During the “Powerhouse Roundtable” portion of Sunday’s This Week on ABC, some on the panel of left-wing journalists shared concerns about Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) tactic of refusing to hand over the Articles of Impeachment against President Trump to the Senate. On top of that, there were worries about the public’s minimal interest in the proceedings.
Speaking on how he saw the Senate trial being conducted, ABC senior national correspondent Terry Moran declared: “Mitch McConnell calls the shots. At the end of the day, the Senate has the sole power to try impeachments. He’s in control of the Senate. I think he will, because he is an institutionalist so some degree, he'll try to work with Democrats. But at the end of the day, the rules of this trial will be laid down by Mitch McConnell.”
Moran also seemed confounded by Pelosi’s plan to not deliver the Articles of Impeachment until after the New Year:
I cannot figure out what the strategy Nancy Pelosi has. The Constitution says the House has the power, the sole power to bring an impeachment. The Senate has the sole power the try an impeachment. I don't get what her leverage is here, and at the end of the day, the Democrats are going to come up short because they don't have the votes in the Senate and that's what controls the process.
Turning to Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty, fill-in host Martha Raddatz decided to read from Tumulty hyperbolic column as if it was insightful. “If things play out as they usually do in the Trump era, all of this will soon be subsumed in the next thermonuclear burst of chaos generated by a president who cannot be chastened or shamed,” she quoted. “Once again, the House has made a notch in history. What's different this time, however, is that no one really believes anything will change as a result.”
A short time later, Moran was asked about how Trump’s impeachment was different from President Clinton’s. His first point was the difference in public interest in the process, citing an ABC poll finding “62 percent of Americans say they are following these developments closely.” He compared it to the 82 percent for Clinton’s.
“Two-fifths of the country can't be bothered and part of that is exhaustion with the constant drumbeat of outrage and bitterness and rancor,” he lamented.
On top of trying to convince the Senate to remove President Trump from office, Moran argued that Democrats also needed to work on getting the public “interested much less actually behind the process, we are split on that.” Because, so far, “it really feels like a nothingburger to some extent.”
![[scooter]](/data/avatars/m/22/22287.jpg?1659477690){kind=avatar}
