Republican senators are finding it difficult to defend president Donald Trump against Democrats charges of criminal activities.
Asked by the media if Trump committed a crime, Ohio senator Rob Portman said he believed what Trump did in regards to withholding aid to Ukraine and asking that country to investigate his political opponent, was wrong but he could not see why he should be removed from office.
“Some of the things that were done were not appropriate… but that’s a very different question than removing someone from office who was duly elected in the middle of a presidential election,” Sen. Portman said.
Other Republican senators simply want to end the trial as quickly as possible. Texas senator John Cornyn said extending the trial will stall everything else in the U.S. Senate.
“There’d be nothing else we could do in the interim. It would basically hijack the senate. In the meantime, the Senate can’t do anything else; we can’t confirm judges, we can’t have hearings, we can’t even introduce legislation.”
Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming argued that he would hear it from his constituents at home if he allows the trial to continue.
“Every day we spend doing this, we’re not doing — I’m a doctor. I want to lower the cost of insulin. I want to deal with this surprise medical billings issue. … But because we’re stuck with this, and the longer you are going, and the longer you’re dealing with witnesses, the harder it is to get to the things that I hear about in Wyoming.”
But Democrat House Manager Adam Schiff of California reminded the Republican senators what is at stake in the trial.
Truth. And right.
“If right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is,” Schiff said. “If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.”
