McConnell is said to be pleased about impeachment, believing it will be easier to purge Trump from the G.O.P.

By Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman

d.d. 12-01-2021

Senate Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, walks to the Senate Chambers in the Capitol building on Wednesday.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has told associates that he believes President Trump committed impeachable offenses and that he is pleased that Democrats are moving to impeach him, believing that it will make it easier to purge him from the party, according to people familiar with his thinking. The House is voting on Wednesday to formally charge Mr. Trump with inciting violence against the country.

At the same time, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader and one of Mr. Trump’s most steadfast allies in Congress, has asked other Republicans whether he should call on Mr. Trump to resign in the aftermath of the riot at the Capitol last week, according to three Republican officials briefed on the conversations.

While Mr. McCarthy has said he is personally opposed to impeachment, he and other party leaders have decided not to formally lobby Republicans to vote “no,” and an aide to Mr. McCarthy said he was open to a measure censuring Mr. Trump for his conduct. In private, Mr. McCarthy reached out to a leading House Democrat to see if the chamber would be willing to pursue a censure vote, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ruled it out.

Taken together, the stances of Congress’s two top Republicans — neither of whom has said publicly that Mr. Trump should resign or be impeached — reflected the politically challenging and fast-moving nature of the crisis that the party faces after the assault by a pro-Trump mob during a session to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory.

As more violent images from the mayhem wrought by the rioters emerged on Tuesday, including of the brutal attack that ultimately killed a Capitol Police officer, and as lawmakers were briefed about threats of more attacks on the Capitol, rank-and-file Republican lawmakers grew angrier about the president’s role in the violence.

Yet as they attempted to balance the affection their core voters have for Mr. Trump with the now-undeniable political and constitutional threat he posed, Republican congressional leaders who have loyally backed the president for four years were still stepping delicately. Their refusal to demand the president’s resignation and quiet plotting about how to address his conduct highlighted the gnawing uncertainty that they and many other Republicans have about whether they would pay more of a political price for abandoning him or for continuing to enable him after he incited a mob to storm the seat of government.

Making their task more difficult, Mr. Trump has shown no trace of contrition, telling reporters on Tuesday that his remarks to supporters had been “totally appropriate,” and that it was the specter of his impeachment that was “causing tremendous anger.”

Mr. McConnell has indicated that he wants to see the specific article of impeachment that the House is set to approve on Wednesday, and hear the eventual arguments in the Senate. The House is expected to pass the single charge on Wednesday, and a senior administration official said the White House expects about two dozen Republicans to support it. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the party’s No. 3 in the House, announced on Tuesday that she would be among them.

But the Senate Republican leader has made clear in private discussions that he believes now is the moment to move on from the weakened lame duck, whom he blames for causing Republicans to lose the Senate. Mr. McConnell has not spoken to Mr. Trump since mid-December, when the senator informed the president he would be recognizing Mr. Biden as president-elect after the meeting of the Electoral College.

On Monday, Mr. Biden telephoned Mr. McConnell to ask whether it was possible to set up a dual track that would allow the Senate to confirm Mr. Biden’s cabinet nominees and hold a Senate trial at the same time, according to officials briefed on the conversation who disclosed it on condition of anonymity. Far from avoiding the topic of impeaching Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell said it was a question for the Senate parliamentarian, and promised Mr. Biden a quick answer.

David Popp, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, declined to comment, pointing a reporter to a speech the senator made from the floor after the attack on the Capitol.

“This failed attempt to obstruct the Congress, this failed insurrection, only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our Republic,” Mr. McConnell said as the Senate reconvened on Wednesday to finish the electoral count disrupted by the siege. “Our nation was founded precisely so that the free choice of the American people is what shapes our self-government and determines the destiny of our nation.”

In the days since the attack, Mr. McCarthy has veered from asking Republican colleagues if he should call on Mr. Trump to resign to privately floating impeachment to his current posture, opposed to impeachment but open to a censure. He even approached Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, about a censure vote, saying he could deliver a large number of Republican votes for a formal rebuke if Democrats backed off impeachment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/mitch-mcconnell-trump-impeachment.html

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My Comments :

1. Do remember that the Trump-stormtrooper lynch-mob - apart from going after Pelosi and some other leading DNC members - went mainly after the GOP vice-president at January the sixth while storming the Capitol, and it has been Trump (and Guliani), who led them into that mind-frame of yelling for the head of "Traitor Pence", because he refused to unconditionally obey the Diktat of Trump, to return the presidency to Trump...

2. Do not however make the mistake, that McConnell just for one second has the defence of democracy on his mind, by considering possibly rendering assistance for the DNC initiated impeachment-procedures against Trump, because McConnell - not only did consistently back Trump over the last four years and did welcome all the racist remarks and ditto Trumponian policies - but he himself is the main architect of the many notorious (and successful) GOP voter-suppression efforts over the years. 

3. Of course McConnell will be extremely well aware that he also now will become the target of the Trump-stormtrooper lynch-mob, but he would have become that anyway, because Trump is only in for the maximum of loyalty, and with the life of Pence on the line, McConnell is no longer able to look away from the potentially deadly threat that the Barmy Army of Trumponian militias will amount to the very peoples from the GOP establishment.

4. Besides, if there is someone in the USA who can be considered the best informed person of the world on the big black side of Trump - containing tons of negative information from all over the world - it must be Mitch McConnell. 

5. So I am sure, that Big Chief GOP Whip McConnell will dearly regret the fact, that he and his party - at least until the next Congressional by-election in two years time - will have lost the Senate majority (which has greatly undermined his position of power within the GOP and of the GOP itself), but that is most probably not his main consideration for possibly removing Trump from office.

6. He neither will be for one nano second in any way or manner impressed or inquiet by the highly likely probability scenario, that (next to Pelosi, Schumer and Clinton, to mention just a few potential targets) Biden and/or Harris will (also) be on top of the assassination-list of the USA extreme-radical right and that a civil war might sooner or later be unleashed by the very same Trumponian Barmy Army, full of bare resentment and bloody revenge for their clear loss of the first Civil War and the threatening minority position of White supremacist political power.

7. There will be a Civil war within the GOP for some time to come anyway, where - apart from his genuine diehard supporters - many opportunistic politicians until this very day will have flatly refused to retract their support for Trump (even after his role in the the violent Capitol occupation), because that might have diminished their political career if and when Trump - or one of his siblings - might be in the position of announcing their candidacy for the 2024 presidential elections...

8.  If the news about his alleged U-turn is correct, one of his main reasons for that alteration might be the fact that the other day Trump big financial donors (such as Deutsche Bank) have announced that they will terminate their connection with him, so any association between the GOP and Toxic Trump might easily lead to the threat of withdrawing financial support by those financial institutions from the Republican Party altogether.

9. Marriott, Amazon, American Express en Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, AT&T, Dow en Airbnb already have publicly announced, that they will not support those members of Congress any longer, that have been all too willing to blindly follow Trump with his false claims about the November election result which ultimately culminated into the attack on the Capitol.