MITCH McConnell bridled over Donald Trump’s crude governing style but found him a valuable White House ally. Now, the powerful US Senate majority leader controls the outgoing president’s political future.

Following Trump’s humiliating second impeachment on Wednesday, the ever-calculating McConnell has a momentous decision to make: defend the president at all costs and rally his Republicans to prevent Trump’s conviction, or work to jettison the contentious and defiant billionaire businessman from Republican politics altogether.

Either way, the 78-year-old senator known for never letting a political crisis go to waste may be more than willing to have a weeks-long impeachment trial overshadow president-elect Joe Biden’s early agenda and portray Democrats as going out of their way to exact revenge on Trump.

The seven-term senator from Kentucky held Trump’s fate in his hands once before, when the embattled president faced a Senate trial a year ago on impeachment charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Trump prevailed, as McConnell held all but one member of his caucus in line to vote against conviction.

McConnell, who has gleefully described himself as the “Grim Reaper” for his ability to kill off Democratic legislation at will, is again the critical link in the impeachment trial process.

But things are different in this second rodeo.

While McConnell was fiercely opposed to the president’s removal early last year, backing the White House line that Democrats were on a witch hunt, he said on Wednesday he has “not made a final decision” on whether to vote to convict Trump for inciting an insurrection in which a mob of his supporters violently stormed the US Capitol.

The Senate leader, who already broke with Trump last month over the president’s relentless effort to overturn Biden’s election win, has hardly been able to contain his disdain for the man in the White House.

The pair sometimes go weeks without speaking, a startling reality given they are the main powerbrokers in the ruling party.

McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao served as Trump’s transportation secretary, giving the senator invaluable eyes and ears in the White House. But she resigned in disgust after the Capitol violence.

And in an explosive story on Tuesday citing people familiar with McConnell’s thinking, the New York Times reported that the leader has privately concluded Trump committed impeachable offences, and that the Democrats’ push to impeach would facilitate Trump’s banishment from the party.

Such leaks rarely occur by accident in Washington, and word is that McConnell, believing Trump has outlived his usefulness in cementing a conservative track for the nation, may be positioning himself for washing his hands of Trump altogether.

That opens the door for other Republicans in the Senate, many of whom take their cue from McConnell, to break with Trump. 

If 17 of them do, Trump would become the first president ever convicted of impeachment charges. A follow-up vote would ban him from future public office. – AFP, January 15, 2021.