Dear Senator Sullivan,
It appears that you have already made up your mind to vote to acquit ex-President Trump. I don't understand that decision, which most of the Republican Senators seem determined to make. But this is critically important so I will give you the view of one of your constituents on why you should vote too convict.
As a young man, I listened to most of the Watergate Hearings on the radio. Let me begin with this quote from Howard Baker, Republican Vice Chair of the Watergate Investigation:
“There's only one way that my party, the Republican Party could be mortally wounded with certainty and that would be for the public to think that we Republicans don’t have the courage, the stamina, the determination to clean our own house."
I've watched four days of impeachment hearings now. It's clear that the House team made a tight, detailed, well organized, factual case against the ex-president. They clearly showed how his actions, since well before the election even, set up the mob that ransacked the Capitol. They showed how he created the big lie - "if I lose, the election was a fraud." After the election he kept up that refrain - and presented no credible evidence in 61 courts. All the judges rejected his cases out of hand. Not just Republican judges, but judges Trump himself appointed!
Then he tried to intimidate Republican election officials in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia into decertifying the elections. He told the Georgia head of elections to just find enough votes to let him win!
Then he started telling his supporters to "Stop The Steal." He encouraged them many times to prevent Biden from becoming president.
Not only was the evidence they presented overwhelming, but for anyone paying attention to legitimate news the last six months, it was all stuff we knew already. You yourself related how you and Sen. Murkowski sprinted out of the Chamber because the insurgents were knocking out the windows and banging on the doors where the House and Senate were certifying the election.
Trump's defense attorneys made feeble attempts to reiterate their claim that "impeaching a private citizen was unconstitutional." But we know he was impeached while he was a sitting president. We also know that judges and other officers have been convicted after they resigned.
They argued that his First Amendment rights were violated. They dismissed the letter from over 100 top Constitutional lawyers, including key people from the Federalist Society, as "partisan." It wasn't. I'm guessing by your question today, that you will choose "You can't impeach a private citizen" as your fig leaf to cover your vote. It's transparent. It won't cover what you're trying to hide.
They played five minutes of video tape of every time any Democrat had ever said "Fight" arguing that the ex-president saying it numerous times in his pre-rampage speech was equivalent. The House team put the ex-president's words into context. Trump's team did not. Instead they tried to make it seem that telling people to fight for equal justice for African-Americans who are regularly being harassed and killed by police is the same as telling an armed mob to take the Capitol and stop the certification of the election by violence.
Some have argued that the Senate Republicans are suffering from the political version of Battered Woman Syndrome. I assume that you know about this syndrome since you have championed the ending of abuse against women. But let me remind you of some of the symptoms:
- learned helplessness
- refusing to leave the relationship
- believing that the abuser is powerful or knows everything
- idealizing the abuser following a cycle of abuse
- believing they deserve the abuse
Here's what some key Republicans said of Trump in 2016:
"On the campaign trail, Rand called Trump a “delusional narcissist” and a “fake conservative,” and Trump mocked his height. Rubio mocked Trump’s small hand size and called Trump a “con artist,” and Trump eviscerated “Lil Marco.” Graham said Trump was a “kook,” “crazy,” and “unfit for office,” and Trump gave out Graham’s personal cellphone number on national television. Cruz said Trump was a “pathological liar,” a “narcissist,” and a “serial philanderer,” and Trump and basically called Cruz’s wife ugly—while accusing Cruz’s dad of being involved in the Kennedy assassination." (from The Daily Beast.)
You yourself said you were ready to support Pence as the candidate and you publicly said you didn't vote for Trump in 2016.
Yet all these Republican Senators, including yourself, have lined up to staunchly back Trump for four years, and the now the ex-president.
The battered woman syndrome does seem to fit well in two particular ways.
- Often women are afraid to get out of relationships because they fear how their men will retaliate.
- Or they are afraid they can't afford, for economic reasons, to leave the relationship.
That sounds pretty close to the situation of Senate Republicans. You're afraid of retaliation by Trump and by his supporters and you are afraid of losing the economic support of Republicans in your next election.
You've taken an oath to support the Constitution both as a Marine and as a US Senator. You're allowing your personal interests and the peer pressure of your Republican colleagues to close your eyes to what that oath requires of you now. The case against the ex-president is more than clear. Trump's defense team was all smoke and mirrors.
There is more to life than being a US Senator if that is the price for honoring your oath to office. But you aren't up for reelection until 2026. By then, voting to convict Trump will be respected by conservatives as well as progressives. Or Trump will be using his acquittal to continue to claim he was robbed of the election and will still be stoking the fires of white supremacy and creating more havoc than you can imagine now. Just as you didn't imagine the storming of the Capitol when you voted to acquit last time.
The American people know Trump should be publicly sanctioned and banned from office. The world knows that. And even if Republicans prevent conviction, the House's case is well preserved on video tape for future generations of Americans to see it for themselves in history classes. And they will. Your children and grandchildren will see it. And they will know you didn't have the courage to honor your oaths to protect the Constitution. They will realize that you grabbed some of the irrelevant sound bytes that Trump's lawyers offered Republicans to use to excuse their votes.
I urge you to stop hiding and stand up front and proudly and deliberately cast your vote (mine too since you represent me in the Senate) to convict Donald Trump.
Thank you
Appreciate your effort, Steve, but Sen. Dan is quite an Exhibit A as to why there could be no trial conviction, in this, Trump's second impeachment.
ReplyDeletePerhaps these Senators just don't see it; perhaps they are simply afraid of a man who can turn out 74 million voters across their home states. Yet as I dropped in and out of today's news, it appears Senators Collins and Murkowski created an opening for what later today became a successful vote on calling witnesses on a critical question: "When did President Trump know of the Capitol riot and what then did he do to stop it?"
There now seems some hope of a real trial possibly bringing Republicans to actually weigh evidence of Trump's complicity in an effort to shut down the certification of the Electoral College. We shall see if this can be enough, or not nearly enough, to help seventeen Republicans consider conviction.
But we should not mistake what is going on as a 'jury trial'; it is not. It is a political floor debate and as it will be decided by Senators voting first, for their political futures. This vote will boil down to this: What voters decide is right, so to gain their favour.
UPDATE: Well, that hope didn't last long! The Senate has decided NOT to take live testimony (likely to speed up what some would rather be done with). This, of course, obviously means that (in the huddles) there isn't the will to change votes enough, or at all.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid the US Senate will leave Trump to play another day and only a future shift in his followers will change his plans to make another run.
Unless there's another twist, of course. We can hope.
Steve, you've raised this point in the past -- concern about how the internet doesn't print it accounts/corrections as a newspaper does -- and here it comes home to roost (citing commentary in the coverage of today's trial in the US Senate):
ReplyDeleteCharlie Savage, Washington Correspondent:
This point that the House managers reconstructing an image of Trump’s tweets equals them fabricating evidence is so weak upon a moment’s inspection. Twitter has taken down Trump’s tweets so none can be simply printed out from the website anymore; all now have to be reconstructed.
Well, I counted the votes as they were read and a Senate majority held firm: a 57-43 majority -- yet an acquittal given 2/3rd majority needed. I'm afraid we can get what we vote for: The Republican Party's vote today is proof that it has been transformed by passions that make no one safe -- except Donald J Trump. What a blow this is to a democracy now in peril.
ReplyDeleteAs for Sen. Murkowski? She can expect another bruising battle as her reward.
The grave of progress.
ReplyDelete