TRIUMPHANT TRUMP ACQUITTED!

 

With the final gavel banging down Wednesday on impeachment, President Donald Trump barreled ahead in his reelection fight with a united Republican Party behind him, and emboldened by reassuring poll numbers and chaos in the Democratic race to replace

 him.

Republican senators voted largely in lockstep to acquit Trump, relying on a multitude of rationales for keeping him in office, his conduct wasn’t at all impeachable; his July telephone conversation with Ukraine’s president was a “perfect call”; there’s an election in 10 months and it’s up to voters to determine his fate.

For Trump, there was one overriding message to draw from his acquittal: Even at a time of maximum political peril, it’s his Republican Party.

One day after Trump avoided talk of impeachment in his State of the Union address and argued that he had delivered on his 2016 campaign promises, the president already was moving to use impeachment as a 2020 rallying cry.

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Trump tweeted after the vote that he would mark his acquittal with a statement at noon Thursday to “discuss our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax!” And the president’s supporters were being invited to join him in an East Room victory lap.

The president and his allies sent giddy tweets needling his accusers and Democrats. In his first message once the trial closed, Trump posted an animated video using a Time magazine cover to suggest he would remain in office “4EVA.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., released a video of him tearing up the impeachment articles. And White House social media director Dan Scavino tweeted an animated GIF of Trump dancing.

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and a senior White House aide, said in a post: “This factional fever and incoherent, ill-conceived process has finally ended and the President has rightfully been acquitted. It is time for our Country to move forward. Together.”

The nation’s first presidential nominating contest, the Iowa caucuses, handed more good news to Trump. A tabulating mishap threw the Democrats into chaos, depriving any candidate of a clear victory and allowing Trump to paint the Democrats as incompetent and corrupt.