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Zelensky plea for additional Ukraine support puts US in a bind
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, discusses US support to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Today's question, what will the US do next to support Ukraine and its war against Russia?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today addressed a joint session of Congress, reportedly moving some members to tears with his plea for additional support for Ukraine. Congress last week approved nearly $14 billion to go to the country, and the Biden administration is set to release $800 million on top of the $350 million in military aid they quickly sent during the outbreak of the war.
The American people want Biden to do more, but Biden's running into the political and practical limits of what he can do. He's already sanctioned the Russian economy back to the 1990s, and dozens of US-based businesses are pulling out over there over the reputational and sanctions risk of operating inside Russia. And Biden's been clear there's two things that Zelensky has asked for that he won't do. One is facilitate the transfer of Soviet-era jets from Poland to Ukraine. And the second is imposing a no-fly zone, which Biden said will involve a direct military clash with Russia, something he said would be the equivalent of World War III.
When it comes to the no-fly zone, the American people agree with the president. A poll earlier this week showed that only 23% of Americans want to see a no-fly zone when it's explained to them that it would involve shooting down of Russian planes. And while the American people generally support more help for Ukraine, they're against the deployment of US troops. You should, however, expect to hear more about these Polish plans.
Biden's critics have said he's letting Putin dictate the terms of US engagement in Ukraine. And Senator Lindsey Graham accused him of folding like a cheap suit once the Biden administration figured out that Putin would see the planes as an escalation. So the US is in a bind. They want to help Ukraine, but they are afraid of Putin, who continues to press the war in the face of near universal international condemnation.
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Quick Take: Trump will be acquitted, impeachment is now broken
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and I've got your Quick Take for the week. The second impeachment trial in the Senate of President Trump, now former President Trump, begins. And Lindsey Graham, Republican senator, has said that we all know what's going to happen. He's right. It's going to be close to a party line vote. A couple senators, maybe a handful, will vote to convict, but the large majority will vote to acquit, which says quite something.
The numbers have moved against Trump to be clear. Back in January, 47% of Americans were saying that the Senate should vote to remove Trump from office. In the last couple of days, those numbers, same poll, both ABC are behind it, 56% of Americans now support the Senate removing Trump. But still, close to a party line vote.
Remember, Trump never quite hit 50% in terms of approval ratings, but that didn't stop him from becoming president, didn't stop him from having an incredible hold on the Republican Party, and that is still true. Most Republicans support Trump. Most support Republicans support Trumpism, and most senators believe they will pay a price, a significant price if they vote against Trump in this impeachment hearing, which is a serious problem. It's all about what you're willing to do publicly for power as opposed to what you believe privately. And there's an enormous gap between the two. We saw that play out over the past several days. Some 11 Republicans prepared to vote in the House to ban Marjorie Taylor Green, the QAnon supporting, legitimately crazy, member of the House, newly elected member of the House from Georgia. 145 Republicans in the House, a strong majority, voted secret ballot in favor of keeping Liz Cheney in her leadership role, despite the fact that she had voted to impeach Trump. And in fact, Liz Cheney this weekend on Fox News, a Fox News interview, actually said about her views of that impeachment vote, what we already know constitutes the gravest violation of his oath of office by any president in the history of the country and this is not something we can simply look past or pretend didn't happen or try to move on. We've got to make sure this never happens again.
Well, certainly if the conviction vote was by secret ballot, maybe that would mean something, but it's not. And so to be very clear, Trump is going to be acquitted. He will be able to run again. And perhaps most importantly, the consequences for sedition, the consequences for actively calling for an insurrection and taking every step possible to overturn the legitimate results of a free and fair election do not include impeachment. Impeachment, I mean, if it doesn't apply for that, then it no longer works. And that's what the American political system is putting on display in the coming weeks, is that impeachment is broken as a political mechanism, which undermines the separation of and the balance of powers in the United States, the world's most powerful representative democracy.
