President Trump is facing the real threat of impeachment by the Democrats, and he knows it’s a serious fight. So do congressional Republicans, and that is why they are doing everything in their power to prepare for the inevitable.
The most important thing when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally calls on Congress to vote on articles of impeachment will be timing. Pelosi will try to drag out the “inquiry” process, pushing the actual meat-and-potatoes of the impeachment itself to occur in a prolonged and expository manner. This, according to the Democrats, will raise their chances of having Trump removed from office, while also damaging his 2020 chances should the “removal” angle not pan out.
In contrast, Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are looking to grease this thing up and send it down the chute as quickly as possible, with the Senate Majority Leader having already called the GOP together to prepare for a swift Senate trial.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Wednesday urged GOP senators to prepare for an impeachment trial of President Trump, which could heat up as early as Thanksgiving.
McConnell, who has largely refrained from making grandiose public statements on the House impeachment effort in recent days, briefed GOP senators during a luncheon on Wednesday on the impeachment process via a PowerPoint presentation and urged them to gear up for an impeachment trial in the Senate. He expects this process could heat up next month, around Thanksgiving.
“There’s sort of a planned expectation that it would be sometime around Thanksgiving, so you’d have basically Thanksgiving to Christmas — which would be wonderful because there’s no deadline in the world like the next break to motivate senators,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said, according to the Washington Post.
McConnell has been avoiding the spotlight as of late, likely due to the immense and intense burden that will soon be upon him.
When he has emerged, however, the Kentucky Republican has been adamant that the President has been engaged in no impeachable offenses and that the Senate will work quickly to conclude their constitutionally-mandated maneuvers in the matter.
