After impeachment acquittal, Teflon Trump appears an unstoppable force
- Donald Trump presses on with re-election effort after Democratic-led effort to expel him from office crashes to a halt
- Trump launches a scathing attack on Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who voted ‘guilty’
With the final gavel banging down on impeachment, US President Donald Trump barrelled ahead in his re-election fight with a united Republican Party behind him, and emboldened by reassuring poll numbers and chaos in the Democratic race to replace him.
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.
Trump tweeted after the vote that he would mark his acquittal with a statement at noon Thursday, US time, 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”.