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      Republicans have betrayed American democracy – and boosted the world's dictators

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      This is not even about Donald Trump any more. It’s about a Republican party that has lost its way, forgotten its core values, and kicked American democracy in the guts.It’s about justice, common sense, and honour, and how they were trampled deep into the churned-up ground of Capitol Hill by a mob of liars and dissemblers who call themselves GOP senators.It’s about how a nation, most favoured on earth, that cast itself as a shining light in enveloping darkness discovered it had feet of clay and laws that did not stand.Just imagine how this latest impeachment travesty – which, despite its last-minute twists and turns, has resulted in acquittal – is viewed in Pyongyang, Minsk, Damascus and other hangouts of dictators, autocrats and war criminals.Myanmar’s generals, universally reviled for this month’s coup, might be forgiven for asking: why is your insurrection so much more excusable than ours?Vladimir Putin, struggling to get past the Navalny conspiracy and Black Sea palace corruption scandal, has been handed a lifeline by Ted Cruz and the rest, abetted by Trump’s third-choice hack lawyers.If an American president can behave like this and get away with it, then who’s to say what Putin’s mafia cronies get up to is so very bad? This is the Trumpists’ morally repugnant, relativist argument. And talking of morality, where are those legions of God-fearing, Trump-worshipping Christian fundamentalists when you really need to draw a line between right and wrong? Praying for the second coming of Mike Pompeo, perhaps.Xi Jinping is not a man who jokes a lot. Global domination is a serious business, after all. It takes a toll. But even China’s big cheese must have cracked a smile as democracy took a beating and the world turned upside down.Everyone likes a Houdini act. Trump’s performance is the political equivalent of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel weighted down by redundant Fox News anchors.We know about China’s rise. But America’s fall?Trump never respected the US constitution. His second impeachment has made a mockery of that hallowed text. Ironically, he claimed it was unconstitutional. He’s the expert.Yet Senate Republicans did not have to follow him over the cliff. Where do they go from here? Who knows? To an all-night bar perhaps, slurping down Kentucky mint juleps in honour of Mitch McConnell.It’s about them now. Senior GOP leaders – the Gain Over Principle party – are discredited beyond redemption. With a handful of exceptions, they abandoned their sworn duty. They gave America the finger.They should all be impeached, too. Except they would acquit themselves. More

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      Convicted or not, Trump is history – it's Biden who's changing America | Robert Reich

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      While most of official Washington has been focused on the Senate impeachment trial, another part of Washington is preparing the most far-ranging changes in American social policy in a generation.Congress is moving ahead with Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which expands healthcare and unemployment benefits and contains one of the most ambitious efforts to reduce child poverty since the New Deal. Right behind it is Biden’s plan for infrastructure and jobs.The juxtaposition of Trump’s impeachment trial and Biden’s ambitious plans is no coincidence.Trump has left Republicans badly fractured and on the defensive. The party is imploding. Since the Capitol attack on 6 January, growing numbers of voters have deserted it. State and county committees are becoming wackier by the day. Big business no longer has a home in the crackpot GOP.This political void is allowing Biden and the Democrats, who control the White House and both houses of Congress, to respond boldly to the largest social and economic crisis since the Great Depression.Tens of millions are hurting. A record number of American children are impoverishedImportantly, they are now free to disregard conservative canards that have hobbled America’s ability to respond to public needs ever since Ronald Reagan convinced the nation big government was the problem.The first is the supposed omnipresent danger of inflation and the accompanying worry that public spending can easily overheat the economy.Rubbish. Inflation hasn’t reared its head in years, not even during the roaring job market of 2018 and 2019. “Overheating” may no longer even be a problem for globalized, high-tech economies whose goods and services are so easily replaceable.Biden’s ambitious plans are worth the small risk, in any event. If you hadn’t noticed, the American economy is becoming more unequal by the day. Bringing it to a boil may be the only way to lift the wages of the bottom half. The hope is that record low interest rates and vast public spending generate enough demand that employers will need to raise wages to find the workers they need.A few Democratic economists who should know better are sounding the false alarm about inflation, but Biden is wisely ignoring them. So should Democrats in Congress.Another conservative bromide is that a larger national debt crowds out private investment and slows growth. This view hamstrung the Clinton and Obama administrations as deficit hawks warned against public spending unaccompanied by tax increases to pay for it. (I still have some old injuries inflicted by those hawks.)Fortunately, Biden isn’t buying this, either.Four decades of chronic underemployment and stagnant wages have shown how important public spending is for sustained growth. Not incidentally, growth reduces the debt as a share of the overall economy. The real danger is the opposite: fiscal austerity shrinks economies and causes national debts to grow in proportion.The third canard is that generous safety nets discourage work.Democratic presidents from Franklin D Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson sought to alleviate poverty and economic insecurity with broad-based relief. But after Reagan tied public assistance to racism – deriding single-mother “welfare queens” – conservatives began demanding stringent work requirements so that only the “truly deserving” received help. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama acquiesced to this nonsense.Not Biden. His proposal would not only expand jobless benefits but also provide assistance to parents who are not working, thereby extending relief to 27 million children, including about half of all Black and Latino children. Republican senator Mitt Romney of Utah has put forward a similar plan.This is just common sense. Tens of millions are hurting. A record number of American children are impoverished, according to the most recent census data.The pandemic has also caused a large number of women to drop out of the labor force in order to care for children. With financial help, some will be able to pay for childcare and move back into paid work. After Canada enacted a national child allowance in 2006, employment rates for mothers increased. A decade later, when Canada increased its annual child allowance, its economy added jobs.It’s still unclear exactly what form Biden’s final plans will take as they work their way through Congress. He has razor-thin majorities in both chambers. In addition, most of his proposals are designed for the current emergency; they would need to be made permanent.But the stars are now better aligned for fundamental reform than they have been since Reagan.It’s no small irony that a half-century after Reagan persuaded Americans big government was the problem, Trump’s demise is finally liberating America from Reaganism – and letting the richest nation on earth give its people the social support they desperately need. More

