Impeachment Trial Could Be Bad News for 6 Democrats

With an impeachment trial for President Trump in the Senate is looking more likely every day, the good news for the six Democratic senators running for president is that they will be on TV every day during a trial. The bad news is, they won't be allowed to speak. The senators will act as jurors, and Senate rules require them to be present from Monday to Saturday, starting around noon, BuzzFeed reports. This means the six senators—Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bennet—could be off the campaign trail for several weeks, with the first primaries rapidly approaching.

Terry Sullivan, Marco Rubio's former campaign manager, tells BuzzFeed that a trial would be a "huge, huge burden" for a candidate, but they should "take the crap sandwich you've been served as a campaign and try to make it into filet mignon" with nightly TV appearances and campaign events in states easy to reach from the capital. An impeachment trial could last several weeks, but sources tell Politico that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Senate Republicans that he expects the House to approve articles of impeachment by Thanksgiving and he wants to have the trial over with by Christmas. It will take a two-thirds Senate majority to remove Trump from office. (More Trump impeachment stories.)