Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave a knowing smile when the only hiccup of Thursday’s formalities got resolved: After a brief pause, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. realized he had to gavel the impeachment trial out of session, adjourning until Tuesday.
McConnell got the day’s ending he had hoped for, a Senate looking somber and serious as it conducts President Trump’s impeachment trial. A Senate that might, as he put it a day before, be capable of rising above “short-termism and factional fever.”
But that fever lingers as the sides jockey for position when the real phase of the trial kicks in, with early skirmishes about calling witnesses getting overtaken by talks about what limits could be placed on the presentation of evidence. Continue reading.