al-jazeera. and. this is al-jazeera. in doha with the news hour which will be dominated by the acquittal of donald trump and his 2nd impeachment trial responded john trump former president you know stage is not

a guilt is cherokee article which broke. the news was greeted with immediate praise from trump who is hinting heavily about his political future. but in an extraordinary post vertica top republican leader mitch mcconnell said trump is responsible for the assault on capitol hill. there's no question. their present trouble is practically. morally responsible. for the bulk. of it. hello and welcome donald trump says his political movement has only just begun after being acquitted by the u.s. senate in his 2nd impeachment trial in just 12 months democrats fell 10 votes short of a conviction as fellow republicans largely swung behind the former president to

shield him from responsibility for that deadly capitol hill riots on january 6th. $57.00 days for ease 3. 2 thirds of the present guilty the judges that responded from former president states is not guilty as charged. reacting almost immediately via a statement trump scientists legal team and hinted at plans for the future saying he has much to share in the months ahead leading republican senator mitch mcconnell was among those who voted to acquit but afterwards he delivered a searing attack on trial for his behavior there's no question no one president rob is practically. morally responsible for provoking the. question of.

the people who storm is building believe they were acting on the wishes and truck of their program. we have andy gallagher monitoring father trump's reaction from west palm beach in florida near the former president's resorts but 1st to alan fish on capitol hill allan a number of twists and turns today took us through the events of the last few hours . well interestingly enough i'm just been speaking to stacey plaskett who's one of the impeachment managers i asked her where she heard about the results she said look they did their job as many republicans have agreed they actually prove the case against donald trump they just didn't get enough of them to vote they didn't get the 67 votes so the feel comfortable with the job that they've done and they see they feel they've established to the american public that donald trump did act as an in chief certainly the day started with the thought that the democrats were going to call some witnesses that came as a surprise we thought we were moving quickly to closing arguments but they decided

that because of news reports that circulated in the united states late on friday there were a couple of people that they wanted to bring that was a surprise to everyone what happened then was that the senate went into recess both sides discussed what would happen over witnesses the statements made by the people that were quoted in the newspapers were entered into the congressional record but in the end it was decided not to bring witnesses plaskett just said you don't start interviewing witnesses that you don't know you're going to get what you're going to get from them and she said if they called kevin mccarthy the republican leader in the house he would have been a hostile witness that wouldn't been a great move for the democrats had built up so much momentum over the last couple of days we then moved on to the closing statements jimmy raskin said this was a time for essentially senators to meet history and as far as the defense were concerned they claimed that the whole. trial was unconstitutional that donald trump should be acquitted and that the senate should return that verdict today well you

saw the vote it was a record vote for a number of people asking ticket to essentially convict the president with 57 votes and it was also the biggest pipe bipartisan vote in the past you had one vote for the impeachment of the president of another party that was the last time don't trump was impeached and that was mitt romney he was one of 7 republicans who voted this time around but in the end donald trump acquitted of high crimes and misdemeanors. by the u.s. senate and i wonder how this is going to be saying did democrats miss a chance to thing because witness testimony whatever allowed him or follow a more complete record of what went on on the events of january 6th. i think they don't feel that they've missed a chance the feel of that no matter what happened this vote would have been roughly the same and the way that the republican senators have decided to acquit we're going to acquit even if they brought donald trump himself into the chamber it

simply wasn't going to change any minds and they were concerned about the time scale it could take another week to do all the work that needed to be done and get in front of the senate and they realize that joe biden has a very short legislative honeymoon he wants to get a $1.00 trillion dollar bill pushed through for corporate relief he wants a number of appointments to be confirmed by the senate including his attorney general he also wants to try and put an immigration bill on capitol hill at some point in the 1st 3 months and if this had dragged on and essentially gummed up the wheels of government and there's no doubt that the senate can to use an american phrase walk and chew gum at the same time but it would have slowed everything down and it would have started to leak political goodwill it would have made things much harder for joe biden and so the democrats took the political decision rather than the legal decision to go ahead without consulting witnesses what this does do though is put a question mark over the republican party there are people in the establishment

