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In 2019, as Congress moved forward with Donald Trump’s first impeachment process, Republicans and allied media outlets embraced one talking point above others: “Let voters decide.” As partisans insisted at the time, the 2020 election cycle was quickly approaching, and if the American electorate had a problem with the then-president’s Ukrainian extortion scheme, voters could register their disapproval at the ballot box.
It was a deeply flawed argument. For one thing, lawmakers had a constitutional obligation to address presidential wrongdoing, without regard for electoral calendars. For another, proponents of this argument were effectively saying that no officeholder should ever be held accountable, so long as he or she was seeking re-election.
But the core problem with those making this pitch was their reluctance to reckon with the larger context: Trump had tried to extort a U.S. ally in the hopes that it would help him cheat in the upcoming election. Simply letting that misconduct go unchallenged, so the matter could be resolved by that election, obviously didn’t make any sense, and it ultimately proved unpersuasive.
Four years later, a variation on the same argument is back — though it’s noticeably worse now.
Sen. Lindsey Graham helped get the ball rolling last week, applying the talking point to the former president’s criminal indictments. “The American people can decide whether they want him to be president or not,” the South Carolina Republican said on Fox News. “This should be decided at the ballot box.”
Sen. Ted Cruz pushed a very similar line soon after, as did Sen. Tom Cotton, who insisted that everyone would benefit if Trump’s critics “try to stop him on the campaign trail and at the ballot box, and let the American people make these choices.”
On Sunday, former Vice President Mike Pence appeared on ABC News’ “This Week,” and presented a similar argument in response to questions from guest host Jon Karl about accountability:
“Look, I think that needs to be left to the American people. ... I’ve said many times, Jon, I would have preferred that these matters be left to the judgment of the American people.”
To be sure, Pence didn’t argue that the former president should be let off the hook for his alleged crimes altogether — in the same interview, he said Trump deserves “his day in court” — but the Republican Hoosier nevertheless expressed a general preference. If it were up to Pence, Trump’s fate would be in the hands of voters, not jurors.
I don’t understand what it is that Pence, Graham, Cruz and Cotton don’t understand.
Revisiting our recent coverage, this should be relatively straightforward. There are a handful of ways to hold Trump accountable for wrongdoing. He can be charged by prosecutors who’ve assembled evidence by way of a grand jury, but Republicans are against that. He can be punished by the Congress — impeachment, conviction and being barred from office — but Republicans are against that, too.
Or Trump can be defeated by the electorate — which certainly has some appeal, though there’s one glaring problem: Americans already tried that.
As we’ve discussed, it’s obviously true that in a democracy, differences are resolved at the ballot box. But — and this is the important part — when the American electorate went to ballot boxes and cast votes in 2020, Trump and his cohorts decided not to accept the results. In fact, according to evidence compiled by prosecutors across multiple jurisdictions, the outgoing president decided to try to overturn the election and claim illegitimate power, despite his defeat.
In other words, the United States tried to decide the former president’s fate at the ballot box, and Trump decided not to care. This isn’t some obscure, tangential point; it’s the foundation of the entire scandal.
I can appreciate the appeal of the Republican talking point — election results should reign supreme — but in this instance, the accused felon, the one they’re so eager to defend, has made clear that he doesn’t respect or accept election results he doesn’t like.
If literally anyone in Republican politics should understand this, it’s Pence. He was, after all, the vice president who was urged, publicly and privately, in ways that were both subtle and explicit, and with lobbying that might've crossed legal lines, not to let voters have the final say.
It makes his rhetoric about leaving Trump’s fate to the electorate that much tougher to defend, since Pence clearly should know better.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.