WASHINGTON — The impeachment trial of Donald Trump will likely be short and almost certainly result in an acquittal. Yet Democrats still view it as an opportunity to not only repudiate the actions of the former president, but drive a larger wedge inside the Republican Party.
While some Democrats are eager to advance President Joe Biden’s agenda, others see next week’s high-profile Senate trial as an opening to force the GOP to reckon with Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, an event Republican leaders desperately want to move past.
“I think there’s a false choice between accountability and progress,” said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. “We can’t just sweep it under the rug now. Republicans are trying to change the subject.”
Even though the Trump-inspired riot at the U.S. Capitol occurred just one month ago, attention in Washington has mostly shifted to the new administration, as Biden has moved swiftly to fill his Cabinet, sign a flurry of executive orders and negotiate a COVID-19 relief package.
The trial, set to begin Tuesday, will bring the storming of the Capitol back to the forefront, allowing Democrats to lay out the most complete and detailed case yet of how the events of Jan. 6 unfolded, particularly since so much of the chaos was captured on video. House impeachment managers applied additional pressure this week by asking Trump to testify under oath, a request the former president quickly denied.
“We must stay on message and let it be known what happened. And I really don’t think people have heard in a coherent manner without replays without commentary, what happened in chronological order,” said Clay Middleton, a Democratic National Committee member from South Carolina. “The issue may be, what does the court of public opinion feel about this at the end of the day?”
After 45 out of 50 Republican senators voted to dismiss the trial as unconstitutional last week, Democrats will be hard-pressed to find at least 17 GOP votes necessary to convict Trump, regardless of the evidence presented.
“It would be a huge mistake for us to say, because the jury pool is somewhat rigged, we’re not going to do what the Constitution calls on us to do, which is hold the trial and render judgment,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon.
As Republicans have struggled to find their footing since their 2020 election losses, most have determined that while Trump is broadly unpopular, they can’t risk alienating his most fervent supporters if they want to return to power in the near future.
That may prevent Democrats from persuading GOP lawmakers during the trial, but they think they will have better luck with the general public.
Entering the trial, polling has suggested the public narrowly favors convicting Trump. A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday found that 50% of Americans support a Senate conviction, compared with 45% in opposition. The divide is mostly partisan, but independents favor conviction by 4 percentage points.
The survey also found that three-quarters of Americans said they are concerned about continued violence by extremist groups emboldened by the insurrection.
“Given that so much is in the open, it seems fair and reasonable to me to spend a week on this before moving to a final vote,” said Jim Manley, who was an aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “I see little downside for that.”
While the 2022 midterm election is more than 20 months away, Democrats have already tried to seize on the public’s sentiment. The Wisconsin Democratic Party aired ads last month calling on GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, who is up for reelection next year, to resign in the wake of the Capitol riot and criticizing GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher for voting against impeaching Trump. Wikler, the state party chairman, said they are planning a similar round of ads during the trial.
Democrats argue that since the events of Jan. 6 occurred mostly in public view, the party has a much more straightforward case to make this time around compared to the first impeachment trial, when Trump was accused of pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.
Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster who worked on Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, compared the Capitol riot to other moments when Trump and the GOP at large experienced a severe drop in public opinion, including the "Access Hollywood" tape during the 2016 campaign, his handling of violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and his policies that separated migrant children from their families in 2018.
Trump and his party rebounded by various degrees after those events, so the challenge for Democrats will be making his role in the Capitol riot stick in the long term. Trump will continue to play a major role in shaping the direction of the GOP while out of office and may run for president again in 2024.
“This is a very different dynamic than the first impeachment trial,” Tulchin said. “I’m not sure how long the shelf life will be, but in the near-term and the midterms, it will be helpful. And it’s the right thing to do.”
Still, some Democrats worry that even the most effective arguments at the trial won’t do much to sway the public if Trump walks away without any sort of further punishment and can claim victory, like he did when he avoided conviction in the first trial one year ago.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., floated the idea of censuring the former president, but acknowledged the proposal doesn’t have enough support from members of either party. A censure would only require support from a simple majority in the Senate.
“I’m very worried about going through this trial and having the punch line at the end being 'Trump acquitted again,'” Kaine told reporters this week.
Senate Republican leaders have warned that Biden is unlikely to receive confirmation votes for his Cabinet nominees during a trial, which could stretch several weeks, depending on the number of witnesses the former president’s legal team decides to call to testify. Trump’s 2020 trial lasted 21 days.
Former Montana Sen. Max Baucus said Democrats would be wise to adopt the Kaine approach of censure, but at the minimum dispense with the trial swiftly.
“It’s clear that Trump will not be convicted. If that’s the case, I think the Democrats should proceed but with a truncated short trial. Make the case, don’t go into great detail, have the vote and get it behind them,” Baucus said. “Democrats in Congress should get it over with as quickly as possible. Strip off the Band-Aid.”
