I've heard several Trump supporters say that even if everything Trump has been accused of is true - it's not impeachable. Is that a reasonable defense? What do you think?
It has long been obvious that Republicans would ultimately converge on this final defense of President Trump: Even if he did everything he has been accused of doing, and perhaps a lot more that we don’t know about, it’s absolutely fine!
We now have a particularly ugly preview of what this defense may look like, as Trump’s Senate trial gets underway. On Sean Hannity’s Thursday night show, former Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus said:
What’s truly perverse here is that if Trump did nothing wrong, then no one could speak to that more forcefully than the witnesses Democrats want to hear from, and who Trump and McConnell desperately do not. If withholding the aid was correct on the merits, why not hear from those directly involved in that decision?
The answer is that Trump and McConnell know Trump did engage in profoundly corrupt, impeachable conduct. Trump used the power of his office — and the conditioning of official acts, including withholding hundreds of millions in appropriated military aid from a vulnerable ally — to strong-arm that ally into manufacturing disinformation to corrupt the 2020 election on his behalf.
More: Hannity previews Trump’s final defense: So what if he’s guilty?
It has long been obvious that Republicans would ultimately converge on this final defense of President Trump: Even if he did everything he has been accused of doing, and perhaps a lot more that we don’t know about, it’s absolutely fine!
We now have a particularly ugly preview of what this defense may look like, as Trump’s Senate trial gets underway. On Sean Hannity’s Thursday night show, former Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus said:
Sometimes the best defense is the ‘so what’ defense. If everything the Democrats said is true, it’s still not impeachable. If everything Lev Parnas said is true, it’s still not impeachable. That’s what this is about.
What’s truly perverse here is that if Trump did nothing wrong, then no one could speak to that more forcefully than the witnesses Democrats want to hear from, and who Trump and McConnell desperately do not. If withholding the aid was correct on the merits, why not hear from those directly involved in that decision?
The answer is that Trump and McConnell know Trump did engage in profoundly corrupt, impeachable conduct. Trump used the power of his office — and the conditioning of official acts, including withholding hundreds of millions in appropriated military aid from a vulnerable ally — to strong-arm that ally into manufacturing disinformation to corrupt the 2020 election on his behalf.
More: Hannity previews Trump’s final defense: So what if he’s guilty?
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