House Republicans run and hide like cowards after vote to impeach Donald Trump becomes official

| 9:10 pm EST December 18, 2019
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During the vote to impeach Donald Trump this evening, one (still unidentified) House Republican pressed the button to vote “yes” on Article 1, before changing that vote less than a minute later. Whether this was an act of cowardice or a mere accident, it served as the perfect encapsulation of both the cowardice and the ineptness of the House Republicans throughout the impeachment process. Then they decided to encapsulate it even further.

Right now, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic House leadership are holding a press conference to explain why they felt they needed to impeach Donald Trump. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the House Republican leadership were supposed to hold a competing press conference of their own tonight, but Rachel Maddow just reported that it was canceled at the last minute.

It isn’t difficult to parse why. It’s not just that House Republicans failed to stop Donald Trump from being impeached, which we all knew was coming. It’s that the antics of the House Republicans, both today and throughout the process, have failed to come up with anything to help Trump’s cause, or to help their own cause, or to gain a single Republican vote in 2020. No wonder the House Republicans are running and hiding tonight. This was a disaster for them on every level.