The newest non-Netflix dramatic series not likely to get an Emmy in 2021 – The Unlikely Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump — for all its gravitas, soaring rhetoric and absurd legal arguments, is much simpler than it looks for two reasons. First, everyone in the room and most television viewers know that Donald Trump never did and still does not pass the “smell test” to be elected President of the United States or to continue to serve as President. Second, Mitch McConnell never did and still does not have any interest in running a fair trial, so we already know how this tawdry but revealing shameless sham of a trial is going to end.
McConnell and his Republican colleagues who are terrified of Trump’s vindictiveness has been as good as his word: taking their cues from the White House and rushing to the forgone conclusion that Trump will be acquitted.
The good news is that the majority of Americans are not as dumb as Trump believes them to be, nor is the Democratic Party. As Nixon taught us, the cover-up is worse than the crime. And now Senate Republicans have become part of the cover-up by ignoring all the evidence of Trump’s misconduct revealed in the House Impeachment proceeding and now by refusing to hear any new evidence of any sort that might confirm what is already known.
Republicans are terrified of facts, but they need not worry, because the impeachment trial has revealed unequivocally that Trump and his Republican supporters have no integrity. Even if acquitted in the Senate, Trump and his Republican supporters will go down in history stained by this impeachment. Trump may finish out his term but he is finishing-off what few Republicans have not yet given up by retiring or resigning from office.
While it will probably take our country at least a generation to undo the damage Trump has done domestically and internationally, it probably will take at least a century for the Republican Party to even begin to recover its luster, if that is even possible. It is a fate that today’s Republicans well deserve. But it is a shame that no Republican Senators have the moral courage to stand up to Trump and take this opportunity to wear the mantle of leadership and give the Republican Party the chance of a new life. Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, one or two others, have toyed with courage and integrity, but in the end they have all decided to go down with the ship while prolonging the pain of drowning.