WASHINGTON (AP) – In his speech from the Senate floor on Saturday, Senator Mitch McConnell issued a burning indictment against Donald Trump, calling him “morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
But in his vote on Trump’s impeachment, McConnell said “not guilty” because he said a former president could not face justice in the Senate.
Washington’s most powerful Republican and Senate minority leader used his strongest language yet to excuse Trump minutes after the Senate acquitted the former president and voted 57 to 43 to condemn him, but who did not get the two-thirds majority that was necessary to declare him guilty. Seven Republicans voted to convict.
The Senate’s longest-serving GOP leader was clearly angry, saying Trump’s actions surrounding the attack on Congress were “an outrageous, disgraceful dereliction of duty.” He even noted that while Trump is now absent, he remains subject to the country’s criminal and civil laws.
“He couldn’t get away with anything yet,” said McConnell, who turns 79 next Saturday and has headed the Senate GOP since 2007.
It was an astonishingly bitter chastisement of Trump by McConnell, who could have used much of the same speech if he had decided to condemn Trump instead.
But by voting for acquittal, McConnell and his fellow Republicans left the party locked in its struggle to define itself after Trump’s defeat in November. Fiercely loyal pro-Trump Republicans, and the base of the party they represent, clash with more traditional Republicans who believe the former president is hurting the party’s national appeal.
A guilty vote from McConnell, which likely would have brought a number of other Republicans, would have been a more direct attempt to squeeze the party away from Trump.
That could have created primary challenges against the incumbents of the GOP in 2022, complicating Republican efforts to win a majority in the Senate by nominating far-right, less-eligible candidates. McConnell has spent years fending off such candidates.
“Time will somehow take care of that,” said Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, at the rate of the party. But remember, to be a leader you have to have followers. So we’re going to find out. “
After Saturday’s vote, enraged Democrats launched their own attacks on McConnell and the GOP. Speaking to reporters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Mocked the “cowardly group of Republicans” in the Senate who she said were afraid to “respect the institution in which they served.”
She also said McConnell had created a self-fulfilling prophecy, requiring the senate process to begin after Trump left the White House by excluding the chamber from the session. Republicans say Pelosi could have started the proceedings earlier by delivering official impeachment documents earlier.
McConnell had announced last month that he was open to convicting Trump, which in itself was an eye-opening signal of his estrangement from the former president. He informed GOP senators how he would vote in a private email early on Saturday, saying, “While it is close, I am convinced impeachment measures are primarily a tool to remove and that we therefore have no jurisdiction. “
He expanded his rationale on the Senate floor after Saturday’s roll call and made it clear that he was hostile to Trump’s actions.
“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the event of that day,” he said.
Even before the November election, Trump repeatedly claimed that if he lost it would be due to fraud by Democrats, a false accusation he continued to make until he left office.
He summoned supporters to Washington on Jan. 6, the day Congress would formally certify his Electoral College loss to Joe Biden, then used a provocative speech near the White House to urge them to march to the Capitol while that count was in progress. His constituencies fought violently past police and into the building, forcing lawmakers to flee, temporarily disrupting votes and killing five. The deep-seated, bloody images of the day were at the heart of the Democrats’ impeachment case against Trump.
McConnell called that attack a “foreseeable consequence” of Trump’s use of the presidency, calling it “the largest megaphone on planet Earth.” Rather than calling off the rioters, McConnell accused Trump of “praising the criminals” and of being determined to reverse the election “or else set fire to our institutions on the way out.”
The 36-year-old Senate veteran maneuvered through Trump’s four years in office as a captain steering a ship through a rocky strait on stormy seas. Sometimes battered by vengeful presidential tweets, McConnell made it a habit not to say anything about many of Trump’s scandalous comments.
He eventually led the Senate to victories like the 2017 tax cuts and the confirmations of three Supreme Court justices and over 200 other federal justices.
Their relationship, based more on opportunity than admiration, plummeted after Trump’s denial of his November 3 defeat and relentless attempts to reverse voters’ judgment with his baseless claims that Democrats had fraudulently stolen the election.
It completely withered last month, after Republicans lost control of the Senate with two consecutive defeats in Georgia that they blamed on Trump, and the savage attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters. On the day of the riot, McConnell protested against “thugs, crowds or threats”, describing the attack as “this failed uprising.”
Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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