Trial or Campaign?

Trump’s strategy is to turn the impeachment into his best campaign.

The final proceeding, the countdown to decide the future of President Donald Trump, is beginning in the Senate. Despite new evidence emerging every day about how he took advantage of his position to discredit his rivals by blackmailing other countries, the only thing that’s certain is that the process will not be successful and that the upper chamber of the world’s leading democracy will not remove Trump from the White House. There’s no chance; there has to be a two-thirds majority in favor of convicting him. Only a profound division, or indeed the collapse of the Republican majority, could result in a judgment that the president’s actions were illegal, and remove him from office. But that’s not going to happen, much less nine months before the election.

Trump knows this, and that’s why he’s decided to appear at the Davos summit like a fighter, as if nothing were going on while the impeachment sessions get started. Impeachment and removal are not judicial proceedings, they are a political process with a legal basis, which is ultimately decided by the votes of 100 senators. We know what the results will be: The Democrats will vote in favor of, and the Republicans will vote against, accepting the evidence provided to Congress.

The country is going to become further divided. The trial will not be decided in the Senate; it’s taking place in the streets, which is all that’s at stake now. The public knows everything that has taken place, and the media will cover every single detail. That’s why Trump has hired two experts who know well that the battle will be fought in the media.

For his defense team in the country’s highest profile trial in living memory, he has recruited one of the main agitators in the impeachment of Bill Clinton and one of the lawyers who led the defense of football star O.J. Simpson, accused of murder. While all his Democratic rivals have begun their campaign in a less emotional vein, the president knows that what’s at stake is not the Senate’s decision, but rather public opinion. His strategy is to turn the impeachment into his best campaign.