“We’ve just come out listening to, what, six hours of testimony, and I didn’t hear anything new,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told reporters early Wednesday evening. “It still seems to me that this was an effort by the Democrats, in a very partisan way, to bring a case against President Trump because they didn’t like the outcome of the 2016 election.”
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) also said he “didn’t hear anything new,” while Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said the impeachment push was really about Democratic efforts to win control of the Senate in November.
“The conclusion is a very simple one,” Scott asserted. “The goal of this entire process is not to remove the president from office. The goal is to remove certain Republican senators — Colorado, North Carolina, Iowa, Maine and Arizona — from office.”
Freshman GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri went even further: “I haven’t heard any evidence in there that the president’s done anything wrong.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the lead House manager, and his colleagues already knew that there was little chance they could persuade 67 senators to vote to convict Trump, given Republicans’ control of the body.
Yet their Senate Democratic colleagues had nothing but praise for Schiff and the six other managers as they opened their case. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called Schiff’s two-hour statement a “tour de force,” while Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) said, “These managers are doing a great job putting those facts on the table.”
And maybe more important, the House Democrats’ efforts aren’t really aimed at trying to sway GOP hard-liners to vote against Trump. Instead, they’re trying to persuade a handful of swing Senate Republicans — a group that includes Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah, among others — to buck the president and their party leaders and support Democratic calls for additional witnesses or documents. After that, Democrats believe, the final vote on the impeachment articles will become a wild card, with possibly even a Senate majority voting to convict the president. Trump would then remain in office but would be damaged politically heading into Election Day.
Murkowski told reporters she was “still listening” as the Senate broke for dinner on Wednesday, while Collins and Romney weren’t available for comment yet.
Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.
Source: politico.com
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