On Friday morning Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer indicated that the articles of impeachment would be delivered from the House to Senate tomorrow, which would automatically trigger the impeachment trial of former President Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection.
“There will be a trial,” Schumer said. “It will be a full trial, it will be a fair trial”
The fact that Trump will have almost no time to mount a defense belies the idea of fairness. Further, the House was careless in its insistence on charging the former president with incitement of insurrection as Trump never ordered an attack on the Capitol and in fact implored the crowd in Washington DC on Jan. 6 to act “peacefully.”
Yes, Trump used the word “fight” several times during his speech but that is a common term used in politics and activism.
However, the crowd was there because President Trump asked them to be there and fed them daily inaccuracies about the election results for more than two months.
Additionally, he did encourage the crowd to go to the Capitol.
“You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” he declared.
“We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated,” Trump railed. “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections, but whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. Our country has been under siege for a long time, far longer than this four-year period.”
As Trump began speaking at about noon on that Wednesday and violent rioters had already begun to overrun Capitol police, so many of the bad actors probably didn’t hear his speech at all and could not have been incited by it.
But by 1:30 p.m. the Capitol was under siege and the only man who could possibly convince the attackers to leave was not heard from until 4:17 p.m., when he tweeted a video out telling them to go home.
The elapsed time between the violence and the president’s call for peace is the egregious element in this saga. While “incitement of insurrection” is debatable, Trump’s subsequent dereliction of duty to protect the legislative branch of government is not. It took hours and we are lucky more lives were not lost.
The inaction of the executive branch of the United States government to protect the legislative branch cannot go unanswered. Though the charges the House has filed miss the mark, in our opinion, the deliberation and vote in the Senate will at least go to condemning Trump’s actions with the political tools the legislative branch is given.
There needs to be a political reckoning for the actions of Jan. 6, but it should not come with a retributive flare nor a punitive pursuit of Trump, who has now returned to being a private citizen. Being America’s only twice-impeached president, regardless of the outcome, is enough of a rebuke for his failure to perform his role as commander in chief at a critical juncture.
That being said, Trump is no longer in office and there are many more important tasks that lie ahead for Congress in the coming days. The Senate should execute the proceedings quickly so that the urgent and pressing matters of the country can be addressed as soon as possible.
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January 24, 2021 at 01:56PM
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Senate should get through impeachment and move on - Lowell Sun
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