wing like mitt romney and mitch mcconnell who are clearly angered by what they saw from donald trump and there are others like ted cruz josh hawley marco rubio who voted with donald trump for one reason one reason being that in 2024 they would like to run for president and so they think to do that they have to convince the trump support that the are with them that they will continue the work of donald trump an interesting thing to note is by being acquitted that me. that donald trump can run for office in the future if he so wishes and there are people talking about him being a presidential candidate in 2024 years he could run again and his supporters think that not only should run he will win so you become the 45th president of the united states and the 47th president of the united states no one ever said that politics in the u.s. was boring indeed stay with us we have some reaction from a u.s. house speaker democrat nancy pelosi who took specific issue with mitch mcconnell's

logic for voting against impeachment saying he was the one who delay the trial in the 1st place for mitch mcconnell who created the situation where it could not have been heard before that 20 year or even began before the 20th in the senate to say all the things he said oh my gosh about donald trump and how horrible he was and years and then said but the tax at the time that the democrat the house chose to bring it over now didn't choose you chose not to receive it so i think that's really important. just going back to you so how do we how do we interpret that statement. she's right the house

passed the pass the the articles of impeachment and mitch mcconnell said and he was in charge of the senate at that point because the republicans still had the majority that he simply wouldn't accept them till after donald trump left and so when he says well i would have convicted him but he'd already left office mitch mcconnell made that himself he delayed the impeachment articles until after donald trump left office he then argued that it was a very narrow tool for a very narrow job and so you only use impeachment when someone is still in office and you can't impeach a private citizen so that was largely of mitch mcconnell's making at felt that speaking to some people some of the democrats they felt rather that mitch mcconnell's speech was rather self-serving that on one hand he was criticizing donald trump so he could say well i condemned him but he actually a load him to. essentially escape because he gave a number of senators like rob portman of ohio the chance to say well i thought it

was unconstitutional because the senate shouldn't be sitting in judgment of private citizens what mitch mcconnell did do was leave the door open to possible criminal prosecutions for donald trump and we know that that is a possibility that there are various investigations ongoing in new york at the moment into his business activities but more importantly in tied to the last election there is an investigation going on in georgia about that infamous call he made to the secretary of state there asking for to find an exact number of votes which was part of the evidence put into the record by the impeachment managers asking him to make sure that they had enough so they could win the state of georgia while that is under criminal investigation at the moment and of course when you were president you could argue that you shouldn't be impeached you should not impeach he shouldn't be charged he shouldn't face any criminal charges because you were the president and you had the job of running the country donald trump doesn't help the defense anymore we know that because he spent the last couple of days on the golf course. indeed many thanks for that alan fish for us in capitol hill one

of donald trump's defense lawyers michael vanderveen says it's time for the people and politicians of the united states to move on and face pressing issues like the current of r s pandemic. this contrie needs to cool the temperature we need to unite as a people there are so many common priorities that we all share that face this country in a really important way this team of lawyers are simply that we're trial lawyers we're not politicians we are not on the left side of the right side or any side of all we have a constitutional duty to defend our clients and we did that to the best of our abilities. has more of the statement donald trump released moments after the verdict it is a sad commentary times that one political party in america is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law i always have and always will be

a champion for the unwavering rule of law this has been the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country he goes on to say a historic petri all sick and beautiful movement to make america great again has only just begun. as. in west palm beach in florida very close to donald trump's residence so what can we make of that statement it's only just begun. well i think we can make of it that don trump isn't going anywhere any time soon that was i think the expectation he pretty much knew that he was going to be acquitted and you know it's it's not a strange thing to realize that this man who cast such a long shadow over the republican party is going to stick around and potentially run again in 2024 i think the wider question here is what does the republican party

