Daily US Times: Donald Trump’s impeachment trial opens a new chapter for his successor Joe Biden in the White House.
But while President Joe Biden and his team are eager to move past the former president’s impeachment, the bitterly partisan tone of the proceedings underscores the deep challenges ahead as the president and his party try to push forward their agenda and address historic crises.
Biden had acknowledged that Democrats needed to hold the former president responsible for the siege of the US Capitol but did not welcome the way it distracted from his agenda. Mr Biden was at the Camp David presidential retreat when the Senate voted Saturday to acquit Trump.
The trial ended with every Democrat and seven Republicans voting to convict Mr Trump, but the 57-43 vote was far from the two-third majority required for conviction. Whether the seven GOP votes against Donald Trump offered Biden any new hope for bipartisan cooperation within Congress remained an open question.
Biden referenced those GOP votes in favor of convicting Mr Trump — and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s own indictment of the former president’s actions — as evidence that “the substance of the charge,” that Trump was responsible for inciting violence at the Capitol, is “not in dispute.”
But President Biden quickly moved on to the work ahead, sounding a note of unity and declaring that “this sad chapter in our history has reminded us that democracy is fragile” and that “each of us has a duty and responsibility as Americans, and especially as leaders, to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.”
The US president said: “It’s a task we must undertake together. As the United States of America.”
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