I thought it was interesting, the Economist Intelligence Unit came out last week with the fact that the United States is considered in its model to be a flawed democracy. My only question was what took them so long? This isn't new. It's been coming for decades and the erosion has happened slowly but still very real. And the ability of the United States to make the argument that we're back internationally only makes sense if, and we'll gain alignment from all the allies, if they really believe that this can't happen in the US again. There's no reason to believe that. In fact, there's every reason to believe that it can and will happen again, because it's not about Trump. It's about anti-establishment sentiment in the United States growing much greater as the political institutions are seen to be rigged. And that is both true of the electoral process and now it's true of the impeachment process. It's not everything, it's not the military, it's not the judiciary, but very big pieces of the American political franchise increasingly do not work.
You know, some countries are hybrid economies in the sense that they're sort of between free market and state controlled. Increasingly, the United States is kind of a hybrid democracy. Some of it functions and some of it doesn't. And the fact that the US, because it's so incredibly wealthy and therefore stable, can continue to power through this and not deal with those challenges is itself a problem because it means that you don't address them. And as much as Biden as president himself is oriented to trying to address these challenges, it's very hard to imagine he's going to have a lot of success and the reason will be on full display in the Senate over the next couple of weeks.
So, that's it for me. I hope everyone's being safe, and avoiding people, and be good. Talk to you soon.
Will the Senate vote to convict Trump?
Watch Jon Lieber, who leads Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, lend perspective to this week's historic impeachment proceedings.
Impeachment. President Trump became the first president ever to be impeached twice this week. And the question on everybody's mind is will he be convicted in the Senate? And I think the answer right now is we just don't know. I'd probably bet against it. There was a really strong Republican vote against impeaching him in the House, with only 10 of the over 100 Republicans breaking with the President and voting to impeach him. And the question now is in the Senate, is there more support for a conviction? Senate Majority Leader McConnell has indicated he's at least open to it and wants to hear some of the facts. And I expect you're going to hear a lot of other Republicans make the same statement, at least until the trial begins.
What are the reasons they wouldn't impeach? Well, Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas has argued that you can't impeach a president after he's already left office. And the trial would of course start after he leaves office. This probably isn't true because it's a question that would probably be up to the Senate to decide. The Supreme Court is usually loath to weigh in on issues of internal matters for the legislative branch, a co-equal branch of government. So, it's the Senate's decision. If they want to impeach a president after he leaves office, they can. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina has argued that this would be a bad precedent to set and could lead to some absurd examples, like impeaching George Washington years after he died. That's probably a slippery slope that you don't have to worry about too much, but it's an argument Republicans might make.
You're also going to hear some Republicans say that the President did something wrong, deserves to be censured, but shouldn't be impeached. This is something that some Republicans in the House side have said. Hasn't really caught on yet in the Senate but could be something that people turn to short of impeachment. I think you can easily see four to five votes already today being there to impeach the President among Republicans in the Senate, but you need 17. If McConnell goes, he probably brings along some other Republicans and that would get you closer to the threshold that you need. But there's a lot of facts that are still to come out. There will be a trial with fact finding in it. And the President's own behavior could dictate which way this goes. If he continues to indicate support for the riot in the coming weeks, if he continues to make controversial statements or make a problem of himself, he could get convicted.
The implications of him being convicted are that once he's impeached, even out of office, both Houses of Congress can vote with a simple majority to bar him from ever holding political office again, which might be helpful for Republicans looking to the 2024 presidential election. But on the other hand, President Trump isn't really one to follow precedent. He could decide to run anyway and let somebody sue him and then build up his political capital and attract attention and fundraising to himself in the process.
So the trial should start right around the 19th or the 20th. We don't actually know when that's going to happen yet. It may interfere with Senate business, but the Senators should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. I would expect them to be able to set up a process to confirm Biden's cabinet nominees at the same time they're running this impeachment trial. This does, however, give the opportunity to some Republican Senators who are opposed to Biden's cabinet to gum up the works. But I think Republicans are generally probably going to want to at least look cooperative in the early days of this administration. So I don't see this being too big of an impediment to Biden's agenda.