become in the future is it down trumps republican party as it appears to be at this moment in time or is it more the republican party of people like liz cheney who voted to impeach him who is far more moderate than trumpets so i think you know there are people already talking about the republican party being at a civil war over the next few years but ultimately it's the american people they get to decide they will make those decisions in the midterm elections in a couple years and of course in 2024 when president former president trump might run him self so that there's no question at this point in time that this is the party of donald trump and potentially in the party of people like marjorie taylor green who is a cuban on supporting conspiracist you know this is a difficult time for the republicans i think that they voted to acquit don't trump because of the because of donald trump space it's important for us all to remember he won almost 75000000 votes in november's presidential election that is base loves

and adores him even if they don't like his personal moral behavior sometimes because what he promises things to these people he tends to deliver to them no matter how abhorrent that is to other people so trump is going nowhere i think that's what we're getting from that short statement that he made. and the expectation here is i think that he won't make any television appearances for a few days because it's the weekend on monday it's president's day and dawn chung likes to hit the prime time we all know that so it may be a while before we see and hear from the man himself but i'm sure when he gets in front of the camera is going to say see i told you so i'm going nowhere and he took us through some of some other reaction because some of trump's supporters have already come out online talking about this as a victory and the fact that he should run again we've also heard from his son i believe. yeah donald trump jr took to twitter almost straight away i tried to read at least one of his tweets

earlier but it was simply full of foul language but he put a picture up of his father saying 2 time champion and he took to facebook to say look not guilty i told you so that's the kind of reaction we expect from him trump supporters if they are ardent supporters of donald trump you know they're going to be overwhelming be happy this is a reason for him to be vindicated in their eyes a reason for him to run again this is someone who has a great deal of loyalty from his base of supporters and we know how much donald trump loves loyalty so there's really no question that this man is going to loom over the republican party for potentially years to come but one of the interesting things that came out over the last few days is something former speaker of the house john boehner said he said he's not afraid that donald trump might win in 2024 he's afraid he might lose in other words he loses starts to call foul again and we see jamming the 6 all over again that is a clear threat i think after what we saw on january the 6th and i think one thing

worth mentioning in all of this is that 5 people died on january the 6th and the families of those 5 people may not have got the answers that they want and as allan was saying trump's legal woes away from over there's a criminal investigation going on in georgia into that long hour long phone call to the republican secretary of state asking to find a specific number of votes so trump could end up in court for many months if not years to come and here's another thing to bear in mind as these people who were part of the answer action go through the court system over the next few months i have no doubt that their lawyers are going to argue that they were doing what the president told them i think we're going to hear that time and time again because for them facing serious charges of insurrection it's a good defense and for those people that did storm the capitol building that day many of them said directly we're doing this for our president we're doing this on his orders i flew here because he told me to so this is not going to go away that

way any time soon but then neither is donald trump. handy for now many things and the gallagher there for us live in west palm beach in florida near trump's mar a lago resort. a long time trump adverse 3 mitt romney was one of the 7 republican senators who voted in favor of conviction afterwards he wrote this tweet from violated his oath of office by failing to protect the capitol the vice president and others in the capitol bill cassaday from the state of louisiana said our constitution and our country are more important than any one person i voted to convict president trump because he is guilty. and senator richard burr from virginia put out a statement part of which read the facts are clear the president promoted unfounded conspiracy theories to cost out on the integrity of a free and fair election because he did not like the results. we can

speak now to theodore johnson who is a senior fellow at brennan center for justice he joins us on skype from washington d.c. many thanks for speaking to us on al-jazeera what's your reaction to this verdict it's hard to see it as anything but a clear victory for donald trump. yes thanks for having me look i think it's exactly what most folks expected it's a little bit more bipartisan then i think going into this we thought we'd see but certainly mostly a party line vote. and a trial where evidence was presented but not really heard i think this was a political vote in the outcome is not that surprising here's the thing the statement mitch mcconnell makes after he voted to acquit president trump is important because it does suggest that the republican party is going to try to distance itself from dunwich from even though we did not want to convict donald trump and and have him ineligible for office going forward so this is a very delicate dance the party is going to have to manage over the next few months