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      in Elections

      Failure to convict Trump in impeachment trial will live as a 'vote of infamy', says Schumer – video

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      The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, decried the decision to acquit Donald Trump of inciting a riot at the US Capitol on 6 January. House Democrats, who voted a month ago to charge Trump with ‘incitement of insurrection’, needed two thirds of the Senate, or 67 votes, to convict him. Only seven Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in voting to convict Trump.
      The Democrats argued in the short trial that Trump caused the violent attack by repeating for months the false claims that the election was stolen from him, and then telling his supporters gathered near the White House that morning to ‘fight like hell’ to overturn his defeat. Five people died when they then laid siege to the Capitol.
      Senate has officially voted to acquit Trump on 57-43 vote More

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      Romney: impeachment row with fellow Republican was about 'boxers or briefs'

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      Mitt Romney suggested on Saturday that a heated argument he was seen to have with a Republican colleague in the Senate chamber was not about whether witnesses should be called in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial – but concerned the age-old question: “Boxers versus briefs”.After a surprise move by House managers on Saturday morning, Romney was one of five Republicans to vote for the calling of witnesses.Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was among 45 who still backed their former president, who went on to be acquitted of inciting the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January. But before a deal was struck to avoid calling witnesses, Romney and Johnson were seen to engage in a fierce exchange.Quoting Jason Donner, a Fox News producer, Andrew Desiderio, a Politico reporter, tweeted: “Ron Johnson turned to Mitt Romney and was upset with him, even pointing at him once. Johnson was visibly upset …“They were going back and forth with [Alaska senator Dan] Sullivan in the middle of them. I heard Johnson tell Romney, ‘Blame you.’ Voices were definitely raised.”Johnson complained that the exchange had been reported, telling reporters: “That’s grotesque you guys are recording this.” Reporters pointed out the exchange happened in public, on the Senate floor.Romney sought to defuse the row, telling reporters it was about underwear preferences. “We were arguing about boxers versus briefs,” he reportedly said.As it happens, as an observant member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Romney has been seen to wear a “temple garment” under his clothes. Some public figures have been condemned for mocking the two-piece underwear as “magic Mormon underpants”. Members of the church regard such mockery as prejudiced and offensive.In 2012, as Romney ran for the White House and the singer Cher ran into trouble for mocking his underwear, one news outlet offered a guide to the garment. On Saturday, though, for anyone seeking to use the guide to divine which side of the “boxers versus briefs” argument Romney might have taken against Johnson, enlightenment remained elusive.“Garments today come in two pieces,” BuzzFeed News reported. “A white undershirt, and white boxer brief-style shorts.” More

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      Trump’s acquittal seals his grasp on the Republican party

