WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump railed behind closed doors about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to delay sending articles of impeachment to the Republican-controlled Senate, putting an expected trial in limbo.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a staunch Trump GOP ally, emerged from a White House meeting with the president with a message.
“He is demanding his day in court," Graham said in an interview on Fox News Channel Thursday evening. “I just left President Trump. He's mad as hell that they would do this to him and now deny him his day in court." The White House did not immediately respond to questions about his account.
Trump has seen a Senate trial as his means for vindication, viewing acquittal as a partial antidote to impeachment's stain on his legacy. But that effort has been threatened by Pelosi's decision to delay sending the articles approved by the House Wednesday to the Senate until, she says, Republican leaders offer more details about how they will handle an expected trial.
“So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,” she said late Wednesday, dropping a surprise procedural bombshell just after the House cast its historic votes making Trump only the third president in the nation's history to be impeached. House Democrats had argued for weeks that Trump’s impeachment was needed “urgently" to protect the nation.
Democrats do not have enough votes in the GOP-controlled Senate to convict Trump and remove him from office, but have been pushing for a trial to include witnesses who declined to appear during House committee hearings, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.
Trump, meanwhile, has been hoping the trial will serve as an opportunity for vindication, and continues to talk about parading his own witness list, including former Vice President and 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden, even though there is little appetite for that among Senate leaders.
“The reason the Democrats don’t want to submit the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate is that they don’t want corrupt politician Adam Shifty Schiff to testify under oath, nor do they want the Whistleblower, the missing second Whistleblower, the informer, the Bidens, to testify!" Trump tweeted late Thursday.
Indeed, pro-Trump blogging has been whining loud and long over process, in the House. That recognition by Republican spokespersons fits hand-in-glove with Pelosi showing due caution that the Senate's deliberations not be subject to any comparable critique from Democrats.
Wisdom is as it does. With Trump and all his GOP men bleating about an "unfair" House dog and pony show this way, that way, all ways; Pelosi is wise in not wanting to see a revenge act: an unconstrained Dog and Pony by Mitch.
Commonsense: November 2020 is close enough that each of the stranglehold two parties should cease dominating things and let voters decide, by ballot, whether it be four more years, or ouster, a procedure that would hold intact, no president has been impeached AND removed from office over the nation's history, from Constitutional adoption, to now.
A caveat: If we could only get the millions of cqampaign slush out of things, voter decision would be an even more reliable alternative. Billionaires should not buy American elections; it is un-American to allow that.
LAST: From the opening of that AP item, it is clear that someone should show the kindness to sit with Sen. Lindsey Graham and explain to him the difference between his narrow-margin GOP Senate and "a day in court."
There is not a congruence. They differ.
Or did Lindsey not care about careful speech, with his only aim being to deliberately muddy the water, (the Senate swamp water), for partisan effect and appearances?