Trump's acquittal is not foreordained

Can GOP senators vote against impeaching a former president and still convict Trump? Absolutely.

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

The second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump is shaping up to be a bit of an anti-climax. Once Tuesday's jurisdictional vote was held, determining whether you could try someone who had already left office, and only decided 56-44 in favor of proceeding, the consensus quickly congealed that conviction was impossible. How could enough Republican senators vote to convict someone who they believed they had no authority to try?

As a consequence, Republicans, Democrats and non-partisan observers alike are behaving as if acquittal is foreordained. The goal is to get the trial over with as quickly as possible and to get everybody on the record as doing precisely what we all know they are going to do, rather than to establish guilt as thoroughly and unequivocally as possible.

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Noah Millman

Noah Millman is a screenwriter and filmmaker, a political columnist and a critic. From 2012 through 2017 he was a senior editor and featured blogger at The American Conservative. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Politico, USA Today, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Modern Age, First Things, and the Jewish Review of Books, among other publications. Noah lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.