US Politics

As Democrats impeached Donald Trump for the second time by accusing him of inciting a violent mob to attack the United States capitol last week, a day of drama played out in Washington DC.
It was a day of emotional speeches, appeals for peace, warnings of danger and remorse over how the country has found itself caught up in times of chaos amid a real fear of civil unrest, triggered by a president who has refused to accept he lost an election.
The historic day – no president has ever been impeached twice – saw a fair share of remarkable speeches and statements that incapsulated these extraordinary times.
Here are some key quotes.
What is at stake
“He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love,” said House speaker Nancy Pelosi as she opened arguments for the impeachment of Trump and pulled no punches in spelling out what she believed was at risk.
Stop posing as victims
Congressman Jaime Raskin of Maryland, the lead impeachment manager for the Democrats, laid the blame for the riot squarely with the pro-Trump mob, memorably dismissing their complaints of being victims, rather than just the losing side in a democratic process.
“It’s a bit much to be hearing that these people would not be trying to destroy our government and kill us if we just weren’t so mean to them,” he said.
Context and a moment of hope
Congressman Adam Schiff of California was a favorite target of Trump during the first impeachment. In his speech, the Democrat placed America’s current travails firmly in the context of history – and added a rare moment of hope that this, too, shall pass.
“America has been through a civil war, world wars, a Great Depression, pandemics, McCarthyism, and now a Trumpist and white nationalist insurrection. And yet our democracy endures,” he said.
Telling it like it is
Freshman Missouri congresswoman Cori Bush told it like it was.
“The 117th Congress must understand that we have a mandate to legislate in defense of Black lives. The first step in that process is to root out white supremacy, starting with impeaching the white supremacist-in-chief,” Bush said.
Breaking point
Bush was backed up by congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota who clearly felt enough was finally enough.
“For years we have been asked to turn a blind eye to the criminality, corruption and blatant disregard to the rule of law by the tyrant president we have in the White House. We as a nation can no longer look away,” she said.
Appealing to Republicans
There was some hope that Republicans could be persuaded to join the impeachment effort. Democratic congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia gave it his best shot.
“The American people are asking is there any depravity too low? Is there any outrage too far? Is there any blood and violence too much to turn hearts and minds in this body? Instead of the usual justification, rationalization and enabling and false equivalence we have to hear?” Connolly asked, looking at Republican members. “This is a moment of truth my friends. Are you on the side of chaos and the mob? Or on the side of Constitutional democracy and our freedom?”
A Republican turns on his president
Dan Newhouse, a Republican congressman from Washington, was one of the few in his party to vote against Trump and for his impeachment.
“A vote against this impeachment is a vote to validate the unacceptable violence we witnessed in our nation’s capital. It is also a vote to condone President Trump’s inaction. He did not strongly condemn the attack nor did he call in reinforcements when our officers were overwhelmed. Our country needed a leader, and President Trump failed to fulfill his oath of office,” he said.
Distraction, distraction, distraction
Many Republicans have chosen to defend Trump by largely ignoring the attack on the Capitol in favor of slamming Democrats and positing that the real issue is the fact that Trump and some other rightwingers have been banned from some social media websites in an act of “cancel culture”.
Trump’s favorite attack dog, congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, led the pack.
“We should be focused on bringing the nation together. Instead Democrats are going to impeach the president for a second time one week before he leaves office. Why? Why? Politics. And the fact they want to cancel the president,” he said.
QAnon congresswoman blames BLM and the Democrats
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once espoused the racist QAnon conspiracy theory, gave a short and impassioned speech saying that the real problem the country faced was Democratic support for the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer.
“President Trump has held over 600 rallies in the last 4 years. None of them included assaulting police, destroying businesses or burning down cities. Democrats have spent all this time endorsing and enabling violent riots that left billions in property damage and 47 dead,” Greene said, wearing a face mask that said “censored” on it.
Greene did not seem to pick up on the irony that she was claiming to be censored while delivering a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, which was broadcast on national television and around the world.
The last word
For many watching, New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries summed things up the best.
“Donald Trump is a living, breathing impeachable offense. It is what it is,” he said. More

