In an historic vote Wednesday, the U.S. Senate acquitted President Trump on both Articles of Impeachment.
Falling far short of the necessary two-thirds majority needed to expel a sitting president, Trump was acquitted 52-48 on the House of Representatives’ Article One charge of “abuse of power.” On Article Two charge of “obstruction of Congress” the President was exonerated by a vote of 53-47.
The vote was along party lines, with sole exception of Republican Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), who joined with Democrats to convict President Trump on Article One’s allegation on “abuse of power.”
Moments after the roll call votes were recorded on each article, the Senate adjourned.
RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a statement “Today’s vote to acquit President Trump ends the latest political witch hunt, a dark moment in our nation’s history, that wasted millions of taxpayer dollars.”
“Once again, Democrats have failed in their quest to erase the votes of 63 million Americans and destroy a duly-elected President. The American people won today, but they will not forget the division that Democrats brought upon our country for three years,” she said. “This November, voters will hold Democrats accountable at the ballot box and vote to re-elect President Trump and Republicans across the board.”
Trump 2020 Campaign Manager Brad Parscale said this vote “totally vindicated” the president, and called on Congress to “get back to the business of the American people.”
“The do-nothing Democrats know they can’t beat him, so they had to impeach him,” he said. This terrible ordeal was always a campaign tactic to invalidate the 2016 votes of 63 million Americans and was a transparent effort to interfere with the 2020 election only nine months away.”
“And since the President’s campaign only got bigger and stronger as a result of this nonsense, this impeachment hoax will go down as the worst miscalculation in American political history,” he concluded.
President Trump reacted to the news on Twitter by posting a “Trump 2020” meme made famous in 2019 depicting the incumbent Republican’s re-election through 2048 and beyond.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2020
The White House issued a heated statement in reaction to the Senate’s “not guilty” verdict:
Today, the sham impeachment attempt concocted by Democrats ended in the full vindication and exoneration of President Donald J. Trump. As we have said all along, he is not guilty. The Senate voted to reject the baseless articles of impeachment, and only the President’s political opponents – all Democrats, and one failed Republican presidential candidate – voted for the manufactured impeachment articles.
In what has now become a consistent tradition for Democrats, this was yet another witch-hunt that deprived the President of his due process rights and was based on a series of lies. Rep. Adam Schiff lied to Congress and the American people with a totally made up statement about the President’s phone call. Will there be no retribution? Speaker Nancy Pelosi also lied to the American people about the need to swiftly pass impeachment articles they dreamt up, only to sit on them for a month before sending over to the Senate. In the Senate, the Democrats continued to make their political motivations clear – Rep. Schiff proclaimed the issues “cannot be decided at the ballot box” – proving once again they think they know better than the voters of this country. This entire effort by the Democrats was aimed at overturning the results of the 2016 election and interfering with the 2020 election.
Throughout this wholly corrupt process, President Trump successfully advanced the interests of the United States and remained focused on the issues that matter to Americans. He spent his time achieving real victories for the people of this country, and the Democrats – once again – have nothing to show for their fraudulent schemes. The President is pleased to put this latest chapter of shameful behavior by the Democrats in the past, and looks forward to continuing his work on behalf of the American people in 2020 and beyond.
The impeachment process began in September when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced an inquiry into Trump allegedly withholding military funds to Ukraine. In December, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach the president.
The acquittal did not totally surprise me. My gut instinct told me that the Democrat leadership’s failure to broaden the scope of the impeachment to include far more serious charges such as killing Americans merely suspected of criminal activity without due process, detaining those mere suspected of terrorism without charging them (Guantanimo), allowing Israel’s AIPAC to rig U.S. elections (far more serious than anything that Russia was alleged to have done), inciting mob violence against marginalized populations, and so forth, doomed the impeachment effort to failure from the start. Maybe the Democrats feared that broadening the charges to these far more serious offenses would also have implicated previous presidents from BOTH parties going all the way back to Truman–or even all the way back to Wilson.
By wasting all this time on impeachment for a trivial alleged offence of letting Russia intimidate the Ukraine, the Democrats squandered their mandate. When people elected them in 2018, it was to deal with gripping domestic issues like affordable health care and to fight global warming–not to waste time on trumped up impeachment efforts!
Trump is creating jobs and killing terrorists. Obama created terrorists and killed jobs.