However, when he voted on Trump’s impeachment, McConnell said “not guilty” because he said a former president could not be tried in the Senate.
In his speech from the US Senate on Saturday, Senator Mitch McConnell addressed Donald Trump and called him “morally responsible” for the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th.
However, in his vote to impeach Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell said “not guilty” because he said a former president could not be tried in the Senate.
Washington’s most powerful Republican and Senate minority leaders used their strongest language yet to condemn Mr Trump minutes after the Senate acquitted the former president. He agreed 57-43 to convict him, but missed the two-thirds majority required to find him guilty. Seven Republicans voted for the condemnation.
Obviously angrier, the Senate’s longest-serving GOP leader said Trump’s actions in connection with the attack on Congress were “a shameful, nefarious breach of duty”. He even noted that even though Mr Trump is not in office now, he continues to be subject to the country’s criminal and civil laws.
“He hasn’t gotten away with anything,” said McConnell, who turns 79 next Saturday and has headed the Senate GOP since 2007.
It was an amazingly bitter chastisement of Mr. Trump by Mr. McConnell, who could have used much of the same speech had he instead chosen to condemn Mr. Trump.
But when he voted for the acquittal, Mr McConnell and his Republicans left the party in their struggle to define themselves after Mr Trump’s defeat in November. The extremely loyal pro-Trump Republicans and the grassroots party they represent clash with more traditional Republicans who believe the former president is damaging the party’s national appeal.
A guilty vote by Mr McConnell, which would likely have brought several other Republicans along, would have marked a more direct effort to wrest Mr Trump from the party.
This could have created primary challenges against the GOP incumbents in 2022 and could have hampered Republican efforts to win the Senate majority by nominating far-right, less-elected candidates. Mr. McConnell has spent years fending off such candidates.
“Time will worry about it one way or another,” said Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asking about the party’s course. “But remember, to be a leader you have to have followers. So we’ll find out. ”
After Saturday’s vote, angry Democrats launched their own attacks on Mr. McConnell and the GOP. Speaking to reporters, House spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Mocked the “cowardly group of Republicans” in the Senate who she said were afraid of “respecting the institution in which they served”.
She also said that Mr. McConnell created a self-fulfilling prophecy that forced the Senate trial to begin after Mr. Trump left the White House by keeping the chamber out of session. Republicans say Ms. Pelosi could have started the trial earlier by filing official impeachment papers earlier.
Mr. McConnell had signaled last month that he was open to declaring Mr. Trump guilty, a dazzling admission of alienation after four years of largely helping him or commenting on his most outrageous allegations. Briefing the GOP senators of how he would vote in a private email early Saturday, Mr McConnell said, “During a close call, I am convinced that impeachments are primarily a tool of removal and therefore we have no jurisdiction to have.”
After Saturday’s roll call, he expanded his deliberations in the Senate and made clear his hostility to Mr. Trump’s actions.
“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking this day’s event,” he said.
Even ahead of the November elections, Mr Trump repeatedly claimed that a loss was due to Democratic fraud, a false accusation he made until he left office.
He called supporters to Washington for January 6th, the day Congress officially certified Joe Biden his loss to the electoral college, and then in a provocative speech near the White House urged them to march on the Capitol, while this count was in progress. His supporters fought violently past the police and into the building, forcing lawmakers to flee, temporarily disrupting the number of votes and causing five deaths. The visceral, gory images from that day formed the core of the Democrats’ impeachment trial against Mr. Trump.
Mr. McConnell called this attack a “predictable episode” by Mr. Trump using the Presidency, calling it “the largest megaphone on planet earth”. Rather than canceling the rioters, Mr. McConnell accused Mr. Trump of “praising the criminals” and being determined to overturn the elections “or set our institutions on fire on the way out.”
The 36-year-old Senate veteran maneuvered through Mr. Trump’s four-year tenure like a captain navigating a ship through a rocky road in stormy seas. Sometimes beaten by vengeful presidential tweets, Mr. McConnell made a habit of not saying anything about many of Mr. Trump’s outrageous comments.
In the end, he led the Senate to victories like the 2017 tax cuts and confirmations from three Supreme Court justices and more than 200 other federal judges.
Their relationship, which was based on expediency rather than admiration, collapsed after Trump denied his November 3 defeat and tirelessly tried to reverse voter judgment with baseless claims that Democrats fraudulently stole the election.
It withered completely last month after Republicans lost control of the Senate to two defeats in Georgia they blamed Mr. Trump and the savage assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters. On the day of the riot, Mr. McConnell railed against “thugs, mobs, or threats” and described the attack as “this failed riot”.
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