Members-Only Article
For all the antics among House Republicans, what is most notable from their Senate Republican colleagues is silence. No Republican senator besides Mitt Romney is meaningfully criticizing the President. I continue to hear that in closed door caucus meetings the attitude toward the President and the widening scandal is considerably more hostile to the President and fearful than one might suspect. Sen. John Thune, a consummate party man, likely gave some hint of this when he told reporters yesterday that “the picture coming out of [the impeachment inquiry] based on the reporting we’ve seen is, yeah, I would say is not a good one.” Of course, if we had a dime for every time we’ve heard about private criticism of President Trump that never goes public we wouldn’t need to work so hard to drive up our membership numbers here at TPM. But there’s another point that is worth exploring about the Republican Senate.
It’s not all about voting to impeach or acquit.