There was a time when it could be argued that the key to the immense power that Donald Trump treasured, who really decided what to do and what not to do, passed through the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell. This Tuesday, the senator from Kentucky intoned a devastating “I accuse you” by pointing his finger at Trump and holding him responsible for spurring on the crowd that stormed the Capitol on the 6th and left five dead on their way to the attack on American democracy .
If at the opening of the session in November after the presidential election, McConnell broke with tradition and refused to acknowledge the victory of Joe Biden, arguing that the president had the right to go to court and that there was nothing wrong with waiting for have a winner, this Tuesday the Republican declared in that same House that “the mob was fed with lies.” “It was caused by the president and other powerful people.” The rupture between the two men has been sealed and the opportunism of the political veteran more in sight than ever.
“They tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific procedure in the first establishment of the Federal Government because they did not like it. But we persevere, ”McConnell declared on the last full day of Donald Trump’s presidency before Biden is sworn in on a Capitol – and a city – militarized and under siege for security reasons.
After four years of supporting Trump with very brief doses of criticism, the influential majority leader – for now, because the Senate has a new composition of 50-50 – continues to ask whether he will vote in favor of Trump. impeachment against the tycoon. McConnell has made it clear that he believes that the president has committed acts that are subject to impeachment. His decision will be crucial since it takes 17 Republican senators to achieve the two-thirds necessary in the Senate to submit to impeachment Trump and McConnell’s position gives the green light to the breaking of voting discipline. The Chamber achieved this impeachment the president last week with a bipartisan vote, with 10 Republicans joining the Democratic majority.
The 78-year-old political veteran has done little or nothing – the same as Joe Biden – with an impenetrable armor for criticism that allows him to incur contradictions, completely ignoring what is said about him, to defend and help Trump after the insurrection in Congress. What a difference from last year, when the senator defended the president with great vigor before him. impeachment looming and declared that there was “not the slightest chance” that Trump would be removed from power.
Even before the Capitol was stormed, McConnell objected to his superior’s wishes to reject the electoral college certification of votes that after weeks of anxiety gave Democrat Joe Biden the victory. It is true that McConnell initially defended Trump’s whims of protesting the results in some states. But the lawsuits that were filed were making waves everywhere in the courts, which led the majority of Republicans to accept the winner of the November 3 elections and the man who was to be sworn in on January 20.
If McConnell was counting on Trump’s victory and preparing to be the last line of defense for conservatism in Washington, reality has been more powerful than any past daydream and has ended up imposing the facts, although in the case of this politician they always have place for a personal interpretation.
McConnell’s words came hours before he was to meet with his Democratic counterpart, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, to set the rules for impeachment and the Senate that is to come when the Upper House begins its journey divided into two in equal parts. It will be the vice president, Kamala Harris, who breaks the ties, but Schumer knows she will need McConnell, a man who knows the ins and outs of Senate power inside out.
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