Mitt Romney Reveals Most Republicans Didn’t Impeach Trump Because They Feared Violent Attacks from His Supporters
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) revealed to biographer McKay Coppins that the threat of physical violence effectively kept many elected Republicans from voting to impeach or convict President Donald Trump, even though they wanted to.
Coppins is doing the media rounds to promote his new biography Reckoning and chatted with Brian Stelter for a thoughtful interview, which Vanity Fair published on Thursday.
NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen flagged one particular passage on social media, writing: “Read this paragraph and tell me that the 2024 election can be responsibly reported using the same tools and terms in use for every national election.”
The passage in question reveals that many Republican members of Congress wanted to vote to impeach or convict the former president but that the threat of political violence by Trump supporters effectively kept them from doing what they thought was right. Stelter writes:
“One of the biggest revelations to me in my conversations with Romney was just how important the threat of political violence was to the psychology of elected Republicans today,” said Coppins, who recalled Romney telling him “story after story about Republican members of Congress, Republican senators, who at various points wanted to vote for impeachment—vote to convict Trump or vote to impeach Trump—and decided not to, not because they thought he was innocent, but because they were afraid for their family’s safety. They were afraid of what Trump supporters might do to them or to their families.” That “raises a really uncomfortable question,” Coppins said, which is “how long can the American project last if elected officials from one of the major parties are making their political decisions based on fear of physical violence from their constituents?”
Rosen’s question is extremely pertinent as we are closing in on being a year away from the 2024 general election, and the former president continues to ratchet up his dangerous rousing of rabble that creates the threat of violence that has been so effective for feckless members of Congress.
