February 20, 2021
McConnell's Bitter Turtle Soup
By J.B. Shurk
Just how much does Mitch McConnell despise President Trump and his MAGA movement? While playing coy for weeks about his intentions before finally voting to acquit the president in an impeachment trial more preposterous than last year's farce, he immediately took to the Senate floor to lay the blame for the events of January 6 entirely at the president's feet. McConnell not only accused President Trump of being personally liable for any potential crimes committed that day by others (in effect, teeing up civil lawsuits for monetary damages directly against the president), but also suggested that private citizen Trump could be criminally prosecuted in the future for setting those events in motion by daring to question the results of the 2020 election. It was one more biting betrayal from the Republican machine against a man who has shown the Republican Party much more loyalty than it has ever offered him in return.
Republicans failed to stand for anything:
Senate Republicans' refusal to unanimously stand up for the free speech of a sitting president is inexcusable — especially during a time when Big Tech is engaging in an unprecedented campaign of censorship against ordinary Americans and Democrats are openly advocating for the criminalization of viewpoints with which they disagree. Republicans had a chance to take a united stand for the First Amendment while it remains under sustained attack by those who wish it to be weakened; instead, out of hatred for President Trump or foolish naïveté as to the real threats against free speech in the United States, they failed miserably.
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