The House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to impeach President Trump for “incitement of insurrection,” making him the first president in American history to have been impeached twice.
The vote comes exactly one week after Trump incited a mob of his followers to storm the U.S Capitol in a violent insurrection that left five people dead. The resolution passed by a vote of 232-197. House Republicans overwhelmingly opposed the measure, though 10 did join with Democrats to vote that a president who encourages his followers and his party to overthrow a U.S. election is no longer eligible for office.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reportedly believes Trump committed impeachable offenses, but has said that he will not bring the issue to the Senate before Joe Biden’s inauguration next week, meaning that, barring his unlikely resignation, Trump will serve out the remainder of his term. The Senate could still hold a trial to convict Trump after he has left office.
This is the second time Trump has been impeached in just over a year. The House voted 230 to 197 to impeach him in December of 2019 following his campaign to pressure the Ukrainian government into launching a public investigation into Joe Biden, then one of the frontrunners to challenge Trump’s bid for reelection.
But the Senate did not subsequently vote to convict Trump, and only one Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), voted in favor of removing him from office. The inability or unwillingness of the other Republicans to recognize the danger Trump posed to the nation proved costly, to say the least. It won’t be long before half of a million Americans will have died from complications stemming from Covid-19, which the president steadfastly refused to take seriously even as it ravaged the nation. Trump has also waged an all-out war on representative democracy since losing the election to Biden in November, culminating in the deadly storming of the Capitol last Wednesday.
From Rolling Stone US