Key events

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4.36pm EST16:36
Trump becomes the first US president to be impeached twice

4.25pm EST16:25
Article of impeachment reaches majority level of support

3.54pm EST15:54
House votes on article of impeachment against Trump

3.51pm EST15:51
Seventh House Republican says he will support impeachment

3.37pm EST15:37
McConnell indicates he is open to convicting Trump

2.09pm EST14:09
Statement from the president

2.05pm EST14:05
Afternoon summary

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4.48pm EST16:48

The most surprising Republican “yes” vote on impeachment came from Tom Rice of South Carolina.
Before the vote, Rice did not offer any indication that he was planning to support impeachment, and he was not considered one of the likely “yes” votes.
Rice has not yet put out a statement explaining his vote, but this tweet from last week, sent during the violent riot at the Capitol, captures his frustration with Donald Trump.

Congressman Tom Rice
(@RepTomRice)
To all my friends back home, I am fine. Capitol Police evacuated us from the Capitol Building. DC is in chaos. This will accomplish nothing.Where is the President!? He must ask people to disperse and restore calm now.

January 6, 2021

4.40pm EST16:40

Here are the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump on the charge of incitement of insurrection:
John Katko of New York.
Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.
Fred Upton of Michigan.
Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state.
Dan Newhouse of Washington state.
Peter Meijer of Michigan.
Tom Rice of South Carolina.
Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.
David Valadao of California.
The Republicans’ votes made this the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in history. In comparison, five Democrats voted to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998.

4.36pm EST16:36

Trump becomes the first US president to be impeached twice

The House has voted to impeach Donald Trump on the charge of incitement of insurrection, after the president incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol last week, resulting in five deaths.
The final vote was 232-197, with 10 House Republicans supporting the measure.
Trump has become the first president in US history to ever be impeached by the House twice.
The matter will now go before the Senate, which will decide whether Trump should be convicted and removed from office.
The trial will likely conclude after Joe Biden takes office anyway, but a conviction would prevent Trump from running for president again.

4.26pm EST16:26

A tenth House Republican, David Valadao of California, has voted “yes” on the article of impeachment against Donald Trump.
The vote currently stands at 229-195 in favor of impeachment.
Nine members have not yet voted.

4.25pm EST16:25

Article of impeachment reaches majority level of support

The article of impeachment has now reached a majority level of support, with at least 229 House members voting “yes” on impeaching Donald Trump for a second time.
The vote currently stands at 229-194.
But the vote is still ongoing, and members can change their votes until it is gaveled out. Stay tuned.

4.21pm EST16:21

Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, Ann Wagner of Missouri and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania have all voted “no” on impeachment.
The three members were some of the last remaining Republicans who were considered possible “yes” votes, but they have apparently decided against impeaching the president for a second time.
It’s looking like the total number of Republicans supporting impeachment will likely be nine, but we won’t know for sure until the vote is complete.

4.14pm EST16:14

Seven House Republicans have already voted “yes” on impeaching Donald Trump, and at least two more are expected to do so.
Assuming no one charges their vote, this will be the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in US history, as a CBC News reporter noted.

Alexander Panetta
(@Alex_Panetta)
BREAKING: This is now the most *bipartisan* presidential impeachment in American history.Six Republicans have already voted to impeach Trump – the most ever from one party again a president of that same party. Previous record: five Democrats vs Bill Clinton in 1998.

January 13, 2021

4.11pm EST16:11

In his statement explaining his vote in support of impeachment, Anthony Gonzalez also accused Donald Trump of having “abandoned his post” amid the violence at the Capitol.
Gonzalez argued that the president’s failure to act further endangered those present at the Capitol.
The Republican congressman described the president’s actions as “fundamental threats” to American democracy.

4.04pm EST16:04

Two more House Republicans, Tom Rice of South Carolina and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, have voted “yes” on impeaching the president.
Assuming they do not change their votes, they will be the eighth and ninth Republicans to support impeachment.
In a statement, Gonzalez said he was supporting impeachment because Donald Trump “helped organize and incite a mob that attacked the United States Congress”.

