Trump may discredit an impeachment trial designed to acquit him

Source: NBC News | January 17, 2020 | Jonathan Allen

Analysis: The president is raising the stakes of his impeachment at exactly the moment Republicans want him to quietly walk away with a win.

WASHINGTON — As his impeachment trial opens Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s instinct for creating chaos represents an imminent threat to Senate Republicans’ ability to protect him, and themselves.

That is, the more Trump discredits the Senate during his trial, the more he discredits an outcome engineered to help him now and as he seeks re-election.

For Republicans, the challenge is to acquit Trump while using the trappings of the Senate to present as much of a patina of high-minded fairness and objectivity as possible. And no venue in American politics is more aptly designed to preserve his power than a Senate that has perfected the art of smothering justice with solemnity.

Likewise, no one in the modern Senate is better at working the rules and the Republican members of the Senate than Trump’s ally, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has made no secret of his desire to deliver an acquittal of the president as swiftly, and with as little fanfare, as possible.

McConnell’s strategy is fairly simple: If the outcome is a foregone conclusion — and it will be without a massive shift in circumstances — there’s no reason to call extra attention to that fact or give House Democratic prosecutors any extra opportunity to present politically damaging information to the Senate and the public.

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But Trump’s own treatment of his trial so far — his Twitter rants, his public statements and his appointment of a television dramedy cast of lawyers to represent him — suggests deep trepidation on his part about the prospect of cutting his losses so far and walking away with the win of a quiet acquittal. Instead, he appears to be spoiling for the kind of high-profile fight — a trash-talking, institution-bashing, circus-like demonstration of raw muscle — that threatens to expose the inequity of a politically driven trial controlled by his own party.

One tension point is that Republican senators in tight re-election races want as little attention to the trial as possible, because it inherently challenges their ability to stoke their political bases while attracting crossover votes from Democrats. Meanwhile, Trump typically sees his best political tactic as raising the stakes of any confrontation with adversaries.

Ever since House Democrats impeached him last month, more evidence surrounding Trump’s Ukraine scandal has emerged, including text messages the House obtained from Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, that appear to show surveillance of then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. If Trump is eventually acquitted, new revelations between now and then that support an impeachment article alleging he withheld federal aid to Ukraine to secure that country’s help in his re-election campaign are not helpful to Senate Republicans who vote in his favor.

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This time, Trump needs one of Washington’s institutions to work for him. If he turns it into a circus, he may undermine the credibility of its verdict even with persuadable voters. And that’s the real danger he faces over the coming weeks and months.

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