Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) predicted Monday on MSNBC that many Republican Senators will vote to convict President Donald Trump after the House managers present their impeachment case, but the final tally will fall short of the 17 needed.
McCaskill said, “What Liz Cheney has done is remarkable. She has stood up with courage and said, ‘Enough. I’m going to lead the non-Trump Republican Party. We don’t want Donald Trump to be the face of our party anymore. This is what I’m doing.’ Now, will anyone else besides Mitt Romney join her? There were people that were defending her in the Senate.”
She continued, “This is just a fig leaf, this argument that they have no jurisdiction over a president who has left office. It’s a fig leaf. It is what they’re most comfortable doing. Their muscle memory the last four years is too high under the desk. This gives them a way to hide under the desk. They don’t have to say that what Donald Trump did is despicable and deserving of some kind of accountability. They can just hang their hat on this technicality.”
She added, “Now interesting, I’m told, they’re going to vote again on whether or not to proceed is constitutional. The first vote was a procedural vote as to whether or not it should be debated. It was to table the debate. I’m told they are now going to debate and vote again, because there are a couple of Republicans that want to weigh in on the side of Liz Cheney and the sane Republicans that are left. So this will be an interesting week. There will defiantly be Republicans that vote to convict. Now how many there will be? We still don’t know. I’m not optimistic they get to 17, but I think they’ll definitely have more than one.”
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