Rep. Anthony Gonzalez
(@RepAGonzalez)
See my full statement on impeachment below. pic.twitter.com/pBBYRI2RUP

January 13, 2021

3.54pm EST15:54

House votes on article of impeachment against Trump

The House has now concluded its two hours of debate on the article of impeachment against Donald Trump.
The chamber has moved on to a roll-call vote on the article, incitement of insurrection.
The measure is expected to pass with the support of all Democrats and at least seven Republicans.

3.51pm EST15:51

Seventh House Republican says he will support impeachment

Peter Meijer, a Republican congressman from Michigan, has become the seventh Republican House member to say he will support the impeachment of Donald Trump.
“The President betrayed his oath of office by seeking to undermine our constitutional process, and he bears responsibility for inciting the insurrection last week,” Meijer said in a statement. “With a heavy heart, I will vote to impeach President Donald J. Trump.”

Rep. Peter Meijer
(@RepMeijer)
President Trump betrayed his oath of office by seeking to undermine our constitutional process, and he bears responsibility for inciting the insurrection we suffered last week. With a heavy heart, I will vote to impeach President Donald J. Trump. pic.twitter.com/SREfFp0nd2

January 13, 2021

Meijer, a freshman congressman, previously said he was considering supporting impeachment, but this is the first time he has clearly said he will do so.
Seven Republicans have now said they will vote to impeach Trump, which means the president will be impeached in a bipartisan vote. When Trump was impeached the first time, only Democrats supported the measure.

3.45pm EST15:45

The debate on the article of impeachment against Donald Trump is now wrapping up, and the House will soon move on to the final vote on impeachment.
Steve Scalise, the House minority whip, was the final Republican speaker, and he applauded the Capitol Police officers who work to protect lawmakers every day. Two Capitol Police officers have died since last week, when a violent, pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.
House members in the chamber stood to applaud the fallen Capitol Police officers, marking a rare moment of bipartisanship during today’s contentious debate.
The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, is the final Democratic speaker, and he has repeatedly cited the words of Republican Liz Cheney, who has said she will support impeachment.
“Will we stay silent, will we not stand up and say this is not acceptable?” Hoyer said. “Donald Trump has constructed a glass house of lies, fear-mongering and sedition.”

3.37pm EST15:37

McConnell indicates he is open to convicting Trump

The Guardian’s Daniel Strauss reports:
Mitch McConnell, the top-ranking Republican in the Senate, indicated to colleagues that he is undecided on how he would vote on impeachment.
In a letter to his Senate colleagues sent out Wednesday afternoon, as members of the House moved forward with impeaching Donald Trump, the Kentucky Republican wrote, “while the press has been full of speculation, I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.”
The line in his note to Senate colleagues follows The New York Times reporting Tuesday night that McConnell is pleased with Democrats’ move to impeach the president again and has been sharing that sentiment with associates.
McConnell’s openness to impeaching the president, a fellow Republican, is the most significant sign so far that congressional Republican leaders are less resistant to Trump’s impeachment than the last time the president was impeached.
In the House, congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the House Republican Conference chair, said she would vote to impeach Trump. Five other House Republicans have also come out in support of impeachment.
It’s unclear how Senate Republicans will vote. It’s also unclear if McConnell’s openness will offer cover for other Republicans who privately would like to see the president impeached. Two-thirds of senators would have to support conviction in order for him to be removed from office.

3.33pm EST15:33

Congressman Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat and a Marine Corps veteran, noted that there are currently more troops in Washington than in Afghanistan.

Aaron Rupar
(@atrupar)
Rep. Moulton: “There are more troops right now in Washington DC than in Afghanistan. And they are here to defend us against the commander in chief, the POTUS and his mob.” pic.twitter.com/bpf9mdWhYi

January 13, 2021

“And they are here to defend us against the commander in chief, the president of the United States and his mob,” Moulton said.
Moulton encouraged his colleagues to look at the National Guard members protecting the Capitol and search for “an ounce of their courage.”

