(RepublicanInformer.com)- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was very direct and to the point when she shared her thoughts on the impeachment trial for former President Donald Trump.
The outcome of the Senate trial wasn’t a shock to anyone. If anything, the surprising part was that so many Republicans joined Democrats to vote to convict Trump. In the end, seven Republicans voted to convict along with all 50 Democrats, with the remaining 43 Republicans voting to acquit.
One of those 43 really angered Pelosi, though — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The House Speaker believes that McConnell played games with the timing of the impeachment trial so that Trump would no longer be in the White House when it took place. Then, McConnell could vote to acquit on grounds that it was unconstitutional to try a former president for impeachment.
In a statement she released following Saturday’s Senate impeachment trial vote, Pelosi said:
“It is so pathetic that Senator McConnell kept the Senate shut down so that the Senate could not receive the Article of Impeachment and has used that as his excuse for not voting to convict Donald Trump.”
Following his vote to acquit, McConnell went off on Trump, saying he was responsible for the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6. However, he said he voted to acquit on constitutional grounds. He said:
“There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president, and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”
That being said, McConnell added that impeachment was only a “limited tool” and that Trump wasn’t “constitutionally eligible for conviction.” He said:
“The Constitution gives us a particular role. This body is not invited to act as the nation’s overarching moral tribunal.”
It’s those statements that drew the ire of Pelosi. They also angered Trump himself, who said in a statement:
“Mitch is a dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again. He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country. Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful and compassionate leadership.”
Pelosi didn’t just reserve her critical words for the leader of the GOP in the Senate, though. She also chastised the 42 other Republicans who voted to acquit Trump. She said they chose to “abandon the Constitution, the Country and the American people with this vote.
“Other Senate Republicans’ refusal to hold Trump accountable for igniting a violent insurrection to cling to power will go down as one of the darkest days and most dishonorable acts in our nation’s history.”
