Trump Is Already Being Censured
A Senate trial or formal rebuke would amount to the same thing: a historic condemnation by a majority of Congress, but not the two-thirds needed for an impeachment conviction.
Might as well try.
Photographer: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty ImagesNo U.S. president, or former president, has ever been convicted in a Senate impeachment trial. Donald Trump is highly unlikely to break that streak. That’s a principal reason some members of Congress started promoting censure as an alternative to impeachment right after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The idea is getting new attention now that Senate Republicans have solidified their opposition to conviction.
Proponents say that compared to impeachment, censure would put a wider and more bipartisan majority of Congress on record in condemnation of Trump’s campaign to overturn the election results and the violence that campaign inspired. It would also avoid the constitutional objections that an impeachment of a former president raises. (Even those of us who believe that Congress has the power to do it generally acknowledge that the constitutional question is tricky.)