3.17pm EST15:17

Young Kim, a freshman Republican congresswoman who flipped a California district that Donald Trump lost by 10 points, will vote against impeachment.

Young Kim
(@RepYoungKim)
However, I believe impeaching the president now will fail to hold him accountable or allow us to move forward once President-elect Biden is sworn in. This process will only create more fissures in our country as we emerge from some of our darkest days. https://t.co/NK1EdO5xoN pic.twitter.com/IJIlb6oGva

January 13, 2021

“The violence we saw last week was disgusting. Our law enforcement was attacked, lives were lost and more were put in danger. These rioters must be held accountable. Words have consequences and I believe the president should also be held accountable,” Kim said in a statement.
“However, I believe impeaching the president at this time will fail to hold him accountable or allow us to move forward once President-elect Biden is sworn in. This process will only create more fissures in our country as we emerge from some of our darkest days.”
So far, only six House Republicans have signaled they intend to support the article of impeachment.

3.09pm EST15:09

It is now past 3 pm in Washington, but the House has not yet moved on to the final vote on the article of impeachment.
The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said yesterday that the final vote would occur at roughly 3 pm, but there are about 20 minutes of debate left.
Once the debate has concluded, the chamber will move on to voting on the article, which is expected to be approved.

2.54pm EST14:54

Chip Roy, a Republican of Texas who has criticized his colleagues’ efforts to cast baseless doubt upon the legitimacy of the presidential election, said he believed Donald Trump had committed “impeachable” offenses.
“The president of the United States deserves universal condemnation for what was clearly, in my opinion, impeachable conduct, pressuring the vice president to violate his oath to the constitution.” Roy said in his speech.
And yet Roy will not be supporting the article of impeachment. The congressman argued the article had been drafted in a manner that targeted political speech itself.
Here’s what the article says, in part: “Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States …
“Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office[.]” More

