Before Donald Trump’s presidency, Max Boot was a proud Republican — and the conservative Washington Post columnist is still decidedly right-wing. But Boot left the GOP because of Trumpism, which he believes has been terrible for the conservative movement and terrible for the United States. And following Senate Republicans’ vote against featuring any witnesses during Trump’s impeachment trial, Boot is asserting that the GOP doesn’t even deserve to survive as a party.
“Trump will leave office someday — I hope! — but he will leave behind a quasi-authoritarian party that is as corrupt as he is,” Boot stresses. “The failure to call witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial revealed the GOP’s moral failure.”
On Friday, January 31, only two Republicans joined Senate Democrats in voting in favor of featuring witnesses in the trial: Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Democrats were hoping for testimony from former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who in his forthcoming book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” (which is due out on March 17), alleges that Trump made an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, a condition of military aid to Ukraine. Bolton, in other words, alleges the very “quid pro quo” that Democrats have been offering as a reason for removing Trump from office. Continue reading.