here and certainly going into the midterm elections next year and then the year after that will see the next set of presidential primaries where don't trump could put his fingerprints all over if he's not been disqualified from running how will the democratic party be sane as a result of this trial in the 1st impeachment trial was seen as a mistake by the democrats because it was seen as consolidating support for the then president is this trial going to be seen in a similar way. i don't think so the events of january 6th were horrendous and the whole nation saw the whole world saw it for the democrats not to act would have been the mistake so that they act they acted in acted quickly was the right thing to do and frankly most folks even on the republican side will agree that the what happened on the 6 was an impeachable offense for donald trump the question is whether or not the fact that he's no longer president whether he could have been convicted or not but this was good for the democrats here is where the trouble is

they were in order to both and peach and then convict don't trump it had to happen before january 20th when his term was officially up so they rushed through the house without presenting witnesses and without talking about a lot of the evidence that came up in the senate trial and that technicality because of the short time frame because of the lack of evidence presented in the house trial but then was proffered in the senate trial that allowed in a state that all for the better for the republican party if i just did if i could just enter interrupt she had what they did have a chance in the end to call witnesses but they didn't do you think that they were going to their detriment but that's right so they didn't because they didn't want this to drag out much longer than it had they were they were in a bind they had to act quickly in the house but acting more deliberately in the senate would have hurt them politically which is why they they threatened to call witnesses and then when basically republicans called their bluff they said ok you know this is not going to change the outcome let's just get this thing over with

and move forward with the nation's agenda so i don't think the democrats hurt themselves politically by by playing all the cards they had available to them given the really. that set of circumstances that we're presented with after january 6th what do you make of donald trump's comments stuff to the results came out in the statement that this is just the beginning and that this is just the beginning and that there's more that we can see from him. yet this is exactly what he said on the day he left washington on the lawn are not your ration day when he was put out of the presidency joe biden ascended to the office this is the talking points he's been using for several weeks now and it's not surprising i think he sees the lack of conviction as vindication and it's clearly not that again the most bipartisan vote for conviction the nation's ever seen the only president to ever be impeached twice in the nation's history this is not a victory for him however he does have

a very loyal base of supporters and he has a republican party that is loath to get on his bad side because they fear they will pay electoral penalty penalties if they're too stringent or too harsh in their critiques of donald trump so the president the former president. wrote out his talking points i can assure you he will insist that he has heard over the next several months and he will try to have an influence on elections again next year and then we'll see what he does in the next presidential election in 2024 hours certainly that will begin in 2023. that this is a man who loves the spotlight and this day presents some another opportunity to try to come in here the spotlight i think but i think the nation's had its fill of him and will look to move on as best they can to include senior republican leadership in the senate at johnson saying a fellow at the brennan center for justice speaking to us that from washington to say many thanks for your thoughts thank you we have more of the remarks by

u.s. senate minority leader mitch mcconnell off to trump was acquitted the republican any that reminded senators that trump could still face criminal prosecution president drop of still liable for everything he did while he was in office as an ordinary sort of. structured limitation to iran. where everything you do while is in office and get away with anything yeah. we have a criminal justice system in this country we have civil law to go and former presidents are not a mere from being accountable by either why. tim constantine is the host of capitol hill show a radio program and a calm columnists at the washington times he joins us from jacksonville florida what do you make of those comments by senate minority leader mitch mcconnell he didn't get away with anything well i think mcconnell is walking