The US House of Representatives was poised on Wednesday officially to charge Donald Trump with inciting violence against the government of the United States one week after he rallied a mob of loyalists to storm the US Capitol, a historic measure that would make him the only American president to be impeached twice.The unprecedented effort gained momentum overnight as senior Republican leaders in the House joined Democrats in support of removing Trump from office.The single article of impeachment charges the defeated president with “inciting an insurrection” that led to what the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said would be immortalized as a “day of fire” on Capitol Hill.The president, Pelosi said, arguing in favor of invoking the constitution’s gravest remedy, represented a “clear and present danger to the nation we all love”.She was joined by six Republican members of the House, including Liz Cheney, the No 3 House Republican and daughter of Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s vice-president.Cheney said in a statement that there had “never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States” than Trump’s conduct on 6 January.The deadly assault on 6 January came as both the House and Senate were in session to certify Joe Biden’s victory in November’s presidential election, a result Trump refused to accept. Five people died during the siege, including a police officer.“We are debating this historic measure at an actual crime scene, and we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the president of the United States,” said the congressman Jim McGovern, a Democrat of Massachusetts and chair of the rules committee, opening Wednesday’s session.The emotionally charged debate took place against a constant reminder of the death and destruction that had transpired just one week ago. The building lawmakers call the People’s House, poorly defended last Wednesday, by this Wednesday had been turned into a fortress, protected by thousands of national guard troops and with metal detectors stationed outside the chamber doors. Some Republicans rebelled against the new safety protocols, evading the security check.A remorseless Trump on Tuesday called his inflammatory language at a rally immediately before the mob marched on the Capitol “totally appropriate”. Efforts to hold him accountable were nothing more than a “continuation of the greatest witch-hunt in the history of politics”, he said.Few Republicans were willing to defend Trump’s incendiary behavior. But those who opposed impeachment objected to the rushed nature of the proceedings and argued that there was little chance the president would be removed from office before the end of his term.“I can think of no action the House can take that is more likely to further divide the American people,” said Tom Cole, a Republican of Oklahoma, who was among the more than 120 House Republicans who voted last week to reject the electoral votes of key swing states that Biden won, despite officials at every level calling November’s vote the most secure election in US history.Democrats were incensed by calls for bipartisanship, particularly from Republicans who refused to recognize Biden’s election victory and voted to overturn the results of a democratic election even after the assault on the Capitol.“It’s a bit much to be hearing that these people would not be trying to destroy our government and kill us if we just weren’t so mean to them,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic Maryland congressman who will serve as the lead impeachment manager.The House proceeded with impeachment on Wednesday after Mike Pence formally rejected calls to strip Trump of power by invoking the 25th amendment to the US constitution, which allows for the removal of a sitting president deemed unfit to perform his job.Pence’s signal came just hours before the House passed a resolution calling on him to take the unprecedented action.Trump’s day of reckoning on Capitol Hill comes less than a year after he was acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial for pressuring Ukraine to open investigations into Biden and his son. But with just days left in his presidency, the political landscape had shifted dramatically.As fear turned to fury in the days since the siege, senior Republican leaders signaled both tacitly and explicitly a desire to purge the party of Trump. But their break with president came only after months of tolerating and indulging his campaign of lies about a stolen election, long after it was undeniably clear he had lost.No House Republicans voted in support when Trump was impeached in 2019 over his attempts to persuade the leader of Ukraine to investigate the family of Joe Biden, then his election rival.The swift second impeachment vote comes just one week after the riot in Washington DC – the first occupation of the US Capitol since British troops burned the building during the war of 1812 – and one week before Trump is due to leave office. The formal charge, a single article of impeachment, was drafted as lawmakers were ducking under chairs and praying for safety during the attack. It charges Trump with “inciting violence against the government of the United States’’ by encouraging his supporters to march on the Capitol in a last stand to keep him in office by overturning the will of 81 million Americans who voted against him.“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more,” he told the raucous crowd at last Wednesday morning’s gathering near the White House.Rallying behind what they believed was a battle cry from an American president, thousands of loyalists stormed the Capitol in a violent rampage that threatened the lives of lawmakers, congressional staff, journalists and Trump’s own vice-president, who was there to fulfill his constitutional duty to count and certify the electoral college votes.“In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government,” the article states. “He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of government.”Two Senate Republicans have already called on Trump to resign, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, reportedly believes the president committed impeachable offenses.The House was prepared to immediately transmit the article of impeachment to the Senate after Wednesday’s expected vote to impeach. On Wednesday, McConnell’s office said he would not reconvene the Senate before 19 January, meaning Trump’s impeachment trial would begin during the inaugural days of Biden’s presidency.Though consequences for Trump will not include premature removal from office, the Senate trial would not be entirely symbolic.Two-thirds of the 100-member body are required to convict a president, meaning 17 Republicans would have to join Democrats to find Trump guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.If convicted, it would then only require a simple majority to disqualify him from ever again holding public office. More

