The thing about Donald Trump’s impeachment trial that everybody missed
The Republican Senate has succeeded in giving Donald Trump a witness-free sham impeachment trial and acquittal. We use the word “succeeded” in the sense that they accomplished what they were trying to do. Whether it ends up being a successful move for them is something that will be decided by the voters when these complicit Republican Senators are up for reelection. But there’s a part to this that everyone missed.
Trump’s acquittal was always going to happen, and everyone knew it. So it’s already baked into the outcome, and Trump won’t see any help with his low approval rating or weak 2020 odds. But this trial was never about the inevitable acquittal. It was about what each side was looking to do during the trial. Democrats and the Resistance clearly didn’t get what they were hoping for, as they wanted John Bolton and others to give damaging testimony against Trump during the trial. Bolton will surely testify to the House soon, but it probably would have had at least a bit more political impact on public opinion it he’d testified during the trial instead of afterward.
The thing is, Trump didn’t get the trial he wanted either. He gave away in repeated and obsessive tweets that he wanted to force everyone from Hunter Biden to Adam Schiff to the whistleblower to testify during the trial. Trump wasn’t just blowing smoke either, as he clearly believes that his fake Biden scandal is a winner for him. But Trump couldn’t even get his own Republican Senate to subpoena these people to testify.
Republican Senators deserve zero points for this, of course. The only reason they didn’t subpoena these witnesses is that while they were willing to corruptly give Trump a sham acquittal, they were afraid of being dragged further down the rabbit hole of Trump’s deranged conspiracy theories and broken mind. But the bottom line is that Trump didn’t get what he was seeking from this trial. It shows just how crippled he is, and how little influence he has over what’s going on. Yeah, the GOP Senate is acquitting him because they think that’s what’s best for themselves. But he couldn’t even get them to do what he really wanted.
