Donald Trump’s most shameless bitter-end Republican defenders accused Democrats on Wednesday of trying to “cancel” the president.
Oh, yes. Oh, yes, they are. And it is long overdue.
As the House voted to impeach Trump for a second time, all we could think about was how good for our country it would have been had he been removed from office long ago — before people were killed in the attack on the Capitol, before countless Americans died of COVID-19 because of his incompetence, before our nation was so divided against itself by his lies.
House Democrats, joined by 10 Republicans, voted to impeach Trump for “inciting violence against the government of the United States.” We can only hope the Senate now will put him on trial and convict him before the blood on his hands goes dry.
No delays
The job apparently will fall to the new Democrat-controlled Senate after Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20; the current Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell, says he has no intention of calling the Senate back into session before then. There is talk, as well, of delaying Trump’s Senate trial even longer so as not to interfere with Biden’s legislative agenda.
What a mistake that could be. The Senate should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. It should put Trump on trial immediately, before the message behind the entire exercise — that a free people can’t give an inch to those who would overthrow democracy — begins to lose its punch.
The case for Trump’s impeachment, laid out during several hours of debate, is clear and convincing, even when limited to the specifics of the president’s reprehensible part in inflaming the rabble that swarmed through the Capitol last Wednesday.
Two months of incitement
Most infamously, Trump delivered a dog-whistle speech to the mob that morning, urging them to “fight” and “never concede.” But he had been doing his best for two months to overturn the results of an honest election by any means possible, spreading false conspiracy theories, radicalizing his supporters and summoning them to Washington to get “wild.”
Not for nothing did many of them show up with spikes, guns, pipes, riot shields, tear gas and zip-tie handcuffs. There were even pipe bombs.
Then, when the mob went wild right on cue — beating up cops, breaking through doors and defecating in halls — what did Trump do? He watched on TV, from the safety of the White House, and chortled. For hours, even as top aides implored him to call for an end to the violence, he thought it was all pretty great.
Trump put a lot of work into assembling that mob, whipping them up and lighting the match.
Unity requires truth
House Republicans on Wednesday called for “unity” and “healing” and a “peaceful presidential transition” instead of impeachment. As if they were not personally partially culpable for our nation’s deepening divide, having for months parroted Trump’s false claims of election fraud. As if the possibility of a peaceful transition hadn’t gone out the window the moment Trump’s mob smashed through the windows of the Capitol.
Unity and peace begin with telling people the truth. Yet even on Wednesday, while arguing against a vote to impeach Trump, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio lied again on the floor of the House, repeated as God’s truth the thoroughly debunked claim that there had been widespread fraud in Pennsylvania’s election.
Trump and free speech
An equally bogus argument against impeachment, peddled again by Jordan and others, was that Trump had done nothing but exercise his First Amendment right to free speech. And, goodness, where would we be without free speech?
The simple fact is that Trump has no free speech defense. Not against this impeachment. A president, like every other American, can say whatever he wants, but more so than the Average Joe he must be held accountable for the consequences of what he says. A president’s words can turn the nation upside down, as Trump’s words did when he egged on the mob to insurrection.
The fact that Trump, in his morning speech that day, called on everybody to be “peaceful” — while 20 times urging them to “fight” to “save the country” — doesn’t come close to absolving him of guilt.
Joe Biden’s got a tough job ahead of him. His approach to politics has always been to build bridges. But as we followed the House impeachment debate, we grew more discouraged than ever that the deep and damaging divisions in our country can be bridged anytime soon. Democrats and Republicans talked past each other, and we doubt that anybody changed anybody’s mind.
The sooner Trump stands trial in the Senate, the better.
Truth is hard, but appeasement is dangerous.
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