Airbnb will block and cancel all reservations in the Washington DC area during the week of the presidential inauguration.The decision, announced by the San Francisco-based short-term rental site on Wednesday, comes amid concerns over renewed violence during the 20 January event following the attack on the US Capitol last week.Airbnb initially announced it would review reservations in the area ahead of the inauguration and bar any guests associated with hate groups or violent activity, but later decided to widen its action.The company declined to say how many reservations were cancelled. .Guests who lost their reservations will be refunded in full and hosts will be reimbursed the money they would have earned. Reservations at HotelTonight, a service owned by Airbnb that handles last-minute deals at top-rated hotels, will also be cancelled.“We are continuing our work to ensure hate group members are not part of the Airbnb community,” Airbnb said in a corporate blogpost.Following the riot on 6 January, Airbnb investigated whether people involved had accounts on the platform, after learning their names through media reports and law enforcement sources. It found numerous individuals associated with known hate groups and banned them from the service.Airbnb has had a policy of removing guests who are confirmed to be members of hate groups since 2017, when it blocked guests who were headed to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.Airbnb’s measures come as tech companies face increased scrutiny for their roles in enabling violence such as the Capitol event.In the past week, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube have suspended Donald Trump from posting on their platforms. Twitter removed more than 70,000 accounts related to QAnon, a conspiracy theory that motivated some of those who stormed the Capitol. Facebook has suspended most uses of the phrase or hashtag “Stop the Steal”, used by those campaigning to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.Many companies – including Airbnb – are also committing not to give political donations to the Republicans who voted against certifying the results of the election last week. Others taking that stand include Marriott, AT&T, and Walmart.Airbnb’s political action committee donated $866,519 to candidates and political parties in the 2020 election cycle, according to Open Secrets, which monitors campaign finance donations. Joe Biden was the biggest recipient of Airbnb donations.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterHas the spell really been broken? After years of joining Donald Trump in demonizing political opponents, and holding their silence as Trump furiously shredded public trust in elections, public service, the rule of law and the truth itself, have mainstream Republicans really decided to give him up?Were the deaths of a police officer and four others at the US Capitol last week in a riot incited by Trump the final outrage? Or did the recent loss of two huge elections in Georgia – elections they expected to win – focus their minds?Perhaps the impressive list of US corporations that have suspended political donations until Washington returns to sanity have been persuasive? Or the new polls showing that 74% of Americans strongly disapprove of the riot at the Capitol?The questions arise from reports on Wednesday, initially in the New York Times, that the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, privately supports the second impeachment of Trump. McConnell, whose iron grip on the Senate was torn from him suddenly by those Georgia losses, sees an urgent need for the party to purge Trump in the name of its own survival, multiple outlets reported.“McConnell turns on Trump” is a headline that by itself signals that the Republican zeppelin is already on fire – even if it has yet to come apart in the sky.But there are many other signals of important Republican defections from Trump. The third-ranking Republican in the House, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney and no closet liberal, said on Tuesday that she would vote in favor of an impeachment article charging Trump with incitement of insurrection.“There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the constitution,” Cheney said.William Barr, the former attorney general and Trump apparatchik, voiced the same charge last week, accusing Trump of “betrayal of his office”.We’re seeing a fracturing, a breaking, because of the unprecedented situation – the sedition, the violence, the deathMore than 100 Republican party officials and sympathizers have signed a letter calling for Trump’s immediate resignation, the conservative political strategist Mike Murphy said on his podcast.“We’re going to have a civil war now,” Murphy said, referring to the party. “The war is coming.”Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican strategist who left the party because of Trump, echoed that assessment.“We’re at the moment now where we’re seeing a fracturing, a breaking, because of the unprecedented situation – the sedition, the violence, the death,” Schmidt told the Associated Press.But observers who have watched for four years as Republicans happily harvested votes and amassed political victories under Trump – while fiercely defending the president against any whisper of criticism as Trump coerced election tampering from abroad and stoked racist hatred at home – might wonder how it is that the basic political dynamics have suddenly changed, if indeed they have.One simple explanation might follow the money. Republicans were already facing a campaign finance crunch with the death this week of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a fervent Zionist whose estimated $480m in lifetime giving to Republican causes was bookended by the takeover of the US Capitol, one week before his death, by Trump supporters in “Camp Auschwitz” T-shirts.Another Republican megadonor and erstwhile Trump backer, Ken Langone, the billionaire founder of Home Depot, expressed revulsion on Wednesday at the Capitol attack.“I feel betrayed. OK?” Langone said on CNBC. “Last Wednesday, if it doesn’t break every American’s heart, something’s wrong. I didn’t sign up for that.”Top US corporations have also signaled their displeasure. A list of dozens of giant companies – from American Express to Amazon, from Goldman Sachs to Bank of America to Blackrock, Google, Facebook, Marriott and Walmart – have suspended political donations in protest of the turbulence Trump has wrought, which is not taken to have been good for business.Similarly, Trump’s lack of interest in addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, which has cost upwards of 380,000 American lives, has left most of the US economy idle and fueled unemployment as countries elsewhere have gone back to work with fewer lost lives –and no culture war over facial masking.The explanation for the Republican break from Trump may come down to raw politics. As of November, Trump is a loser, who might have won re-election if only he had not alienated suburban Republican moderates in places like Atlanta, Philadelphia and Omaha.Trump’s future utility on the stump, in helping Republicans recover control of Congress in 2022 or the presidency in 2024, is questionable. In any case he might be deemed too unpredictable to build a long-term party strategy around.Republicans might have noticed that Trump’s base of voters only shows up to vote for him, and not down-ballot or off-year Republican candidates.Or Trump’s political utility might be deemed to have been used up, the politician an empty husk. In this analysis, Republicans have already gotten everything out of Trump they wanted, and the returns at the margin look to be extremely diminishing.Trump stood and smiled next to three supreme court nominees selected by outside conservative groups, and Trump nominated, for hundreds of federal judgeships, whoever conservatives told him to. Trump was foolish enough in his own egotism to believe that the makeover of the US judiciary was something he had done. Similarly, he bragged about the tax cut bill of 2017, thinking it was something he had negotiated.More recently, Trump has been getting in the way of McConnell’s business, and demonstrating his own impotence where Congress is concerned.In a pathetic attempt to bend the Senate leader last month, Trump vowed not to sign a Covid relief bill, demanding larger individual payouts. McConnell did not blink, and Trump backed down. Likewise, Trump’s veto of a defense spending measure was unceremoniously overridden by both houses of Congress.But a Republican break with Trump is hardly complete. Trump retains huge support among the Republican rank-and-file of elected officials, among state legislators and among Republican base voters. Even after blood was spilled in the Capitol over the election lie, 137 Republicans in the House still voted in favor of that lie. Many Republicans vehemently opposed Trump’s second impeachment.Dave Wasserman, the Congress editor at the Cook Political Report, noted that in the 16 hours after Cheney announced she would vote to impeach Trump, only five Republicans had publicly said they would follow her lead.“I’d be surprised if there are a dozen, ultimately,” Wasserman tweeted. “The GOP reality: anti-Trumpism still faces a greater risk of purge than Trumpism.”But secret and not-so-secret motivations remain. At least some of the senators who will vote on whether to convict Trump in his second impeachment are eager to run for president themselves in 2024 – a job made a lot easier without Trump on the field.If, that is, he really is on his way off. More

The Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives has opened the debate on the article of impeachment against Donald Trump, arguing the president must be removed from office. Describing the storming of the Capitol as a ‘day of fire’, Nancy Pelosi said Trump had incited insurrection
Trump impeachment – live
House poised to impeach Trump for a second time following deadly Capitol riot
Trump impeachment: what you need to know as House moves to a vote More

I was pleased when the Guardian began to use the phrase “global heating” instead of “global warming”. In the same vein, I ask you to reconsider repeated use of the term “conspiracy theory” (Authorities on high alert across US as fears over far-right violence intensify, 12 January).It is misleading to suggest that elaborate lies are “theories”. Undergraduate students have occasionally responded to objections to unsupported claims as “that’s just your theory”. Theory is serious.It is crucial to name and analyse real conspiracies, through investigations by reporters. But conspiracies to promote lies, such as QAnon, are not “theories”. It is time to change the discourse.What to use instead? Charles Eisenstein uses “conspiracy myth”. Other terms such as “conspiracy fantasy” can work. “Myth” seems to capture the sense of a shared and comprehensive belief system, yet “myth” can be a positive term describing many things, from Jungian psychology to anthropological research. The myth of American goodness is invoked by politicians of all stripes, despite the long continuity of racist images, such as the Confederate flag, worn or carried by those who assaulted the US Congress. It is important to discuss what term to use, but please don’t use “theory”.Harriet Friedmann Toronto, Canada More

