PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – Donald Trump has lost his social media megaphone, the power of the government, and the unequivocal support of his party’s elected leaders. But a week after he left the White House in disgrace, a large-scale Republican defection that would eventually clear him of the party seems unlikely.
Many Republicans publicly refuse to defend Trump’s role in fueling the deadly uprising in the Capitol. But as the Senate prepares for impeachment over Trump’s incitement to riot, few seem willing to hold the former president to account.
After House Republicans backing his impeachment faced intense backlash – and Trump’s lieutenants indicated that the same fate would meet others who would join them – Senate Republicans voted overwhelmingly Tuesday for an attempt to dismiss his second impeachment trial. Only five Republican senators turned down the challenge of the trial.
Trump’s conviction was seen as a realistic possibility just days ago after lawmakers whose lives were threatened by the mob weighed up the appropriate consequences – and the future of their party. But Tuesday’s senate vote is a sign that while Trump is held in low esteem after the Washington riots, a large chunk of Republicans are reluctant to turn over his supporters, who remain the majority of the party’s voters. stabbing.
“The political winds within the Republican Party are blowing in the opposite direction,” said Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and an ally of Trump. Republicans have decided that even if someone believes he made mistakes after the November and January 6 elections, the policies Trump defended and the victories he won from judges to regulatory rollback to tax cuts were too great to allow the party. to stand to leave him. on the battlefield. “
The vote came after Trump, who went to his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida last week, started wading back into politics in between rounds of golf. He took an early step in the Arkansas governor’s race by backing former White House aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and backed Kelli Ward, an ally who won reelection as chairman of the Republican Party after his approval. from Arizona.
At the same time, Trump’s team has given allies an informal blessing to campaign against the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach.
After Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer supported impeachment, Republican Tom Norton announced a primary challenge. Norton appeared on longtime Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s podcast in an effort to increase campaign contributions.
On Thursday, another Trump loyalist, Representative Matt Gaetz, plans to travel to Wyoming to convict Home State Representative Liz Cheney, a House GOP leader, who said after the Capitol riot that “ there has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States from office and oath to the constitution. “
Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr. – a star with Trump’s loyal base – has encouraged Gaetz on social media and has embraced calls for Cheney’s removal from House leadership.
Trump remains furious with Georgia Republican government Brian Kemp, who refused to back Trump’s false allegations that the Georgia elections were fraudulent. Kemp is running for reelection in 2022, and Trump has suggested that former Rep. Doug Collins would run into him.
Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman’s decision not to seek reelection in 2022 opens the door for Rep. Jim Jordan, one of Trump’s most avid supporters, to seek the seat. Several other Republicans, some of which are far less supportive of the former president, are also considering fleeing.
Trump’s continued involvement in national politics so soon after his departure marks a dramatic break with previous presidents, who generally stepped out of the spotlight, at least temporarily. Former President Barack Obama was famous for seeing kitesurfing on vacation with billionaire Richard Branson shortly after he left office, and former President George W. Bush began painting.
Trump, who craves the media spotlight, was never expected to disappear from public view.
“We will come back in some form,” he told supporters at a farewell event before leaving for Florida. But exactly what form that will take is a work in progress.
Trump remains very popular among Republican voters and is sitting on a huge pot of money – more than $ 50 million – that he could use to face primary challenges against Republicans who supported his impeachment or refused his failed attempts to challenge the election results with false allegations of massive voter fraud in states like Georgia.
“POTUS told me after the election that he will be very involved,” said Matt Schlapp, the president of the American Conservative Union. ‘I think he will remain engaged. He continues to communicate. He will continue to express his opinion. For example, I think that’s great, and I’ve encouraged him to do so. “
Assistants say he also plans to commit to reclaiming the House and Senate from Republicans by 2022. But for now, they say their sights are on the process.
“We’re preparing for impeachment lawsuit – that’s really the focus,” Trump adviser Jason Miller said.
Trump aides have also spent the past few days trying to assure Republicans that he currently has no plans to launch a third party – an idea he has floated – and will instead focus on using his power in the Republican Party.
Senator Kevin Cramer, RN.D., said he received a call at home Saturday from Brian Jack, the former White House political director, to assure him that Trump had no plans to expire.
“The main reason for the call was to make sure I knew about him that he was not setting up a third party and that I would help quell rumors that he was starting a third party. And that his political activism or whatever role he might play in the future would be with the Republican Party, not as a third party, ”Cramer said.
The phone calls were first reported by Politico.
But the stakes remain high for Trump, whose legacy is a point of fierce contention in a Republican party grappling with its identity following the loss of the White House and both chambers of Congress. Just three weeks after a pro-Trump crowd stormed the Capitol, Trump’s political position among the Republican leaders in Washington remains low.
“I don’t know if he turned it on, but he was part of the problem, so put it,” said Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, a strong supporter of Trump, when asked about the Capitol siege and process involved. of accusation.
Tuberville didn’t say whether he would personally defend Trump in the trial, but he downplayed the prospect of negative repercussions for those Republican senators who end up voting to condemn him.
“I don’t think there will be any consequences,” Tuberville said. “People are going to vote how they feel.”
Trump maintains a strong base of support within the Republican National Committee and in the leadership of the state parties, but even there, Republican officials have in recent days dared to speak out against him in a way they did not before.
In Arizona, Ward, who had Trump’s backing, was barely reelected this weekend, even as the party voted to denounce a handful of Trump’s Republican critics, including former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of Senator John. McCain.
At the same time, Trump’s impending impeachment sparked a bitter feud within the RNC.
In a private email exchange obtained by The Associated Press, Illinois RNC member Demetra DeMonte proposed a resolution calling on every Republican senator to oppose what she called an “unconstitutional sham impeachment motivated by a radical and reckless” Democratic majority “.
Bill Palatucci, a Republican commissioner from New Jersey, retaliated.
“His act of insurrection was an attack on our democracy and deserves impeachment,” Palatucci wrote.
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Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.