Majority of voters want Trump convicted for inciting insurrection

A poll released on Donald Trump’s last full day in office found that a majority of voters support his conviction on a single charge of inciting an insurrection.

The Politico/Morning Consult poll found 55% of voters support convicting Trump, including 20% of Republican voters. The same percentage of voters want Trump to be convicted even if that means disqualifying him from running for office ever again, according to the poll.

Trump was impeached for a second time on Jan. 13 for his role in inciting the violent terror attack at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Trump’s barrage of lies about voter fraud and his demand that his voters “fight” to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory helped radicalize a large group of his supporters. A group of those supporters, several of them citing Trump’s orders, marched on the Capitol, where they then violently broke into the building and injured multiple law enforcement officers in the process. One Capitol Police officer died in the attack.

Democrats wanted to immediately begin the impeachment trial to remove Trump from office before his term expires at noon on Jan. 20. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to bring the Senate back into session to begin the proceedings, and thus Trump will remain in office until Biden is sworn in.

A trial will take place once Trump is gone, and when Democrats will control the Senate, thanks to Sens.-elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff both defeating incumbent Republicans in the Georgia runoff elections the day before the insurrection.

The Politico/Morning Consult poll found just 27% of voters approve of McConnell’s handling of this second impeachment.

It’s unclear whether enough Senate Republicans will vote to convict Trump, which requires a two-thirds majority. However, it appears to be unlikely, as few have said they will actually take that step.

Republicans have instead been more vocal in their demands that Democrats drop the impeachment trial, as Trump will already be gone once it begins.

For example, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wrote a letter to incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) urging him to drop the impeachment charge, saying that holding an impeachment trial once Trump is already out of office would be an “unconstitutional act of political vengeance.”

Of course, Graham was part of Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results based on lies of voter fraud. Graham even called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to throw out mail-in ballots to install Trump as the winner of the state, even though he lost by more than 11,000 votes.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.