Seven days ago, Donald Trump added a coda to a lengthy misinformation campaign, featuring months of lies about the nation’s system of elections and his own electoral defeat. He did so with an indefensible speech to a group of enraged followers, who’d descended on the nation’s capital at the Republican’s urging. At Trump’s urging, a violent mob quickly proceeded to launch a deadly insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Seven days later, the U.S. House of Representatives held Donald Trump accountable for his misconduct.
The House impeached President Donald Trump Wednesday for a second time, charging the president with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the violent riot by a pro-Trump mob of the U.S. Capitol that left five people dead and terrorized lawmakers as they sought to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
The final vote was 232 to 197. All 222 House Democrats who voted supported impeachment.
More notably, 10 House Republicans voted with Democrats to impeach Trump:
In 1998, five House Democrats voted to impeach Bill Clinton, which was the highest number of impeachment votes ever cast by members of the sitting president’s party. Republicans doubled that record today. The Democratic-led House is expected to send the impeachment article to the Senate immediately. As of this afternoon, however, it appears unlikely the Senate will reconvene for an impeachment trial before Jan. 19 — the day before Inauguration Day — meaning that Congress probably won’t bring Trump’s term to a premature end, even if there were two-thirds Senate majority to remove him from office.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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