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      Donald Trump’s highly anticipated acquittal at his US Senate impeachment trial is the least surprising twist in American politics since … well, his acquittal at his first US Senate impeachment trial a year ago.On that occasion, with Republicans virtually unanimous in his defence, the then president lorded it over Democrats by staging a celebration in the east room of the White House and gloating over a newspaper front page that proclaimed: “Trump acquitted”.But this time Trump, already stripped of the trappings of power, suffered a somewhat bipartisan defeat in the Senate has been spared the prospect of becoming the first American president in history to be convicted only because a two-thirds majority is required rather than a simple majority.The final vote tally was 57-43. Seven Republicans turned on Trump: Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.However, Trump and his supporters are likely to claim victory again. The cloud of January gloom that descended on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in sunny Florida after seemingly endless defeats at the ballot box and in courts will have lifted a little. The historic debate that played out in the Senate last week is also the final proof positive of a claim made by his son, Donald Trump Jr, at the fateful rally before the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January: “This is Donald Trump’s Republican party!”If the chilling images of havoc that day – with police under attack and Vice-president Mike Pence, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mitt Romney narrowly escaping with their lives – were not sufficient to wrench the party from Trump’s grasp, then surely nothing is.Kurt Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide who switched allegiance to the Democrats, commented: “It’s a demonstration that his status as the leader of the Republican party is unchanged, even though the results of the election have shown that his agenda is a losing agenda for the Republican party.”One explanation is that senators’ actions are ultimately shaped by Republican state parties, which are ever more radically pro-Trump, and by grassroots supporters, who were not necessarily paying much attention to the trial.On Tuesday afternoon an average of 11 million viewers watched the opening arguments across five networks, according to CNN, rising to 12.4 million on Wednesday – a sliver of the US population. Notably, the pro-Trump Fox News’s ratings plummeted during the trial until it cut away to other subjects.In short, the evidence that was devastating to Trump’s reputation, and could harm his future political chances, was not necessarily seen by much of his “Make America great again” base.That is worth bearing in mind when considering whether or not Trump might take advantage of the fact that his ultimate acquittal will clear the way for him to run for president again in 2024.Some commentators believe the trial hammered a final nail in that possibility. Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, said: “No matter what the verdict of the senators, Trump is going to come out of this disgraced and his political career is over. He’s not going to be able to recover from this trial.”The Hill website reported that some Senate Republicans, including those intending to vote for acquittal, say the trial has “effectively ended any chance of him becoming the GOP presidential nominee in 2024”. It explained: “The emotional case presented by the House impeachment managers stung – and will likely lessen his influence in the Republican party.”Moreover, Trump faces business troubles, myriad court cases and time’s arrow: he would be 78 by election day and might find the lure of the golf course irresistible. He could instead play the role of kingmaker, inviting a series of Republican hopefuls to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring.[embedded content]On the other hand, the former president has made comments in the past suggesting that he might consider another run and the Hollywood drama of “the greatest comeback ever” would surely appeal. An Axios-Ipsos poll last month found that 57% of Republicans said Trump should be the party’s nominee in 2024.Bardella noted: “There are obviously a lot of legal landmines still out there that he’s going to have to overcome. You can never underestimate the ambition of other people in his own party who certainly are interested in being the next standard bearer of the party.“I believe that he will project the idea that he intends to run to maintain a certain level of power and position and fundraising, but what someone’s going to do two years from now is impossible to forecast.”It is certainly a threat that the Democrats take seriously. Their impeachment managers warned this week that, unless the Senate acts now to stop him, Trump could renew his assault on democracy. Lead manager Jamie Raskin said: “If he gets back into office and it happens again, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.”Indeed, Trump has always thrived on the principle that what does not kill him makes him stronger. The Russia investigation and his first impeachment over coercing Ukraine for political favors were both weaponized by him to convince supporters that he was the victim of a “witch-hunt” by the deep state.The second impeachment would surely form part of the same narrative. The clues were there in the arguments presented by Trump’s defense lawyers. Michael van der Veen described the trial as “a politically motivated witch-hunt” and an “unconstitutional act of political vengeance”.In what sounded like a potential passage from Trump’s reelection campaign launch in 2023, van der Veen added: “It is constitutional cancel culture. History will record this shameful effort as a deliberate attempt by the Democrat party to smear, censor and cancel, not just President Trump, but the 75 million Americans who voted for him.”Whatever Trump’s future plans, critics fear that a precedent has been set. The upshot of the trial – held at the very scene of the siege – is that a president can lie about an election and incite a riotous mob yet still not endure the ultimate sanction available to Congress. That is Trump’s dangerous legacy.Bardella added: “If you send a signal that someone who vocally led a violent insurrection against American democracy can do so without consequence, you’re only sending the message that he should do this again, that it’s OK: you are condoning that behavior.“And it’s not just Donald Trump. The people that perpetrated this are extreme and radical and will only see the Republicans like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio as partners in what will be an ongoing effort to continue to destabilise the democratic process.” More

