At noon on Thursday, Donald Trump will sally forth to gloat. Or whine. To gloatwhine about his less than perfect acquittal in the Senate. Robbed of his ability to declare total victory by Sen. Mitt Romney unexpectedly casting a safety line back to the world where Republicans existed as something more than Trump’s eager footstool, the vote in the Senate has not gotten the 10,000 or so tweets it surely deserves. Tweets about “exoneration” and Rep. Adam Schiff’s collar size.
Still, Trump will not be denied his opportunity to stand before the nation and complain about a bipartisan vote of “guilty.” So he comes forth at noon to check his shadow, complain that the do-nothings done something, and talk about the real national tragedy—how eight sheets of number two copy paper meet an untimely death at the hands of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Going into the vote on Wednesday, Trump was confident that all the Republicans would grovel on cue. In fact, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was shaping his beak into an “is that lettuce?” grin over the idea that Democrats facing difficult elections in red states might also pile in. They fully expected to exit the day with both a bipartisan vote to acquit, and a nice claim that the vote to remove Trump was “completely partisan.”
But as the day wore on, those Senate Democrats in the tightest of tight spots, like Alabama’s Doug Jones and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, made it known that they would be voting to impeach. Neither they, nor Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, were even going to toss Trump a crumb by splitting their votes. All three joined every other Democrat to vote Trump guilty as charged, and unworthy to remain in office, on both articles of impeachment.
That was good, but Romney’s speech announcing that he would cast his vote against Trump was even better. It not only completely rewrote the narrative, it was a sharp rebuke of the fawning attitude adopted by every other Republican senator. It’s extraordinarily telling that for the whole course of the impeachment trial, only a handful of Republicans were ever even considered to be willing to vote for something as obvious as calling witnesses. “Serious” Republicans, including those who had been in the Senate for decades and cast votes against Bill Clinton while expressing their deep offense at his action, were never even considered as possible votes against Trump. Of course they would bow. All Republicans bow.
What Romney said in his speech—as surprising for its genuine uplifting and moving quality, as much as for the news of that single vote—flipped the script in Washington. It wrecked Trump’s plans for celebrations and caused infinitely more paper to be shredded on Capitol Hill than Pelosi did during Trump’s House chamber rally. It took a full day of pouting and screaming for Trump to settle down, and for Stephen Miller to pencil in “and Mitt Romney” to every insipid attack.
Still, don’t expect Trump to be contrite, and certainly not restrained. As Wednesday night’s bizarre attack on New York residents demonstrated, there is no slight he will overlook, no act of vengeance too petty. Don’t be at all surprised if Trump devotes 90% of his speech to ideas that “Nancy Pelosi should be impeached.” After all, it’s certain that 100% will be about how he is perfect, Democrats are unworthy, and real Americans wear red hats.
Given that, Romney aside, the clear message of the Senate vote was that Republicans will support Trump in any action that he takes against political opponents, no matter how vile, dangerous, or illegal … it’s likely that he’ll take this opportunity to announce something even more vile, more blatant, and more divisive than before.