January 6, 2021 was a historic day in American history for all of the wrong reasons.  For the first time since the War of 1812 the Capitol was breached, not by a British battalion, but by a mob of Trump supporters and right-wing extremists who stormed the building to interrupt the election certification that would solidify the end of Trump’s tenure in office. Less than six weeks later, history was made again as Donald Trump was acquitted of his charge of “incitement of insurrection,” making him the only president in history to go through the impeachment process twice. Yet despite the massive amount of attention the assault on the Capitol received, the public did not seem to care about Trump’s second trial. Though there was overwhelming evidence that he incited the attack, they still could not get 17 Republicans to convict. This is beyond troubling and goes to show the dire situation America is in when it comes to the public’s relationship with politics.

Comparing the arguments prepared by both the prosecution and the defense shows the major difference in the quality of these two cases. The prosecution argued that Trump was aware of the Capitol attack and is solely responsible for the extreme actions of the rioters. Their argument was mainly presented using provocative videos taken of the Capitol, as well as affidavits from hundreds of insurrectionists from the Capitol attack. Many of these testimonies said that they took Trump’s comments, from January 6 in particular, as justification for their actions.

 At first it seemed like an uphill battle for Trump’s legal team to defend him, considering the strong case they were defending against. Once the spotlight shifted, it became evident that his legal team seemingly had almost no case in defense of what Trump actually did; they mostly argued that the trial was unconstitutional in nature and that the defense’s argument of incitement was “a preposterous and monstrous lie”. When they did shift to showcasing their “evidence,” it consisted of a montage of prominent Democratic leaders making out-of-context statements that the team compared to Trump’s rhetoric, such as Chuck Schumer’s statements outside of the Supreme Court. It would seem that, based on the weak, almost laughable defense of Donald Trump and the prosecution’s fairly strong case, this trial would be a very easy decision for the Senate. However, there was one group of people that the  did not argue towards: the American public.

According to Google Trends, the peak use of the search term “impeachment” over the past five years was the week of December 15, 2019, the week that Trump was first impeached by the House for “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress.” The search term was given a rating of 100, meaning that this was the most popular time the word “impeachment” was searched since 2016. However, when Trump was impeached for a second time on January 10, the word impeachment had a score of only 36, about one-third of its score during the first impeachment trial. This clearly indicates that, despite the massive amount of media coverage, Trump’s second impeachment did not have the same importance as the first. How is this possible?

One possible answer to this question is that the American public has grown accustomed not only to Trump’s outrageous actions but also to his tendency of getting off scot-free. Despite the fact that Trump was seemingly always buried in controversy, he never faced any real ramifications for his actions. Both of his impeachment trials ended in an acquittal and many of his contentious policy changes, such as pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords, were swept under the rug by the daily news cycle. Even his tweets of spectacular insanity, often containing lies and misinformation, became a part of daily American life as many simply accepted that this was how our president was going to act.

Americans’ indifference to Trump’s outlandish statements and actions has culminated in this second impeachment trial, where it seemed that Trump did not even escape conviction because of his defense team’s argument. After the trial, Mitch McConnell said that Trump’s actions on January 6 are moot because he is “constitutionally not eligible for conviction.” This statement makes obvious that McConnell knew that this trial was never going to get enough public attention to force him and other Senate Republicans to convict Trump. This is incredibly dangerous, as this is a clear sign that politicians have picked up on the air of indifference surrounding Trump and politics in general and could take advantage of this fact to mitigate further controversies. In order to prevent this from happening, Americans have to become more invested in the political realm, and take tangible actions to hold those in government accountable.

Tyler Quigley ‘24 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at q.tyler@wustl.edu.