Towards the end of night two of the Senate impeachment trial, the Washington Post reported Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., left the trial over an hour before its conclusion.
Washington Post Reporter Paul Kane said Feinstein exited the Senate chambers through the carriage entrance into an awaiting car at 8:45PM.
“Goodnight,” @SenFeinstein said to me and @jenhab as she exited the Senate at 8:45 pm.
She left under the carriage entrance into an awaiting car.
There was almost an hour left on Wednesday night’s impeachment trial. https://t.co/7E1woQ0ENT— Paul Kane (@pkcapitol) January 23, 2020
On Wednesday, MSNBC Hosts Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes criticized senators who left the impeachment trial early, questioning their devotion to their country.
“We also live in a country in which we ask every citizen to serve on juries. Most of those people have other jobs they have to take leave from. If the trial goes for a long time, often they don’t collect their paycheck from that and are given a meager amount of money relative to what some of those people might make,” Hayes said. “These peoples’ job is to do this. This is literally their job. If you find it too annoying or frustrating or uncomfortable to sit for eight hours and listen, you can resign tomorrow and go get another job.”
MSNBC’s legal analyst Maya Wiley said Senators who left early are not taking their job seriously.
“It’s a terrible look to the public to the extent that the news reports are getting out. These are people who are supposed to be listening, hearing and then making a decision on what’s being presented all day long. We’ve also heard a lot of people have made up their minds already and are not actually taking their oath seriously,” Wiley said.
Maddow agreed with the sentiment, saying, “there is something to be said for the civic example that they could fake. You don’t have to believe it, but fake it for the sake of your country.”
Meanwhile, over on CNN, host John Berman went after Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
The presentation from the House managers is earning praise even from Republicans. We have a picture to show you, last last night, that’s Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the president’s fiercest defenders, telling lead manager Adam Schiff that he had done a good job. Really well-spoken, he said.
Although it does beg the question, how would Senator Graham know? He wasn’t in his chair for chunks of the arguments. In fact, many of the senators from both parties were not at their desk at different times despite the rules which will require the apparently herculean task of sitting down for a few hours.
Berman concluded his dramatic monologue by decrying the future of the Republic is at stake if Senators don’t take their job seriously.
“This isn’t digging ditches, this isn’t manning a fox hole, this isn’t working an assembly line. This is sitting in a chair and enjoying all the milk you can drink. But I guess it’s not like the future of the Republic is at stake. Oh, wait, it is,” he said.
