Songs and Insurrection
Donald Trump is no longer the President of the United States, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!! He’s sequestered away at his Mara Lago Resort, taking out his frustrations on the fairways and putting greens instead of Twitter and the Department of Justice. And, to quote a very different song lyric (from Hamilton, of course) That Would be Enough. But of course, it’s not.
The evidence continues to grow that Donald Trump was in the process of an overthrow of the Constitution. He tried to subvert the mandated transition of power to a new President. Trump did it with the long discredited “election fraud” campaign. He did by attempting to suborn election fraud in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (and probably Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada). We have the actual call to Georgia, when he demanded that the election authorities “find” 11,780 votes to change the outcome.
He did it by bringing his partisans to Washington on January 6th for the express purpose of stopping the Electoral Vote certification. We have that speech as well, and those of his apologists who are hiding behind the one—word fig leaf of “peacefully”, ignore almost an hour of haranguing the crowd, firing them up to march to the Capitol and “fight, fight, fight”. This isn’t a “perfect” speech, Georgia wasn’t a “perfect” phone call, and neither was the one to the Ukrainian President.
Sunday Night Massacre
And Friday night we discovered that President Trump made the decision to fire his acting Attorney General. He wanted to replace him with a lesser Assistant who, in the assistant’s own words, spent “…a lot of time on the internet” and believed in the “stop the steal” fraud. Only the willingness of the rest of the leadership in the Justice Department to quit in protest, gave the President enough pause to change his mind. And it really wasn’t that potential “massacre” that stopped him. It was two days before the January 6th assemblage on the National Mall. Trump thought he had a better chance of “winning” there, and didn’t need the distraction.
And now reporting shows that while the mob was storming the Capitol, and Congressmen hid in fear, Donald Trump was watching on television. He was almost gleeful, getting what he wanted: pressure on the Congress to deny the legal election results.
Who knows what other actions will be revealed in the coming days? Who knows how close our Republic was to irrevocable damage? A government of the people, by the people and for the people was on a thin thread, and the more we learn, the more frayed and narrowed that thread becomes.
Self Defense
So impeaching the President while he remained in office was really a “no brainer”. It was the only reasonable course that the House of Representatives could take, a pure measure of real self-defense. That only ten Republicans chose to participate says so much more about the rest: politics reigned supreme over principles.
But he is no longer in office, exiled to the sunny golf courses of the Sunshine State. So why bother with a trial in the Senate? Goodbye and good riddance. Let us move onto the crises of the present: COVID and the economy, racial justice and the climate threat. But like putting a new coat of paint over rust, those last actions of Trump cannot be ignored. The new will flake off to reveal that the old rust is simply growing, the problem worse from the neglect.
We know that “…if you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll ask for a glass of milk”. We learned that over and over from Donald Trump. The more he acted outside the “lines”, the farther he passed the boundaries of American mores and norms. Senator Susan Collins of Maine assured us he “learned his lesson” after the first impeachment and trial. But of course we now know the only lesson he learned was – forge ahead and no one will stop him.
Milk and Cookies
So the Senate trial of the former President is more than just a “show trial” for the slim Democratic majority. In their heart-of-hearts, they wish they could “leave him be” on the golf course. But they know, he has the cookie, and the glass of milk, and he will come back for much, much more. And even if Donald Trump chooses to not exert himself and return to the fray, his progeny and those that strive to gain his mantle (Graham, Hawley, Cruz, et al) must know that there are consequences for insurrection, malfeasance and misfeasance in office, and for trying to subject the United States to authoritarian rule.
Sure, the new Department of Justice will have their say as well. Federal prosecutors must be examining those last few weeks, trying to determine whether to charge felonies of incitement of insurrection, sedition and election fraud. But there is a difference between “legal” consequences and “political” consequences. And the legislative branch, granted the Constitutional authority to enact political consequences for unconstitutional acts, must weigh in.
There are two punishments for conviction after impeachment. The first, and most obvious, is removal from office. That box is already check-marked, the people of the United States have made that clear. And for doubters, the precedent is already set for trying a “high official” who has left office, it was done in the ugly time after the Civil War. It’s been done before; it can be done again. But why do it?
Political Consequence
The second Constitutional consequence of conviction is the opportunity, a choice, to ban the offender from any future “position of trust”. And it is that statement that the offended legislative branch must make to the man, and his followers, who attempted to use the executive branch to violently overthrow them. Like the House of Representatives, the Senate must rise to its own defense, and not just depend on a third branch, the judiciary, for protection.
The statement must be loud and clear – attempt to overthrow the Constitution, and you forfeit the right to earn the trust of America again. The Senate must stand for itself, and for the nation.
