and to punish or censure anyone not aligning with the Trumpites. The Impeachment trial is distracting us from the danger that may well have greater ramifications for the health or demise of democracy in the United States -- the Republican controlled state legislatures. Are these states still democracies? How many Trumpites will be coming to the U.S. House and Senate in 2022?
Incredible that anyone who was in that Capitol that day could even consider voting to acquit. Since that day, even during that day as those six senators continued to object to the count even AFTER a coup attempt -- a coup attempt! -- I have been asking myself how many would have had to have been murdered that day. How many police officers? One was not enough, clearly. How many senators and representatives? How many members of their staff? How many members of their families who happened to be there that day? Two? Five? 10? 20? 50? 100? 200? 500?
It's only a mysterious combination of dumb luck and some kind of cosmic intervention that prevented the deaths of more people. Those rioters were there to kill. Kill our elected leaders. Murder them in OUR capitol building, perhaps hang them in their crude but functional gallows in broad daylight.
What on God's Earth would it take for these senators to impeach (just freakin' impeach -- not indict, not criminally convict, not sentence, not put in jail, not execute, just impeach!) the man who incited those rioters? And yes, he got hot and heavy with his demonic lies after he lost, but that man was inciting this from BEFORE the day he took office. Well before.
I truly want to know what it would take.
I watched the film "The Dig" the other night, which is about the Sutton Hoo archaeological find in Suffolk, England, on the eve of the British entry into WWII, and what I'm feeling tonight is that kind of quiet, dreadful waiting, knowing that tomorrow will start a process that will change the shape of the US for decades to come, for good or for ill. There is no real predicting of the outcome.
What saddens me is that there is a clear path in all this that is right: right for the rule of law, right for the integrity of the government and the nation, right for the people's hope for the future. But the rightness of that path is completely irrelevant to the political calculation that will take place over the next week. The Congress is filled with people who would rather rule Hell for ten minutes, than serve in Heaven, and all their effort is bent to bringing about those ten minutes. They care nothing for what comes after.
Republicans know they will never win another national election without massive turnout from white supremacist organizations. Every Republican vote for Trump acquittal will be a vote for white supremacy. There is no gray area here whatsoever. If Trump is acquitted, from that day forward every American who casts a vote for a Republican candidate for any office from dog-catcher to POTUS will be doing so with the complete self-knowledge that such a vote instantly identifies him or her as enablers (and fans) of white supremacy in America. At that point, they undoubtedly will still continue to insult themselves and decent Americans everywhere by continuing to yap about imaginary Republican principles (taxes, deficits, all the usual ridiculous BS they have gotten away with for decades). But the cat is way out of the bag, the toothpaste is way out of the tube and if it quacks like a racist duck, it IS a racist duck ... as surely as the sentence you just read is the most tortured metaphor you will read this week (lol).
HCR keeps talking about ads that “write themselves”, implying that appeals to facts will sway voters. It’s hard to believe that. The ads for the last election also wrote themselves. Trump mishandled the pandemic badly, causing hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Trump separated babies from their mothers, and put them in cages. Trump gleefully enabled white supremacists. Trump oversaw the biggest plunge in employment in decades. Trump ignored climate change, pushing coal and oil. Trump alienated our allies. Trump lied thousands of times. Trump lined his own pockets at the expense of taxpayers. Trump belittled soldiers and attacked war heroes. Ad after devastating ad. Do ads matter? 74 million people voted for an incompetent, corrupt, dishonest cretin. 10 million more than voted for him in 2016. After Trump’s disastrous first term, 10 million more wanted to re-elect him! The ads may write themselves, but if Republican voters remain as ignorant, bitter and racist as they have been, the ads won’t matter.
"... [For Republican Senators] there will be no escaping the consequences of their choices."
Yesterday HCR posited that a GOP vote not to convict Trump might not be the slam dunk it appears to be. Today she suggests that Democrats might effectively leverage GOP objections to passing Biden's coronavirus relief bill.
I don't pretend to know how either supposition will turn out but I do know this: Unless and until the GOP faces ANY consequences for their four years supporting Trump, their posturing to attract Trump supporters in the future by objecting to the election today, and their failure to police the worst of Trump's transgressions, no reason for optimism exists.
For nearly give years we expected any one of Trump's comments or actions would be the last straw, the point at which Republicans would say "enough." But no straw was ever too heavy. The GOP masterfully bobbed and weaved and deflected, hoping to fatigue the country long enough to complete implementing the laws that would enable them to make minoritarian rule a done deal. Cages, voter suppression, violence against protesters, strong-arming foreign leaders, strong-arming Georgia's Secretary of State to "find" votes, and knowingly working up supporters for at least two months to obstruct Congress's Certification of the election results. None of that mattered. Manafort was jailed for campaign finance crimes only to be pardoned. Still not a peep. Convicted killers were pardoned. Crickets.
Trump's supporters probably don't realize that the tax cuts received in 2018 begin getting taken away in 2021, scheduled so the blame for the increase was laid at Biden's feet. The Senate refused to hear witnesses at the first impeachment trial. Senators reversed themselves on the propriety of filling a SCOTUS opening just weeks before an election, despite Lindsey Graham's recorded vow that we could hold him to his word that'd never happen again.
