Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a frequent opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
One reason to put an impeached president on trial after he has left office is to deliver a clear, decisive verdict that the defendant’s actions were abhorrent and should never happen again.
But there are other reasons, and some have to do with our time – with what happens now.
On the third day of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, House impeachment managers made the urgent case that Trump is not only directly responsible for the events of January 6, when his followers attacked the US Capitol, but that failure to find him guilty leaves the country at risk from another Trump-led insurgency. If convicted, the US Senate could then vote to bar Trump from running again.
“I’m not afraid of Donald Trump running again in four years and winning,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, a House impeachment manager. “I’m afraid he’s going to run again and lose, because he can do this again.”
In other words, the perpetrator of what most certainly qualifies as high crimes and misdemeanors is still at large. The country is not safe.
On Wednesday, impeachment managers showed chilling new video of the January 6 assault. Watching those indelible images, many of us could feel the PTSD symptoms burning in our chests as we relived those hours when the nation watched a murderous coup attempt playing out in the nation’s seat of power. It’s breathtaking to see just how close the United States came to what might have been one of the worst massacres in its history. Too many did die. Too many were gravely injured. But it could have been much worse.
On Thursday, the House managers drew a clear line between Trump’s actions and the resulting crime. They shined a light on Trump’s yearslong pattern of inciting and/or endorsing violence against his critics. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, noted correctly that, “January 6 was not some unexpected radical break.” The montage of Trump reveling in calls to violence over the years was a shocking reminder of what kind of man sat in the Oval Office for four years.
There was the 2015 video of Trump fans kicking and shoving a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally, and Trump approvingly cracking, “Maybe he should have been roughed up.” (His campaign said it did not condone physical violence.) There was the infamous “very fine people” on both sides speech he gave about a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville. There was the his praise for a congressman – now governor of Montana – who body slammed a reporter. And on and on.
Hardly the picture of a peaceful leader.
The grim recounting grew worse from there, with Trump tweets defending the armed goons who took over the Michigan state Capitol – “a dress rehearsal” for the January 6 insurrection, according to Raskin. And then the most recent and incriminating evidence: videos of Trump pushing the big election lie and telling his backers – over and over – that they had to “fight like hell.”
We saw him instruct his ardent supporters on Twitter to come to Washington, DC, for a “Wild!” event on January 6. To me, after decades of watching wars and insurrections, Trump’s behavior was reminiscent not of the leader of a party in a democracy, but of a militia chief or warlord, disparaging and intimidating his rivals, and sending his forces to violently secure victories he could not obtain through peaceful means.
The House managers made a point of noting that Trump has shown no remorse. Did anyone expect him to? Of course not. But the lack of remorse, his claim that everything he has done is appropriate, his “We love you” message to his loyalists’ mob, supports the managers’ contention that Trump would do this again. That what occurred on January 6 may be the worst thing Trump has done – so far.
Democrats have put on an ironclad case. And yet, the prospects for conviction remain low.
Still, the jurors – the members of the Senate – should consider that they are, figuratively speaking, on trial. We know Trump is guilty, and I would venture most of his defenders know it as well. Those who vote to acquit become accomplices in Trump’s assault against America’s democracy. History will remember that, even if their self-interest drives them to ignore their conscience and their duty to the country and to the truth.