Has the GOP really been stuck with Trump because McConnell miscounted the impeachment vote? He's a genuine coward because he couldn't bring himself to do the right thing when the choice was the moral high ground or power. Powe trumps everything for Mitch.
Mitch McConnell thought the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol would finally vanquish Donald Trump, initially predicting that at least 17 Republican senators would vote to convict him in his impeachment trial, barring the former president from running again.
He was wrong.
McConnell’s miscalculation is one of the new details reported in the latest book on the chaotic end of the Trump presidency, “This Will Not Pass” by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.
In the weekend following the riot in early January 2021, McConnell is described by the authors as “in a lather, using profanity to refer to Trump,” and outlining what he saw as his “imminent demise.” “McConnell told his advisers there would be at least 17 Senate Republicans ready to affirm Trump’s impeachment, supplying the two-thirds vote needed to convict,” Martin and Burns write.
But just a month later when the unprecedented second impeachment trial of Trump unfolded with him out of office and kicked off of Twitter, just seven GOP senators voted for Trump’s conviction and McConnell wasn’t even one of them.
The head-snapping change in the Kentuckian’s mindset is a vivid illustration of how he ultimately chose the preservation of his own power over damning condemnation of the man he said was “practically and morally responsible” for the Capitol attack. In the end, when McConnell saw most of his party falling into line with Trump, he wasn’t going to be out of step.
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