Center for American Progress

No, Trump hasn’t learned a lesson. He’s got a record of misusing taxpayer funds.
In the News

No, Trump hasn’t learned a lesson. He’s got a record of misusing taxpayer funds.

Author Sam Berger argues that a Senate acquittal would be a green light for President Donald Trump to continue misusing taxpayer funds.

As President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial winds down, multiple GOP senators have tried to justify their plans to vote against removing him by suggesting that Trump has been chastened — he may have done something “wrong and inappropriate,” as Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) described it, but he’s learned a lesson, and that’s good enough. Sunday on “Meet the Press,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said, “If a call like” Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “gets you an impeachment, I would think he would think twice before he did it again.” On Sunday, when asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if she is “confident that he won’t do this again,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) replied, “I think that he knows now that, if he is trying to do certain things … he needs to go through the proper channels.”

The above excerpt was originally published in The Washington Post. Click here to view the full article.

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Authors

Sam Berger

Former Vice President, Democracy and Government Reform