Ksenija Pavlovic Mcateer talks to the BBC Hereford & Worcester Breakfast radio show about Mitt Romney’s symbolic vote to remove President Trump via Impeachment and the future of the Trump campaign.
For the BBC Hereford & Worcester Breakfast radio show, Ksenija Pavlovic Mcateer talked about Mitt Romney’s decision to vote against his party on the first article of impeachment and how “Donald Trump is already attacking him viciously”. Citing his Mormon faith, Mitt Romney — once a presidential hopeful from Utah — voted with Democrats to remove President Donald J. Trump via impeachment in the Senate. Pavlovic also pointed out that Romney is the first Senator “in the history of the United States who voted to convict the President of his own party”.
Mitt Romney gave an impassioned speech in the Senate, saying that “as a Senate-juror, I swore an oath, before God [,] to exercise impartial justice . . . with my vote I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability believing that my country expected it of me. I will only be one name among many, no more, no less, to future generations of Americans who look at the record of this trial. They will note merely that I was among the senators who determined that what the president did was wrong, grievously wrong. We are all footnotes at best in the annals of history, but in the most powerful nation on Earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that distinction is enough for any citizen”.
While Pavlovic admitted that the trial was a predetermined outcome, Romney voted “with his conscious . . . exercised his own agency” to symbolically vote to remove the President via impeachment on the grounds of abuse of power. That act promoted an immediate whirlwind of insults by the President at every chance.
“He [Trump] is abusing his Twitter account to go after a member of the party [Romney]”, Pavlovic said to the show. Trump tweeted out that “had failed presidential candidate @MittRomney devoted the same energy and anger to defeating a faltering Barack Obama as he sanctimoniously does to me, he could have won the election. Read the Transcripts!” Trump also made multiple speeches since then where he attacked Romney. At the National Prayer Breakfast, where Trump held up the front page of a newspaper signaling his acquittal, Trump stated that “I don’t like people who use their faith as a justification for doing what they know is wrong”.
State Rep. Phil Lyman filed a resolution to censure Mitt Romney to promote “good relationship with the White House . . . with President Trump”. Though many lawmakers in the Republican Party do not like the actions he took, many still respect that he has a right to do as he pleases regardless of party politics. It is unclear at this point what will happen to Romney as he distances himself from the opinions of his Republican colleagues and his dissent of Donald Trump makes him unpopular amongst Republican voters. Donald Trump certainly makes his opinion clear of those who dissent against him and uses his rhetoric about those dissenters to fuel his campaign. He should use that rhetoric increasingly as the 2020 Presidential Election approaches. Pavlovic stated that “he will use this acquittal against Democrats [some of the dissenters] . . . this is going to further polarize the American voter opinion”.