Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 12:28 pm
While the House of Representatives is all but certain to make Donald Trump the first president to be impeached twice, it isn’t clear what will happen on the Senate side of the equation.
New reporting Tuesday sheds some light on what could be unfolding in the Senate, and it shows that Sen. Mitch McConnell likes the idea of impeachment as a way of purging Trump from the GOP.
As CNN also reported, McConnell’s silence on where he would stand on a potential conviction vote speaks volumes. After all, he was a vocal opponent of the first effort to impeach and remove Trump.
If McConnell did eventually come around and voice his support for the current effort, he could bring along enough Republican support to convict Trump.
“Several GOP sources said on Tuesday that if McConnell supports conviction, Trump almost certainly will be convicted by 67 senators in the impeachment trial,” CNN reported.
“If Mitch is a yes, he’s done,” said one GOP source, according to the report.
More from CNN:
McConnell has made no commitments on voting to convict Trump, and wants to see the article itself before voting. It’s a stark contrast to the President’s first impeachment when McConnell repeatedly spoke out against Democratic intentions to hold Trump accountable for a pressure campaign on the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his family.
…
Many Republican senators are staying quiet about whether they’ll back conviction — a sign that they, too, could support conviction in an effort to rid Trump from their party.
On her program on Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow also said that her view on whether the Senate has the Republican votes to convict Trump has changed drastically over the past 24 hours.
“There may very well be enough votes in the United States Senate to convict President Trump and remove him from office,” Maddow said.
Video:
Rachel Maddow says new reporting suggests that “there may very well be enough votes in the United States Senate to convict President Trump and remove him from office.” #maddow pic.twitter.com/JtRZ3SDkrB
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) January 13, 2021
McConnell can put the final nail in Trump’s political coffin
Given the fact that Democrats control the House of Representatives, it’s almost a guarantee that they will have enough votes to impeach Donald Trump.
What’s different this time around is that the impeachment effort is bipartisan, with reportedly as many as two dozen House Republicans – including Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) – planning to vote for impeachment.
The impeachment process is moving quickly and there are a lot of unknowns about how it will ultimately play out, particularly when it reaches the U.S. Senate.
One thing is growing increasingly clear, however: Mitch McConnell has the power to put the final nail in Donald Trump’s political coffin.
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