Here & Now

Political Scientist Examines Trump’s Acquittal, Iowa Caucus

Frederica Freyberg:

In our closer look, the trial of President Donald Trump is over. On Wednesday, the Senate voted on two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate did not have the two-thirds majority needed to find the president guilty on either charge, with the vote cast almost exclusively along party lines. The president, as expected, came out swinging. One description: Trump on steroids.

Donald Trump:

It was evil. It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars. Adam Schiff is a vicious, horrible person. Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person. We went through hell unfairly. It was all bullsh*t.

Frederica Freyberg:

Senators U.S. Senators Ron Johnson, who voted to acquit and Tammy Baldwin, who voted to convict, spoke to their respective positions ahead of the vote. Baldwin focusing on the lack of witnesses called and Johnson on the lack of a crime committed. Both referenced an August 31 conversation between Senator Johnson and the president where the senator challenged Trump’s motivations for withholding aid from Ukraine.

Tammy Baldwin:

Last month, President Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton, provided an unpublished manuscript to the White House. The recent media reports about what Ambassador Bolton could have testified to had he not been blocked as a witness go to the heart of this impeachment trial.

Ron Johnson:

I reached out to John Bolton and said, “Listen, John, if you’ve got something to say, say it sooner rather than later. Get it on the record. Would you like me to extend an invitation to talk to our committee? He said no. He’d only respond to a subpoena, which I respect as well.

Tammy Baldwin:

President Trump told Ambassador Bolton in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until they helped with the political investigations. Had Ambassador Bolton testified to these facts in this trial, it would directly contradict what the president told Senator Johnson in a phone call on August 31, 2019, where, according to Senator Johnson, the president said, “I would never do that. Who told you that?

Ron Johnson:

And I’m the one that raised the issue. “Mr. President, I heard there may be some possible arrangement, where if Ukraine does something, you release the hold,” and he immediately, I’ve described it accurately as angrily, vehemently, adamantly, denied, “No, I would never do that. No way. Who told you that?”

Tammy Baldwin:

John Bolton not only has direct evidence that implicates President Trump in a corrupt abuse of power, he has direct evidence that President Trump lied to one of our colleagues in an attempt to cover it up.

Ron Johnson:

To me, it didn’t have any impact. I don’t think whatever John says is going to really affect my evaluation. Again, what was charged in these two articles of impeachment is not impeachable offense.

Frederica Freyberg:

So there you have it. What a week. We now tap into UW-Milwaukee Emeritus Professor and Political Scientist Mordecai Lee for his take on what’s ahead. Thanks a lot for being here.

Mordecai Lee:

You’re welcome.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Senator Baldwin said in no way should the president’s acquittal be viewed as an exoneration. How likely is it that that message resonates especially as the president publically reacts to it right now?

Mordecai Lee:

Well Frederica, I think in Wisconsin right now we’re living in two different realities. 47-48% of the voters really like Trump and agreed with the outcome and thought it was an exoneration. And 47-48% of Wisconsinites agreed with Senator Baldwin. It’s almost like two ships passing in the night. They don’t even live in the same world.

Frederica Freyberg:

How much does this embolden President Trump do you suppose and his supporters?

Mordecai Lee:

Well, I think it emboldens President Trump, but I’m not sure there’s not much more to embolden in the sense of this has been his style since the day he became president. He’s a street fighter. He not only disagrees with his opponents. He wants to crush his opponents. Only he is right. Everybody else is wrong. That’s a style. I guess you might say it’s almost like a New Yorkie style that he’s carried throughout his presidency. So when he came out swinging the day after he was acquitted, it was the same old Trump. I’m sure some of your viewers can compare it to President Clinton the day after the impeachment vote when he was acquitted. He came out and he apologized to the public and he said he wanted to work with the other party. Such a difference.

Frederica Freyberg:

Does the acquittal hurt Democrats?

Mordecai Lee:

I think that what the acquittal does is it says this is how it’s going to be until the election. In other words, for those people who really dislike President Trump and were sort of fantasizing about him being removed from office, I think this puts them back in touch with the fact that the Republican Party is now the Trump Party, that no matter how they feel about President Trump behind-the-scenes, that all Republican politicians in the House and Senate will go along with him, with the exception of Romney, and that they are lock-step with him. This is what the Republican Party is. This is in a sense the new normal.

