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NEWSWEEK.COM 25
JOE MANCHIN
Democrat, West 9 irginia
DOUG JONES
Democrat, Alabama
MITT ROMNEY
Republican, 8 tah
MARTHA MCSALLY
Republican, Arizona
SUSAN COLLINS
Republican, Maine
Apostates within Trump’s GOP are not treated
kindly. Ask Francis Rooney, a representative from
Naples, Florida. Last month he gave a television
interview in which he equated Trump’s Ukraine
scandal with Watergate. “I’m very mindful of the
fact that back during Watergate everybody said, ‘Oh,
it’s a witch hunt to get Nixon.’ Turns out it wasn’t a
witch hunt. It was absolutely correct.”
The backlash from his district was swift, intense,
and stoked by a furious White House. Several con-
stituents called his office and said if he wasn’t pre-
pared to support the president he should stand
down. The reaction stunned Rooney; so much
so that the next day, he took the advice and an-
nounced that he would not run for re-election next
year. The episode, more than anything, showed
“that this is not the Republican Party anymore,” says
political scientist Sabato. “It’s the Party of Trump.”
McConnell has already spoken directly with
the president on “multiple occasions” about the
impeachment trial, according to four Capitol Hill
and White House sources. At this point, sources
familiar with McConnell’s thinking say, the major-
ity leader does not disagree with the conventional
view of the forthcoming impeachment drama: The
country’s founders made it difficult to remove a
president. Based on his understanding of the facts
surrounding the Ukraine affair, in which the presi-
dent allegedly tried to leverage military aid in return
for a Ukrainian investigation into political rival Joe
Biden and his son, McConnell believes there is little
chance Trump would be convicted in the Senate—
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