There's more. Of course there's more, yet they've lied and obstructed and deflected with impunity and many won reelection in spite of that. Congress and the wealthy have done what they want without concerns for the ethics, the legality, or the likelihood of consequences.
Our system is broken. We've lost any culture of accountability, of it ever really existed. Representatives represent money, not constituents. HCR's cautious optimism is no longer sufficient reason to believe. I, for one, fear that Biden's Administration is but a speed bump for those who wish to rule America, not lead it. I'm tired of McConnell and Paul and Cruz and Hawley and Gaetz and Gohmert and Greene and Jordan and DeVos and Ross and Meadows and all those who've either condoned or failed to speak up. I'm losing my faith that Americans can or even want to rebound from this era of paucity of character.
Show me that some or all of these bad actors will have to face the music. If not, I'm out.
It’s helpful to remember that almost half a million American have died due to Covid over the last year. If only we had had a true leader in that time. I salute and have a great gratitude for the healthcare professionals who are now mobilizing to get shots in arms. Not so many would’ve had to die and many more would’ve been inoculated by now if we had only had an effective administration over the last 12 months. President Joe: keep doing what you’re doing, don’t let up, and Professor Richardson, please keep us up to date.
There seems to be no acknowledgement by anyone involved that the impeachment trial will have deep historical resonance as well as immediate impact. The immediate impact seems to have declined into a messaging battle between the parties, almost as it would for any other issue.
It has been pointed out to Americans frequently in the past two weeks the precedent of an historically obscure Senator and Secretary of War - William Belknap being tried after he left office.
I find it galling that Biden waves Trump’s trial off with what could almost be described as petulance, because it interferes with his hard-driving agenda. “I’ll let the Senate sort it out”, is his dismissive point.
Whatever else one may say about Trump, he is not going to be an obscure historical figure. His *second* impeachment and trial are a watershed moment in American history. Yet, both Democrats and Republicans seem to regard it as a wearisome duty or, in the Republican case, an improper action. I would expect that of the Republicans. Not so the Democrats, especially those in the Executive Branch.
I do think the impeachment managers are putting heart and soul into it. The fact that the party as a whole is not astonishes me.
In many ways Trump supporters are in a moment of near ascendancy. The Arizona Senate came within a single vote today of imprisoning election managers for not turning the ballots over, so they could discover the corruption in Arizona’s presidential count and, presumably, turn the state back to the “45th President”. Michigan has got rid of the single Republican electoral official to vote to certify their results.
Trump himself feels assured he will be acquired and is planning vengeance on those Republicans who have not supported the brazen lie that he won.
The Democrats need to acquit themselves in this trial in such a way that they will be remembered historically as having unanimously seen the grave assault on democracy that was January 6.
Perhaps, if they weren’t attempting to rush this trial through, they might galvanize the public and make it a dire risk for anyone to vote against conviction. This would deliver a sharp rebuke to those actively plotting to conduct a resistance campaign against the legitimacy of Biden’s win.
I fear that history will judge the Democrats harshly if this trial gets resonance as only a pro forma attempt. There is a battle on for the soul of America. Trump’s forces need to be thoroughly routed by a complete delegitimizing of Trump himself. They do not seem to be headed in this direction.
Many thanks for resurrecting the word, "wastrel." I'll be working it into conversation every chance I get for the foreseeable future.
As a veteran commentator here's my take on the impeachment of President Loophole -- https://dianefrancis.substack.com/p/president-loophole-on-trial
Perhaps the “business and finance” Republicans will grasp that this is their last chance to wrest the party from the populist racist Republicans and allow themselves to be convinced of the obvious guilt. Look for early clues from Mitch M.
Since day one of this series of Letters from an American, I have admired Heather's mad skills that include, but are not limited to, her ability to look at situations in both micro and macro focus. In this letter, she analyzes how a trump acquittal could/would affect things in 2022 and 2024. I find myself nodding agreement, even as I try to calm myself each time I read any variation of the word "acquit." Re the outcome of this trial, I LONG FOR SOME INSTANT GRATIFICATION!!! Ooops. That just slipped out. Ommmmm...
My grandmother had a statement that perfectly fits with statements made by Republican senators: “my mind is made up stop trying to confuse me with facts”
"This document tries to rewrite what we all saw with our own eyes"
The emperor has NO clothes!
It would be interesting to take away paychecks and health insurance from the senators and see how fast they get us coronavirus stimulus. They don't care that we can't pay rent or bills or buy food. This is not political it's a matter of survival.
I was struck by your comment last night that senators are not required to be present during the vote. I'm hoping at least 17 will not be present to vote against conviction, to give themselves some wiggle room. It will be interesting to watch.
Despite the long range precedent of the Impeachment Trial, I find I am more worried about the Republican state legislatures like Arizona and Michigan who are still trying to overturn the election and to punish or censure anyone not aligning with the Trumpites. The Impeachment trial is distracting us from the danger that may well have greater ramifications for the health or demise of democracy in the United States -- the Republican controlled state legislatures. Are these states still democracies? How many Trumpites will be coming to the U.S. House and Senate in 2022?