Frederica Freyberg:

Let’s move along to Iowa. Given the snafu there with the new and glitchy app to report results, the delays and now a request by the National Democratic Party for a recanvas, what do you think about whether the Iowa Caucus should be put out of its misery?

Mordecai Lee:

Well, they don’t have a very good track record, but I suspect they’ll fight like heck to hold on to it. They’re the first caucus in the series, not the first primary. So I think it’s going to end up being the same. You know, some of the stuff that went wrong was just plain amateur hour. It sort of reminds us of the roll-out of Obamacare where there just wasn’t enough beta testing of whatever program they were using. But I think it’s also interesting that there was some jamming of the phone lines, that there was a backup hotline to call in when the app didn’t work and apparently some of it was jammed by supporters of President Trump, not in an organized basis but almost like on a prankish, let’s by mischievous basis. So there’s a lot of blame to go around, but I don’t think Iowa is going to be changing in terms of its role in future presidential cycles.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to the results there, what’s your reaction to those?

Mordecai Lee:

What it did was it permitted the four leading candidates to all move on to New Hampshire and say I didn’t lose because there wasn’t any definitive winner. So the optics that you and I are used to, that on the night of the caucus there’s somebody who’s on the podium with their hands raised in victory salute that they won the primary and that gives them the bump, the momentum to go on to New Hampshire, that just didn’t exist. So it was almost anticlimactic that now New Hampshire will be the one that will tell us who is the leader.

Frederica Freyberg:

You said on this program previously that you think the field will not be narrowed by the time of Wisconsin’s April 7 presidential primary. Do you still think that?

Mordecai Lee:

You promised me you were going to erase that part of the tape, but I guess I have to live up to what I predicted. I think there are at least three, probably four long-distance runners. In other words, unless somebody really does terribly in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, I think they’ve got the money to stay in. Maybe it will be Bloomberg who comes out of left field. Maybe even Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, but I think Wisconsin is going to be a real race. So for us that will be good. We may well be the pivot in the presidential nominating process.

Frederica Freyberg:

You say there’s a decent chance of a contested Democratic convention in Milwaukee. Why?

Mordecai Lee:

Well, if I’m right about my prediction about the primary, then that means there’s also a likelihood that those two or three or four are going to survive even beyond that and they are going to come to Milwaukee for the convention and they’re going to fight it out. The last time it happened in either of the two major parties was John F. Kennedy in 1960 in Los Angeles. Nobody knew who the nominee would be and the fact that he won on the first vote was everybody’s surprise. In fact, he won with Wyoming, the last state, putting him over the top. So we might be lucky. It might be that the Milwaukee convention will be a real convention with who knows what would happen. And I think that’s good. You know, when a convention is merely a coronation process, when there’s no news that comes out of a convention, it’s anticlimactic. I’m hoping that Milwaukee will be climatic.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to Republicans, with about a minute left, with Trump unopposed, what could happen there?

Mordecai Lee:

Oh, that’s a great question. I think Republicans in Wisconsin when they come to the April primary are going to have to decide do we want to show Trump that he’s got support and even though he’s unopposed should we vote in the Republican primary for him? Or should we cross over and perhaps play a little bit of mischief, perhaps vote for the person who would be the weakest Democratic nominee? When you’ve got an open primary, sometimes the interpretation of what it means is very hard to discern.

Frederica Freyberg:

Could Trump Republicans possibly bear to cross over?

Mordecai Lee:

I think it’s pretty common in Wisconsin politics when we used to have almost one-third of the voters who sometimes voted in Republican primaries and sometimes voted in Democratic primaries. It’s sort of the Wisconsin culture that you’re not betraying your party or you’re not being false if you vote in the other party’s primary. So I think they’re going to feel free to do it. It may well be that they coalesce to say I just want to tell Trump that I support him.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yeah. All right. Mordecai Lee, thanks a lot.

Mordecai Lee:

Thank you.