In a surprise to no one, the Senate voted on February 13th to acquit Donald Trump in the second Pelosi/Schumer sham impeachment sham, this one charging Trump with “incitement of insurrection” in connecting to the January 6 Capitol riot. Needing to reach the two-thirds threshold of 67 votes to convict the former president, the Senate vote came up short, 57 to 43, with seven Republicans joining all 50 Democrats in voting to convict.

The prospect of ending the trial on Saturday was almost derailed when Democrats pressed for calling witnesses, a measure that was adopted. However, with the defense threatening to call in a litany of Democrat lawmakers to cross examine, it was agreed that the testimony of Representative Jaime Beutler (R-WA) regarding Trump’s initial response to the Capitol riot was officially entered into the record as evidence.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted against conviction on the grounds that impeaching a former president was outside the bounds of the Constitution, nevertheless blasted Trump for his role in inciting the crowd. McConnell said the riot was a “foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”

It would appear that McConnell would love nothing more than to rid the Republican Party of the influence of Trump.

Following his second impeachment acquittal, Trump responded by thanking his legal team “for their tireless work upholding justice and defending truth” and those members of Congress “who stood proudly for the Constitution we all revere and for the sacred legal principles at the heart of our country.” He also noted the “sad commentary on our times that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs, excuse rioters, and transform justice into a tool of political vengeance, and persecute, blacklist, cancel and suppress all people and viewpoints with whom or which they disagree.”

Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC), who voted against conviction, warned, “The process they used to impeach this president was an affront to the rule of law. … The trial record was a complete joke, hearsay upon hearsay, and … if you use this model I don’t know how [Vice President] Kamala Harris doesn’t get impeached if Republicans take back the House because she actually bailed out rioters and one of the rioters went back to the streets and broke somebody’s head open. So we’ve opened Pandora’s Box here and I’m sad for the country.”

In the end, Democrats once again put the country through another sham impeachment that amounted to nothing more than political theater solely intended to damage all Republicans. No matter how loudly the Democrats claim to be preserving democracy, the reality is they have no concern for constitutional fidelity or even truth itself. This was only ever about a political power play via a campaign to smear all conservatives, Trump supporters, and Republicans as “a threat to democracy” when nothing could be further from the truth.