After the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, many Senate Republicans became fed up with Trump. Today, they want to see him return to the White House. How is this explained?
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Three years ago, Donald Trump had only a few friends left in the US Senate. The leader of the Republicans, Mitch McConnell, then declared in a spectacular speech that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He would have uttered “wild false truths” about electoral fraud and would have attempted to reverse his electoral defeat.
And after the House of Representatives launched impeachment proceedings against Trump as part of the rebellion, seven Republicans sided with Democrats in the Senate and declared him guilty. Trump was ultimately acquitted, but several Republican members of the Senate distanced themselves from the ex-president. Many were convinced that his political future was over.
But he wasn’t: Trump is now the Republican Party’s likely leading candidate in the November election, he will run again against Joe Biden. On June 13, he returned to the Capitol to meet with Republicans – and received almost unanimous enthusiastic support within the Senate caucus, including from some who had sharply criticized him for his actions after the election of 2020.
McConnell shook his hand several times and gave him a fistbump. The discontent of the time, the memories of the violence at the end of Trump’s presidency seemed to have completely faded.
Enough is enough
“I think it’s in the rearview mirror for most people,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said of events surrounding the 2020 election. “There will always be tensions. But I think most Republicans see Trump as the only way to get the country out of the crisis. And they’re excited about the opportunity,” Graham continues.
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This is the same senator who declared a few hours after the assault on the Capitol, marked by violent attacks by Trump supporters: “Without me! Enough is enough”. This now almost flawless unity follows years of ups and downs. Republican members of the Senate have never – with a few exceptions – supported Trump as consistently and zealously as their colleagues in the House of Representatives.
But now that he’s back in the race, they’re supporting him with more enthusiasm than ever. And this staunch support is partly linked to self-interest. Republicans have a good chance of winning a majority in the Senate in November’s congressional elections, and they know that Trump’s support is a key to wresting control of the House from Democrats.
“One team, one vision”
This is especially true in stable Republican states like Ohio and Montana, where Democratic incumbents struggle to get re-elected. This is why there is already talk in the Republican ranks of everything that will be done if Trump wins and if, moreover, both houses of Congress are controlled by the Republicans.
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The Speaker of the conservative-dominated House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, recently attended a Senate Caucus luncheon to discuss, among other things, the possibility of new tax laws in the event of a triple victory in November – White House, House of Representatives and Senate.
“Our ability to get a majority in the Senate is essentially tied to Trump winning,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said after the meeting with Johnson. And this is how the motto “one team, one vision” so to speak applies.
“There is no plan B”
His Texan colleague John Cornyn, who is seeking to succeed McConnell at the head of the parliamentary group if the latter leaves his post after the November elections, speaks of a “binary choice” between Trump and Biden for the party.
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“There is no Plan B,” said the same senator who called Trump “grossly negligent” after January 6, 2021. “I think people know the strengths and weaknesses of both candidates. And in my eyes, Trump is clearly preferable. Additionally, “his support will be strong in a lot of these states where he’s very popular, where we have Senate races.”
Congressional elections are held every two years and always concern all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the 100 terms in the Senate. If conservatives are more united than ever behind Trump in the small chamber, it is also because several allies of the ex-president have entered it in recent years.
“We need to rally around @realdonaldtrump.”
And the accusations against him in several court cases are widely seen as politically motivated within the party – this too has united. While until the beginning of the year, most members of the Republican caucus had lined up behind his new candidacy, including McConnell and Cornyn, he enjoyed a wave of support, so to speak, in the conservative camp of the Senate at the time of his guilty verdict in the hush money trial in New York in May.
“Now more than ever, we need to rally around @realdonaldtrump, take back the White House and Senate, and get our country back on track,” Cornyn said on the X platform using Trump’s account name.
Against this backdrop, Trump’s rhetoric has changed little overall, although he struck a more positive tone during last week’s Senate meeting and even praised McConnell at one point. He continues to claim his 2020 election victory was stolen from him, calls Capitol rioters imprisoned for their violence “hostages” and says he will pardon them if he wins.
But too much is not enough for most Republicans in the Senate, with a few exceptions. They included Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. They did not attend the meeting with Trump.
Mary Clare Jalonick, PA
