Democrats have failed miserably in their last-ditch effort to punish President Donald Trump after Republicans defeated the ridiculous impeachment effort created by House Democrats.
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) proposed the idea of censuring President Trump instead of voting to remove him. According to Manchin, a “bipartisan majority of this body would vote to censure President Trump.” But let’s be honest, Manchin represents a red state, it would give him the ability to punish the President without having to vote to remove him.
Manchin said, “Censure would allow this body to unite across party lines and as an equal branch of government to formally denounce the President’s actions and hold him accountable. The most dangerous, the most troubling to me, is the false claim that the President can do no wrong, that he is above the law and if it’s good for the reelection of the President that it’s good for our country. That is simply preposterous.”
Senator Chuck Schumer was quick to shut the idea down, “Mitch McConnell — we cannot bring it up in the Senate trial. He has the ability to bring it up afterwards. He won’t. But for most of us, and just about all of us, he should be convicted and we don’t want a halfway measure. I think the reason McConnell doesn’t want to bring it on the floor is our Republican colleagues — so many of them — are so afraid of even saying he was wrong that they don’t want to have a vote on it.”
Senators Lamar Alexander, Collins, and Murkowski disagree. They all have said they don’t accept how the President handles the situation with Ukraine.
Republican Senator Susan Collins said, “I considered censure. If the House had started with a censure resolution, instead of leaping to impeachment and shortcutting the process and skipping over judicial adjudication, it’s something I would have looked at. At this point, the fact is the President has been impeached — and only (the) third president to actually be impeached in history — both Republican senators such as myself and Democratic senators have criticized his conduct, strikes me as a reprimand.”
Republicans are confident that there is no chance at all that the Senate will censure President Trump.
