Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 08:55 pm
While it’s hard to envision a scenario in which the GOP-controlled Senate votes to remove Donald Trump from office, there is a growing possibility that a handful of Republicans in the upper chamber could still side with the Democrats.
As MSNBC political contributor Jason Johnson pointed out on Monday, Trump’s impeachment messaging has been a disaster and it’s making it more likely that a substantial number of Republican senators will vote to convict and remove Trump.
“You could see five, six, seven, eight senators – Republican senators – make symbolic votes for impeachment because the president can’t explain himself and they’re tired of taking arrows for him,” he said.
Video:
.@DrJasonJohnson calls Trump’s impeachment messaging a disaster that’s pushing Republicans away from him. #ctl #p2 pic.twitter.com/FBAa0PvFKx
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) October 29, 2019
Johnson said:
Twenty-four hours ago, the president was crowing about the fact that he defeated ISIS. We’re not talking about that anymore. By Thursday, we’re going to be talking about the pre-impeachment vote. Politically and communications wise, Nancy Pelosi is, for once, running circles around him. And the problem is if the president can’t figure out a way to change this narrative, not only is he obviously probably going to lose the impeachment vote in the House, but he will lose support in the Senate. And the real question is not going to be whether or not he gets removed. I don’t think that happens. But if this continues to go back from a messaging standpoint, you could see five, six, seven, eight senators, Republican senators, make symbolic votes for impeachment because the president can’t explain himself and they’re tired of taking arrows for him.
A severe blow to Trump’s reelection chances
Just because enough Senate Republicans are likely to side with Trump and save him from being removed from office via the impeachment process, it doesn’t mean that the vote wouldn’t be severely damaging – perhaps fatally so – to his reelection chances.
To be sure, if and when the Senate fails to get the 67 votes needed to convict and remove Trump from office, the president will make the argument that he was acquitted – aka fully exonerated!
But if even four Republican U.S. senators break against Trump and side with the 47 Democratic and Independent senators, Democrats will have a powerful argument ahead of 2020: A bipartisan majority of lawmakers in both the House of Representatives and the Senate support the impeachment and removal of the sitting president of the United States.
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