Susan Collins and Tim Kaine are working to convince colleagues to censure Trump instead of ban from office: report

Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) are working behind the scenes to convince their colleagues that they should censure former President Donald Trump, Axios reported.

When former President Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about a sexual relationship, the Senate refused to vote for removal and instead voted for censure in 1998. Now Kaine and Collins are trying to convince their colleagues that attempting to overthrow the 2020 election and leading a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol is worthy of the same censure that Clinton got.

The Senate voted Tuesday whether to accept the argument that impeaching Donald Trump was unconstitutional, and 45 Republicans agreed to throw out the impeachment case. Two-thirds of the Senate is needed to convict Trump, which is 17 Republicans that would have to join with all Democrats.

"I think it's pretty obvious from the vote today, that it is extraordinarily unlikely that the president will be convicted. Just do the math," Collins said to reporters after the vote.

Kaine, by contrast, said that he wants to remove the focus from Trump and instead put it on the issues of President Joe Biden's agenda.

The majority of Americans support the second impeachment of Trump (56 percent) and believe that he should be convicted and barred from running for office again (57 percent), a Monmouth University poll said this week. These are the base numbers that appear prior to the public trial of Trump that will show videos and audio of the former president's supporters saying that they went to the Capitol on his instruction.

Read the full report at Axios.