Final vote count on “Abuse of Power”, breaking completely along party lines except for one: Mitt Romney (R) UT, who voted to convict Trump

Republicans Don’t Convict Trump Because They Don’t Have To

By the end of Trump’s trial in the Senate, pretty much the only one still claiming the President’s conduct was “perfect”, was Trump.

Although now that the trial is over, and Trump’s skated, the White House seems to be trying to resurrect that narrative: Trump’s current National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien insisting the President never asked Ukraine’s government to investigate Joe and/or Hunter Biden. Just “corruption” in general. To which we say (as the President often has recently) “READ THE TRANSCRIPTS!” Because in the “rough transcript” of the phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, released by Trump and subsequently touted repeatedly by Trump, the President says:

We took a photo of the official White House release so there’s no doubt we’re not making this up

But at least O’Brien got us and others to repeat allegations against the Bidens. And we guess now that Trump’s acquitted (though still impeached), anything can be true. And we guess if you wanna prove to the President you’re not gonna end up being another John Bolton (who preceded O’Brien in the job), it’s probably good to go out and publicly say things like this.

Back in the Senate, Utah Republican Mitt Romney was the only crossover. From either party. He voted “guilty” on “Abuse of Power”. And significantly is the only Senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a President of his own party in an impeachment trial. (It’s likely some would’ve gone against Nixon if he hadn’t resigned first). What did Romney accomplish? Well, at very least he made it impossible for Trump to say the impeachment process was totally partisan, and he was totally vindicated. (Although Trump probably will anyway.) And maybe Romney just did the right thing.

No Democrats crossed over and voted to acquit Trump. Is that surprising? We’re not sure. Seems to us Democrats, at least, had little choice after Trump’s anti-unity State of the Union speech the night before.

Took Romney only one short sentence to sum up his decision:

“What the President did was wrong, grieviously wrong.”