More and more isolated, Donald Trump will be tried from February 8
Explanation Taking office on Wednesday January 20, the 46th President of the United States Joe Biden does not want the trial of his predecessor to monopolize his start of term.
With more than two weeks of a trial that could make him ineligible in the future, Donald Trump appears weakened, including in his camp.
When and why will Donald Trump be tried?
The former US president faced a second indictment at the end of his term by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives: a first in history. His trial will begin on February 8 in the Senate, two weeks after the indictment of the former president was transmitted to the upper house on Monday, January 25.
Donald Trump is to be tried for "inciting insurgency". He is accused of having encouraged his supporters to launch an assault on Capitol Hill on January 6, just as congressional officials confirmed the victory of his Democratic rival in the presidential election, Joe Biden. “You will never take back our country by being weak. You have to show strength and you have to be strong, ”he said that very morning to his supporters. Five people died during this attack. If Donald Trump were found guilty, he would not be impeached, having already left the White House, but he would become ineligible.
Why such a delay between the indictment and the start of the trial?
Chuck Schumer, leader of the Senate Democrats, discussed with his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell "the timing and length" of the hearings. Mitch McConnell had suggested to wait until mid-February to begin the debates, pleading for the holding of "a full and fair trial, during which the former president can defend himself and the Senate can consider all factual, legal and constitutional questions. ".
The two-week delay between the delivery of the indictment on Monday, January 25, and the start of the debates should therefore allow Donald Trump to prepare his defense. But as Mitch McConnell also pointed out, this delay is also in the interest of the new administration, so that the trial does not monopolize the upper house sessions for the start of Joe Biden's term. The Senate will thus be able to concentrate, in the coming days, on the confirmation of the members of the government.
For the new president Joe Biden, who made the call for the unity of the country the strong line of his inauguration speech, on January 20, it is also a question of not giving the feeling that the trial of Donald Trump is a priority topic. At a time when the country, faced with the health and economic crisis, needs all the energy of the new administration, the message would get badly. Conversely, Joe Biden signed, Friday, January 22, two decrees to help the poorest workers, on the one hand, and to fight against food insecurity, on the other.
Can Donald Trump count on support during this trial?
In January 2020, when Donald Trump was prosecuted for asking the President of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden's son, the case was quickly dispatched. The Senate, then controlled by the Republicans, had acquitted the president without even hearing a witness. Donald Trump, then, had a fair game of ironizing, tweeting, about a "scam orchestrated by the Democrats-who-do-nothing".
A year later, the case promises to be more complicated for the man no longer in power, and no longer even has a Twitter account to talk to his supporters. While it takes a two-thirds majority in the Senate (i.e. 67 votes - therefore those of 17 Republican senators) to condemn a president, some elected Republicans have not hesitated to be very critical of the outgoing president . Mitch McConnell himself does not rule out finding him guilty.
In addition, Donald Trump's popularity has seriously deteriorated. The former president left the White House on January 20, at the lowest in the polls: only 34 percent of Americans favored him. The bleeding could continue, including some of Donald Trump's staunchest supporters. According to the New York Times, the far-right Proud Boys militia, which had declared its "unwavering loyalty" to him, now regards "its disavowal of the rampage of the Capitol" as "an act of treason". "Trump will be remembered as a total failure," they declared on social network Telegram on Jan. 18.
The story is hardly better within the QAnon conspiracy movement, whose followers saw Donald Trump as a messianic figure. Several American media have relayed their dismay expressed on Telegram: "We were taken for fools", "What a joke", we could read there. Or, "I believed it. It's finish ".
