Why Trump’s Senate impeachment creates a headache for everyone

Ron Klain was wearing a face covering, but you could tell he was not really smiling. Yes, he told the CNN anchor. He did believe it was possible for Congress to work together in a bipartisan fashion to produce a major Covid-relief package, while also overseeing the impeachment trial of Donald Trump in the Senate.

A week earlier, Joe Biden’s chief of staff said the same thing in an interview with the Washington Post. “I think they are going to have to work on both simultaneously,” he said.

“Obviously a committee will work on the proposal that [Biden] put forward, and this can obviously go on while the impeachment trial is taking place. And hopefully the [impeachment] trial will not be a lengthy trial.”

Klain may be newly appointed as Biden’s chief of staff, but in no way is he a newcomer to the the ways of Washington. If he truly believes Democrats and Republicans can seamlessly work on passing Covid relief, while ring-fencing the impeachment issue, he must be speaking more from hope than experience.

The reality is, the Senate’s hearing of the House’s impeachment of Trump is a headache the Biden administration would far rather not have to deal with. Biden has pretty consistently supported Congress in its constitutional duties, while at the same time making clear it is not really his responsibility.

“This nation remains in the grip of a deadly virus and a reeling economy,” he said in a statement. “I hope that the Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation.”

Biden would far rather Democrats were focussed on helping him push the agenda he has announced for his first weeks in office: a massive $1.9 trillion stimulus package; a commitment to rejoin the Paris Accord on climate change; rejoining the WHO; scrapping of the Muslim travel ban; the cancellation of permits for the Keystone XL oil pipeline; an undertaking to work for racial equity; and a desperately pressing commitment to ramp up the supply of vaccines, while improving their roll out.

In places such as California and Rhode Island, only 45 per cent of vaccine shots delivered have been used, which could suggest a lack of trained staff, insufficient vaccination locations and, possibly, a hesitancy among some communities, particularly African Americans. Biden wants everyone to have access to the vaccine by the spring. All the while, he has been swearing in the most diverse cabinet in American history: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the first woman to hold the job, and Lloyd Austin, the nation’s first black defence secretary.

So while some Democrats in the House and Senate, pushed by their progressive members, may be keen to see the trial of Trump play out in the upper chamber, with the prospect of him being the first president to be convicted and possibly banned from ever holding federal office again, for the the president it is not the most pressing issue. He was presumably relieved when the Democratic leader in the Senate agreed to a request from Mitch McConnell to push the hearing back to February. Republicans, too, are not gleeful about the trial, which Chief Justice John Roberts has said he will not preside over. He believes the constitution makes it his task to take part if proceedings relate to a sitting president, not a former one.

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As things stand, there seems little likelihood of Trump being convicted in the Senate, having been impeached in the House on a single count of inciting an insurrection for his speech delivered shortly before hundreds of his supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January. For that to happen, Democrats would need to secure a two-thirds majority: 67. But as Susan Collins, the long-time “moderate” Republican senator of Maine, who this week voted to allow the trial to go ahead, pointed out, the numbers are not there.

It’s possible that half-a-dozen GOP senators might support it – Mitt Romney, Collins, Lisa Murkowski and the like – but not enough. “I think it’s pretty obvious from the vote today that it is extraordinarily unlikely that the president will be convicted,” she said. “Just do the math.”

Polls suggest about 51 per cent of the nation believes Trump should be blocked from holding office if he is convicted. But lots of Republicans will ferociously defend him. Rand Paul of Kentucky has been among them, denoting the hearing as unconstitutional. “This impeachment is nothing more than a partisan exercise designed to further divide the country,” he told the Senate this week when he tried – and failed – to have the trial thrown out before it began.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the upper chamber, may be among those keen to see Trump gone. Since Trump’s defeat to Joe Biden, a ferocious fight is underway over the party’s future: will Trump be its candidature in 2024, will he form his own party, will Republicans revert to a more traditional candidate in the likes of Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo or Mike Pence?

And while McConnell is somewhat cushioned by the threat of being challenged in a primary by a pro-Trump rival – he was in November – returned for another six years, he has his eye on the 2022 midterms and trying to regain the Senate for the GOP. Everyone will be poring over not simply how he votes, but whether he directs his members to defend the former president, whose influence hangs over the party. The same goes for every senator; they know their actions will be under intense scrutiny. Trump has warned them he will be paying close attention.

Indeed, the only person with much to gain from all of this is Trump himself. Assuming he is not convicted and not prevented from running again, he will be rallying his base of support, presenting himself as a martyr, and taking up the headlines Joe Biden wishes belonged to him.