GOP senators who voted to convict Trump say it’s too soon to worry that he could
The Republican senators say they it’s too early to be concerned that Trump would seize on another election conspiracy to try to overturn a 2024 result that doesn’t go his way: He’s not even a candidate yet, and even if he runs, Trump won’t have the power of the federal government at his disposal like he did in 2020.
“Until there’s a 2024 filing date, I don’t necessarily know if anybody is in or out of the race,” said Sen. Richard Burr, a retiring North Carolina Republican who said he’s focused on election security and the 2022 midterms. “So, it’s sort of an irrelevant thing to talk about somebody that might run in ’24 and what they might be saying.”
CNN spoke to six of the seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump about the concerns democracy experts are raising. The seventh, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, declined to answer questions when approached by CNN, and a spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
“That’s kind of premature,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican. “He obviously tried to miscommunicate the one that already did happen.”
“I have no idea what President Trump’s plans are,” said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican. “I’m really not focused on that. I’m focused on all the issues we have going on.”
Democracy experts say Trump and his allies already pose a grave threat to a close 2024 election — and American democracy. He’s convinced significant chunks of the Republican Party base to buy into his lies about the 2020 election being stolen, he’s got a stranglehold on the GOP to launch a presidential bid and he’s endorsed candidates echoing his election conspiracies who are seeking to run elections in the key battleground states.
“What Republicans discovered in 2020, maybe to their surprise, was that it’s possible to overturn the election, and that the base will not only tolerate it but support it,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University political scientist and co-author of “How Democracies Die.”
“And now, much more than 2020, there will be Republicans on the ground ready to exploit opportunities to either toss out ballots from rival strongholds or overturn the results,” he added.
“I think what we’ve learned from the Trump presidency, and the behavior of his allies, is not to ever dismiss what they are seeking to do,” said Rep. John Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat who has authored voting rights legislation in the House. “Too often, when people said, ‘Well, they’ll never try…
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