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      The GOP representative at center of Trump impeachment trial drama

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      Jaime Herrera Beutler, the congresswoman for south-west Washington state at the center of last-minute drama at Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, has been a rare Republican supporter of the Democrat-led effort to convict the former president of “inciting violence against the government of the United States”.Herrera Beutler, who has served as a representative since 2011, made her support to impeach Trump known six days after the Capitol riot in early January. “The president of the United States incited a riot aiming to halt the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next,” Herrera Beutler said then.In the statement, Herrera Beutler described Republican leader Kevin McCarthy as “pleading with the president to go on television and call for an end to the mayhem, to no avail”.Late on Friday, Herrera Beutler went further, saying she was told by McCarthy that Trump initially sided with supporters. She urged Republican “patriots” to come forward and share what they know about the conversation in which Trump is alleged to have told McCarthy that rioters at the Capitol were “more upset about the election” than the congressional minority leader was.For a few tense hours it looked as if Herrera Beutler might upset the whole impeachment trial, as Democrats, backed by a handful of Republicans, suddenly decided she needed to be called as a witness – a move that would ensure Republicans would call witnesses too.But amid scenes of farce, chaos and frantic negotiations, a deal was struck to merely read Herrera Beutler’s statements into the record, in lieu of personal testimony. Suddenly, the prospect of weeks of lengthy witness testimony in the impeachment trial receded again.But the incident has focused senators to focus – even if briefly – on what Trump knew and when he knew it on the day of the riot, something that may leave a lingering impact on how the American public views the trial.Herrera Beutler first came to national attention in 2014, when then speaker John Boehner introduced her 13-month-old daughter Abigail, who has Potter’s syndrome, a rare condition in which a child is born without kidneys, to the legislative chamber with the Johns Hopkins doctor, Jessica Bienstock, who had helped save her life.Herrera Beutler later co-sponsored a bipartisan bill that would allow children on the Medicaid program with complex medical conditions to seek specialty care outside their coverage areas.She also drew attention as one of a growing number of women balancing motherhood and elected political life. At the time of her daughter’s birth, she was just the ninth lawmaker in history to have a baby while serving in Congress.Now again she is a rare politician: an eloquent voice in her Trumpist-dominated party, arguing for a return of the party to its pre-Trump values and standards of political life.In her 12 January statement on the Capitol riot, the congresswoman wrote: “I understand the argument that the best course is not to further inflame the country or alienate Republican voters. But I am also a Republican voter. I believe in our constitution, individual liberty, free markets, charity, life, justice, peace and this exceptional country. I see that my own party will be best served when those among us choose truth.” More

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      Five Republicans join vote for witnesses in Trump Senate trial – video

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      Five Senate Republicans voted with the Democrats on Saturday, that the Senate should call witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
      Before the 55-45 vote, Trump’s impeachment lawyer Michael van der Veen warned senators that if Democrats wished to call a witness, he would ask for at least 100 witnesses and insist they give depositions in person in his office in Philadelphia – a threat that prompted laughter from the chamber.
      Impeachment: five Republicans join vote for witnesses in Trump Senate trial More

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      For Trump, V is for victory – while his lawyers flick a V-sign our way | Richard Wolffe

