What happened today? The Senate voted to acquit Trump on both articles of impeachment, rejecting the House’s charges that he should be removed from office for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The vote on abuse of power failed 48-52. Sen. Mitt Romney was the lone Republican to vote in favor of the abuse of power charge. The second article, obstruction of Congress, also failed, 47-53 along party-lines. Ahead of the vote, Romney called Trump “guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust […] What the president did was wrong — grievously wrong.” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham claimed Trump’s acquittal was a “full vindication and exoneration” and that “only the president’s political opponents – all Democrats, and one failed Republican presidential candidate – voted for the manufactured impeachment articles.” The acquittal concludes five months of hearings and investigations into Trump’s withholding of U.S. military aid from Ukraine and pressuring of its leaders to investigate his Democratic rivals. A handful of Senate Republicans — Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski — argued that while the House had proven its case and that Trump’s actions were wrong, they ultimately concluded that the charges did not merit removing Trump from office. Collins said she thinks Trump learned a “pretty big lesson” from the impeachment process and said she believes he will be “much more cautious in the future.” Trump, however, has continued to insist that he did nothing wrong and that his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a “perfect phone call.” He sent nearly 700 tweets or retweets about impeachment – an average of more than five per day – since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened the inquiry in September. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it “a sad moment for democracy,” but that there’s a “giant asterisk” next to Trump’s acquittal because “he was acquitted without facts, he was acquitted without a fair trial.”
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2020/02/05/day-1112/
