Donald Trump is the one on trial in the Senate next week, but his party may face its own reckoning in the court of public opinion. Sure, it was the former president who did the most to stir up last month’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol—but he wasn’t the only one pushing bogus election fraud claims or whipping up the mob’s passions before the riot. There were also MAGA muckety-mucks like his son, Donald Trump Jr., and his right hand man, Rudy Giuliani, and elected officials like Mo Brooks and Madison Cawthorn—all of whom also spoke at the so-called “Stop the Steal” rally January 6. And then there were those, from Mitch McConnell on down, who have tried to distance somewhat from Trump since the siege, but who, in enabling him for four years and waiting over a month to acknowledge Joe Biden’s clear victory, helped set the stage for it.
In a concrete sense, Trump’s second impeachment trial isn’t going to change anything. Republicans seem highly unlikely to convict him, and even if they did, he’s already out of office. But Democrats prosecuting the former president will be able to do something important next week: To painstakingly lay out Trump’s grave misconduct and the GOP’s complicity in it, in a straightforward and emotionally charged case that could put a lasting stain on both the former president and his enablers. “The Democrats have a very emotional and compelling case,” former Trump strategist Steve Bannon conceded to Politico. “They’re going to try to convict him in the eyes of the American people and smear him forever.”
Seeking to avoid that fate, Republicans and Trump’s legal team have settled on a defense strategy: Try at all costs to keep the focus off the riot, the very event that precipitated the trial, in favor of talk of Democratic bias and narrow constitutional questions, including whether a president can be impeached after he’s left office. “We don’t need to focus on January 6 because this is unconstitutional,” a person familiar with the strategy told Politico. “There’s a lot of legal technical arguments that are going to be discussed.”
That, itself, is a dubious argument; while there isn’t a consensus among legal experts, a majority appear to believe it is perfectly constitutional to impeach an ex-president. But even if that or some balderdash about Democrats threatening Trump’s First Amendment rights held water, a strategy predicated on not talking about the very subject of the trial seems desperate and destined to fail. As my colleague Chris Smith reported Thursday, Jamie Raskin and the other House impeachment managers have been building a case against Trump combining both visceral video clips and incriminating statements and social media posts, drawing a direct line between what he and his allies said and the riot at the Capitol. “It’s much more tangible and understandable and more vivid for the senators who were there on January 6, and for the American public who watched it all unfold on television,” said Daniel Goldman, the attorney who represented House Democrats in Trump’s first impeachment a little over a year ago. “You will see a more emotional, powerful, compelling presentation.”
That may not bring about Trump’s conviction, but it could certainly dim his future political prospects and add another layer to the GOP’s identity crisis. The party this week made clear that the kind of extremism represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene, while forcefully condemned by some in its ranks, is nevertheless part of the Republican brand. Trump’s trial next week will be a potent reminder of the real-world cost incurred by embracing that kind of radicalism. “A party needs to have some level of principles or visions that defines it,” the GOP consultant Brendan Buck told the Washington Post. “It can’t purely be a vehicle for grievance and entertainment, and that is what it has become.”
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