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Impeachment Complicates Biden's Efforts to Unite the Country (Analysis)

2021-01-23T22:16:40.861Z


Biden spent his first week in office trying to convince the nation to see themselves not as Democrats or Republicans.


(CNN) -

President Joe Biden spent his first week in office trying to convince the nation to see themselves not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans united to defeat the pandemic.

Then on Friday night, the impeachment of former President Donald Trump got a formal date on the calendar, complicating all the bipartisan goals on the new president's agenda.

After four grueling years of Trump that left this country deeply divided and democracy hanging by a thread, the nation breathed easier when Trump moved to Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday, his scathing virulence silenced by a permanent suspension in Twitter

Next month's trial will bring the outcast former president back to center stage, giving him another chance to claim he's a victim in an endless partisan witch hunt and giving him a platform to rally his supporters at a time when it would be hard to have such a opportunity.

Biden is caught at that crossroads as the nation once again engages in the most polarizing kind of procedure that exists in Washington.

He has insisted that Trump be held accountable for the attempted insurrection on Capitol Hill on January 6, but has been remarkably cold with the prospect of impeachment as he tries to break Trump's legacy with more than two dozen decrees in his first three days in office, all the while using the phones to build a broader legislative consensus.

The looming trial, which has the potential to inflame partisan divisions as quickly as Biden was trying to crush them, offers no visible advantage for a president who was elected on his promise to unite Washington's warring parties and forge a compromise in a Capitol that has been defined by race.

  • MORE: Arguments for the second impeachment trial against Trump in the Senate to begin on February 9

Hopes that Biden could bring a different tone to Washington - which were so brilliant on inauguration day - were complicated by the announcement by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Nancy Pelosi that the House would hand over Trump's impeachment charge of "inciting insurrection" to the Senate Monday night.

Senators will be sworn in for trial the following day, according to the schedule outlined by Schumer, and the grounds for the trial will begin on February 9.

The delay in the start of the trial will be helpful to Biden because only two of his cabinet appointees have been approved by the Senate so far, a much slower pace than their predecessors.

Biden underscored that point Friday when asked if he was in favor of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's schedule for impeachment in mid-February.

"The more time we have to get going and dealing with these crises, the better," Biden responded at the end of a White House event on executive action in the economy.

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Senate unlikely to convict Trump

Biden has been cautious about whether he thinks it makes any sense to hold an impeachment trial in the Senate for a president who has already left office, answering virtually every question by stating that he will leave the timing and mechanics of a trial to Senate leaders.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki forcefully closed questions about Biden's more substantive views on impeachment, and whether Trump should be banned from federal office in the future, noting that the president ousted Mr. Trump from the White House through the electoral process.

"He ran against him because he thought he was unfit to serve, and he is no longer here because President Biden hit him," Psaki said during the White House news conference on Friday.

"We will leave the steps, the steps of responsibility, for Congress to determine."

The question of the futility of an impeachment right now is even more important given that it seems increasingly unlikely that the Senate will convict Trump, according to a report by CNN's Manu Raju, Ted Barrett and Jeremy Herb.

Convicting Trump would require 17 Republican senators to vote with all 50 Democrats in the Senate, a difficult task on any legislative issue, let alone one as tense as this.

While there is disagreement among grassroots Republicans on how Trump should be punished for his role in the riots, with the conviction that Trump may not be able to hold federal office in the future, many Republicans now also wonder if it is. it is constitutional to judge a president who has already left office.

The argument about constitutionality serves as a useful trick for Republican senators who are wary of Trump's punishing instincts, allowing them to avoid alienating their grassroots voters, while potentially bailing them out with more moderate voters who were angry about him. Trump's role in the Capitol riots, seeded by the storm of lies he told about the results of the November elections.

"I don't know what the vote will be, but I think the two-thirds chance is nil," Sen. John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, told CNN.

'Americans are starving'

Castañeda: With Biden, the US-Mexico agenda will expand.

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With nearly all of his other actions this week, Biden noted that he is trying to take Americans beyond the Trump era, not just in politics but also in tone.

Upon swearing in his new hires, Biden told them that if he heard them disrespect or speak ill of another colleague, he would fire them on the spot, underscoring that he believes that everyone deserves to be treated with the dignity and decency that has been "lost. in a big way for the last four years.

That comment aside, when given a chance to attack Trump, he generally avoided it, describing the letter the former president left him, for example, as "generous."

Biden alienated some Republicans this week by trying to undo some of Trump's most controversial policies through executive actions: stopping construction of the wall on the US-Mexico border, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, rejoining the US climate deal. Paris and rescind Trump's travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries.

But the new president also placed great emphasis on actions that could garner support from both sides: measures to accelerate vaccine distribution such as invoking the Defense Production Act to produce more supplies such as specialized needles or syringes that could extract more vaccine from each vial;

plans to accelerate the reopening of schools;

an extension of the moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures;

and policies aimed at curbing food insecurity amid the pandemic, which has been of concern to both Democrats and Republicans.

  • MORE: Some National Guard Soldiers Will Remain In Washington Over Concerns Over Potential Impeachment Riots

Pointing the way ahead while outlining some of the economy-focused executive actions taken on Friday, Biden underscored that there were limitations on what he could do with just the stroke of his pen, and made another urgent appeal to members of Congress to come. to the negotiating table on its $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package.

With the U.S. Senate split 50-50, Schumer and McConnell are still arguing over a power-sharing agreement in the Senate that will determine the number of seats each party controls on the House committees.

The talks have been stalled by McConnell's claim that Schumer maintains filibuster.

While Biden already faces significant resistance from Republicans over the cost of the package, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese has warned that Americans can slip into an even deeper medical crisis and "economic hole" without him.

Biden noted that another 900,000 Americans have joined the ranks of the unemployed, according to economic data this week, while many families are still forced to drive to food banks just to feed their children.

In an argument in favor of his legislative package in tune with Republican concerns, he said there is a "growing economic consensus that we must act decisively and boldly to grow the economy" and that it is "a smart fiscal investment" that will help the United States to retain its competitive advantage around the world.

(He noted at one point that Trump's former economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, has spoken out in favor of the proposal he has outlined.)

"This has almost no partisan side to it," Biden said pitifully.

  • MORE: McConnell privately says he wants Trump out, as Republicans quietly press him to convict

"I don't think the people of this country just want to stand still and watch their friends and neighbors, co-workers, fellow Americans go hungry, lose their homes, or lose their sense of dignity, hope and respect," he said Friday.

“I don't think Democrats or Republicans go hungry and lose their jobs;

I think Americans go hungry and lose their jobs.

"We have the tools to fix it."

Yet Biden still has a lot to persuade as he tries to garner the political will for other bipartisan legislation that uses those tools.

As it draws closer, there are signs that the two sides are retreating to their familiar corners, with impeachment the biggest obstacle in the new president's path.

Joe biden

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-01-23

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