Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the Senate Minority Whip, criticized colleagues on both sides of the aisle, saying they preemptively made up their minds about how to vote on whether to remove President Donald Trump from office.
“I think they’ve gone too far. How can they hold their hands up and say, ‘I swear impartial justice. I’d like to sit at the manager’s table with the President’s team’?” he said on the Sunday episode of CNN’s State of the Union. “You can’t do that. They shouldn’t have done that.”
The House of Representatives impeached Trump Wednesday, largely along party lines. Not a single Republican voted for the articles of impeachment. Now the Senate is expected to hold a trial on the matter. They need a two-thirds majority to remove the president from office, but as things stand, that’s incredibly unlikely. Top Senate Republicans Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham have consistently dismissed allegations against Trump, and accused Dems of partisanship.
To be sure, Durbin singled out the GOPers for their overt resistance to the impeachment process. Dash pointed out that a number of Democrats–including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders–already announced their stance.
“Well, they shouldn’t,” Durbin said. “As far as I’m concerned, they can tell which way they’re leaning, or how they feel in terms of the probability, but when it comes to saying, ‘I made up my mind. It’s all over.’ For goodness sake, that is not what the Constitution envisioned. Alexander Hamilton said we give this job to the Senate because they are quote ‘independent and dignified.’ For goodness sake, let’s do our best to meet those standards.”
[Screengrab via CNN]