Donald Trump’s Camp David fracas with GOP Senators isn’t what you think it is

| 7:30 pm EST November 23, 2019
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Even though Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate likely won’t begin for at least a couple months, Trump has already begun trying to coax Republican Senators into acquitting him. He’s using the trappings of the presidency, including free vacations at Camp David, to try to sway the GOP Senators.

This is, of course, outrageous. It’s also openly corrupt. It’s disgusting in its blatantness. It’s also largely a waste of time. Donald Trump’s Camp David sessions with Republican Senators are not some magic wand proceeding where they plot out what they’d like to have happen, and then they pull a lever and it happens. Nothing works that way in the real world.

These Republican Senators are each selfish by nature. In the end, they’re each going to vote on impeachment in accordance with how they think it’ll impact their own personal odds of reelection. That’ll depend on what happens with impeachment poll numbers and approval rating poll numbers between now and the trial. Each of the GOP Senators will have their own personal math, based on their own state’s voting demographics and other factors. They’ll each cast their impeachment vote based on that math, not based on whether Trump shows them a good time at Camp David.

Anyone who claims to know how the Senate will vote on impeachment is being simplistically naive. It’ll come down entirely to factors which can’t yet be predicted. The process will not involve Trump and the Republican Senators collectively waving a magic wand which will alter reality to where the Senators can vote to acquit him without taking any heat from voters. For all we know, the polls could ultimately shift that way – but Trump won’t make the polls shift by screwing around at Camp David. Instead of getting out there and trying to change the minds of undecided Americans, he’s wasting his time and effort on a corrupt yet self-defeating strategy. Let him waste it.