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      You may have thought the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump was somehow connected to the fascist mob that staged an insurrection on Capitol Hill last month.According to Trump’s lawyers, you are clearly an idiot.In actual fact, the former president was impeached for using the word “fight” – a crime committed by everyone in Congress and a good number of other people you might know.Madonna, for instance. Johnny Depp too. Seriously, America. If it’s OK for Madonna to talk about fighting, or voguing, or being a material girl, what’s the big deal?If the star of Pirates of the Caribbean can talk about walking the gangplank or shivering his timbers, then who is to deny our beloved former president the right to also don an eyepatch and wave a cutlass in our general direction?There was lots of video on the day of the greatest Trump lawyering of all. Mostly the same video, played over and over again, sometimes two or three times in quick succession like a Max Headroom compilation of politicians saying the word “fight”.There was President Biden, and Vice-President Harris. There were a bunch of former Democratic presidential candidates. Also some House impeachment managers.The only challenge for Trump’s lawyers is that none of them led an insurrection. None of them urged a mob to storm Congress. None of them timed their fight song for the precise moment when elected officials were carrying out their constitutional duty to certify an election’s results.[embedded content]But we digress. Back to the best lawyering in the land, a veritable elite strike force of jurists not seen since the last one outside that landscaping business next to the sex shop in a particularly lovely corner of Philadelphia.The strike force featured a new striker. Not the bumbling, rambling Bruce Castor, or the endlessly pedantic David Schoen. No, this time Trump bestowed upon his historic impeachment trial a personal injury lawyer from – yes, you guessed it – Philadelphia. An ambulance chaser, best known in Philly for his radio ads, asking if you’ve tripped while walking down the street.“If the walkway isn’t clear, and you fall and get hurt due to snow and ice, call 215-546-1000 for Van der Veen, O’Neill, Hartshorn and Levin,” the ads say, according to the Washington Post. “The V is for Victory.”Last year Mr V was actually suing Trump for his unfounded claims about mail-in voter fraud. This year, he is not so much chasing the ambulance as driving it.First, Mr V claimed that Trump was encouraging his supporters to respect the electoral college count, not to “stop the steal” as the entire mob was screaming in front of him. Then he claimed that the first of the mob to be arrested was a lefty antifa stooge, not a Trumpy fascist thug.But mostly he claimed that he – and his client – were defending the constitution at the precise moment when they were burning it to crispy charcoal husk.OK, so the Trump mob unleashed violence to stop the constitutional counting of the electoral college votes. But the idea that Congress might stop Trump’s free-speech rights to whip up that mob is an outrageous, unconstitutional human rights abuse that threatens to silence all politicians everywhere.OK, so the Trump mob might have silenced Mike Pence permanently by hanging him on the gallows they built on the steps of Congress. But if Congress tries to stop a president from using a mob to intimidate Congress, where will it end?Pretty soon, Mr V argued, we won’t even have access to lawyers. The hallowed right to counsel, if not ambulance chasers, might be threatened. “Who would be next,” he asked, indignantly. “It could be anyone. One of you! Or one of you! It’s anti-American and sets a dangerous precedent forever.”To his great, sighing chagrin, Mr V lamented the state of political discourse. “Inflammatory rhetoric from our elected officials – from both sides of the aisle – has been alarming frankly,” he said, in sorrow, as if his client were just a hapless symptom of a bigger sickness: a pandemic of mean words from Democrats.“This is not whataboutism,” he declared, after rolling his whataboutist video for the second or third or fourth time. “I’m showing you this to show that all political speech must be protected.”The key to the defense was about incitement to violence and the legal test of Brandenburg v Ohio. Appropriately enough, the Brandenburg in question was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and the test – as Trump’s lawyers helpfully explained – was about whether the free speech in question “explicitly or implicitly encouraged the use of violence or lawless action”.“Mr Trump did the opposite of advocating for lawless action,” said Mr V. “The opposite!”The worst news of all was that Bruce Castor was at the microphone, pretending to be a half-decent lawyerThis is only true if it’s opposite day, when opposite means the opposite of opposite. As it happens, it was indeed just that day at the impeachment trial of our great defender of the constitution, free speech and peaceful politics.Which is why Mr V’s partner, the now legendary Bruce Castor, concluded the defense case. Castor explained that because he was the lead attorney in this legal shenanigan, he was going to take “the most substantive part” of the case for himself. That wasn’t to say, he added hastily, that his learned friends had done a bad job, oh no. The good news, he said, was that the case was almost over. The bad news was that it would take another hour for it to be over.The worst news of all was that Castor was at the microphone, pretending to be a half-decent lawyer.“Did the 45th president engage in incitement – they say insurrection,” began Castor. “Clearly there was no insurrection,” he continued, defining the word as “taking the TV stations over and having some idea of what you’re going to do when you take power”.As a description of the Trump presidency, that sounded pretty accurate. Unlike the part Castor read from his notes about Trump’s attitudes towards mobs in general.“By any measure,” the lawyer said in his most Trumpy way, “President Trump is the most pro-police, anti-mob president this country has ever seen.”From that point on, the defense case smooshed together some condemnation of the Black Lives Matter protests, some justification of Trump’s campaign to overturn the election results in Georgia, and some accusation of a supposed effort to disenfranchise Trump voters – who lost the election.Like so much else connected to the scrambled neural networks inside one Florida resident’s cranium, it made no sense. It was a radio echo bouncing around the cosmos from a distant star that collapsed into a black hole of disinformation and delusion long ago.“Spare us the hypocrisy and false indignation,” said Mr V, as he wrapped up another hypocritical and falsely indignant response to the same old video of Democrats saying fiery things.Now all we have left is the hypocrisy and false indignation of Republican senators who value their own careers above their own lives or the democracy that elected them. The V is for venal. More