a tight rope here he knows that there is an entire group within the republican party that is not particularly happy about having donald trump continue to really put forth as the voice sort of face of the party i would say the majority of people in the party would like to put that in the rearview mirror so mitch mcconnell is not going to vote to convict on this impeachment when clearly there was not evidence to do so but at the same time it's not cut and dry he knows that trump is expensive trump is rude trump is brash and there's a lot of people that don't like him so he's he's trying to walk that fine line. at the end of day 7 republicans did vote to convict trump were you surprised by any of those that did and what does it tell us about the state of the republican party. well i was surprised to only that a week ago they had or a few days ago they had

a vote where shifty flour scuse me 45 members of the republican party said this was an unconstitutional here it was contrary to the constitution of the united states so that 2 senators who didn't think it was constitutional would vote to impeach that was a little surprising but i think in the long term question is what's donald trump future what's the party's future and i move backward sometimes to see what will happen in the future it was only one year ago little over a year ago that donald trump was impeached the 1st time but because of coded and because of the election and because of other news stories going around the world it literally wasn't mentioned once during the election campaign by any major news organization it had largely been forgotten and that was an election for president in the same year so the idea that donald trump is going to continue want to be the

leader of the party 4 years from now i think is an absurd idea i think it's one that he will fade that's how politics works he wants that spotlight and he will cling to that spotlight but i don't expect him to be the nominee of the party in 2024 then hit who do you think well i mean would it be a candidates like nikki haley for example. she may have started off as not big parts of the establishment but she very much is now is that something that . support will appreciate. you know at least one she's got a great track record and in this instance she has played both sides of the fence she was part of the trump team when she served him and his administration of the united nations but this past week came out and said enough we need to move on from donald trump which was very clever but i think to the republican party's benefit they have a deep bench of credible people you have senator ted cruz who is who came in 2nd 4

years ago to don't trump in the process who clearly would still like to be president you have paul ryan who was speaker of the house he still your music very dynamic he's more center of the road he can appeal to both sides ders no shortage of candidates that are going to be a viable and likable alternative to donald trump like many thanks for your time tim constant state constant taking the capitol hill so i write a program and a columnist at the washington times thank you. full coverage of the question is ahead plus myanmar's military rulers to give themselves more palace as they face intensifying anger at the last week scale. and how rio de janeiro's that he known for youth and energy is finding itself ill equipped to protect itself from its aging population.

we got some very nasty weather coming in across much of north america over the course of this week and by the end of the weekend some parts could see as much as 30 centimeters of snow fall loss of cold air still in places tongue of colder air than across was spinning out of canada that arctic blast are going to write down all the way down into the deep south and we have got weather warnings in force anywhere from the pacific northwest right down to the mexican border as we go on through the next couple of days here is that cold air then the purples they're going to make their way further south which is because on through saturday sunday going on in some monday gradually seeing that very cold air coming all the way down into a good part of texas minus 9 the top temperature in dallas on monday afternoon minus 3 the fool who stands you can see basically cold frigid air coming through

dangerously cold weather got some wet weather now the prices are pulling away from the southeastern corner weiss freezing rain on that northern flank of that here comes and next batch of wintry weather that will make its way down across new mexico coming into texas as we go on through sunday going on in some monday that snow takes even further southeast and could see its coldest weather for 100 years that wet weather and wintry weather continues pushing east. as a weapon of war leaves the very deep scars. scars so rude the victims men and women can barely talk about. the only witnesses who can help bring about justice. fairness human rights campaigners and maybe investigating since the 2000. and speakable crime on al-jazeera

one of the really special things that work in progress here is that even as a camera woman i get to have so much input in contribution to a story. her in this region better than anyone else working for it as you know is that it turns out in that particular because you have a lot of people that are divided on political issues we are we the people we live to tell the real story so i'll just mend it is to deliver in-depth journalism we don't feel inferior to the audience across the globe. you're watching out there in mind of our top stories this hour former u.s.

president donald trump has been acquitted and his 2nd and pitchman trial 7 repub.