A common refrain one hears from both the left and right is that their foes are just “cosplaying”. The word is a Japanese portmanteau of “costume” and “play”, and originally referred to people dressing up as characters at comic book conventions. Now it’s used, more or less metaphorically, to mock anybody who seems lost in a fantasy world. Its cousin, “performative”, has become similarly popular as a word to dismiss actions being carried out purely for appearance’s sake.This strikes me as strange, because the “cosplay” label is often applied precisely to the kinds of people who clearly are no longer playing around, and who are willing to make good on their pretensions. As we learn more about last week’s attack on the Capitol, the intensity of the violence and the seriousness of the participants’ murderous intent becomes ever clearer. This was not people “cosplaying” a violent mob – it was a violent mob. One wonders who is really off in fantasy land: the people cracking skulls, or those insisting that the skull crackers aren’t really doing it, for some reason? It is time to acknowledge that fancy and imagination are doing serious political work for the far right.There is some truth in the idea that these latter-day fascists are playing out an imaginary game. Some of them even wore outlandish costumes to storm the Capitol, determined to look the part of the marauding barbarian horde. This is not a new or minor part of political history. Karl Marx wrote in 1852 in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, reflecting on the coup that brought Napoleon III to power, that in “epochs of revolutionary crisis” men “anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language”.With his deflating wit, Marx describes how the French revolutionaries of 1789 used Roman costume to invoke an air of historical tragedy; then their heirs in 1848 modelled themselves after their revolutionary forefathers, essentially cosplaying the cosplayers. For Marx, imagination supported the work of politics by transferring actions to a grander and more exciting scene. Once their revolution was accomplished, the bourgeoisie took off their togas and returned to their offices. Napoleon Bonaparte wrote in his diary: “Imagination rules the world. The defect of our modern institutions is that they do not speak to the imagination.”A superficial glance at the movement that stormed the Capitol last week discovers the predominance of fantasy over reality. Many were adherents of the bizarre online cult of QAnon, which has concocted an increasingly baroque metaphysical world, totally impervious to empirical fact, around Trump’s infallibility and ultimate victory. The imaginary basis of the storming of the Capitol comes straight from the pages of The Turner Diaries, a vile neo-Nazi novel written by the late William Luther Pierce, which envisions the mass lynching of journalists and politicians.This is not a recent trend for the extreme right, either. In his 1985 book The Occult Roots of Nazism, the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke traces the mystical dreams of Aryan superiority and ultimate world conquest to crackpots and tiny millenarian sects in turn-of-the-century Germany and Austria who were disenchanted with the modern world. Many of the symbols and ideas they cooked up later became the basis for the pomp and pageantry of the SS. Like many of the weekend militia members and QAnon acolytes who showed up at the Capitol, what begins as mere eccentric hobbyism can turn sinister.It must be admitted that the people Goodrick-Clarke describes in his book – stealing off to the woods in outlandish druid outfits, performing made-up rituals – are in fact quite silly. But perhaps it’s this very unseriousness, this retreat from the disappointments and defeats of real life, that provides the appeal of political fantasy. A similar process takes place in the extreme right’s use of “ironic” memes and jokes that revel in their own absurdity: irony suspends the rules that usually govern people’s lives, allowing them to say and do things without “really saying them”, to engage in a kind of camp play-acting, until, of course, they feel comfortable really believing it, and drop the pretence. Online accounts with cartoon frog avatars traffic in racist or sexist memes that are nasty in content but also playful in spirit. It is possible to reassure oneself that mischief is meant rather than real harm.The left and liberal reaction to this type of “playing around” is to get (justifiably) upset and insist on seriousness – which unfortunately makes the “playing around” all the more fun and satisfying, because now it actually shocks the lame, hypocritical libs. The other response is to refuse to take this behaviour seriously, and to call it “cosplay”. A balance must be struck between penetrating the pathetic core of these fancies, and the way they are meant to create an air of mystery, grandeur and superiority, and taking seriously what their emergence means as both the symptom and cause of dangerous politics.Perhaps Napoleon was right when he said that “imagination rules the world”. For some people, it seems like realisation of the fantasy of “greatness”, rather than anything lying behind the fantasy, is the entire point. The left should exercise imagination a little, too – not to engage in similar delusions of grandeur, but to expand their horizons of what is possible. While keeping sight of the facts on the ground, this should be a reminder that reality is more mutable than it seems. If the right has fantasised itself into almost realising a dystopia, perhaps the left can stand to be a little more utopian, and imagine the kind of world where these forces would finally be vanquished. More