One day after President Donald Trump's 2020 State of the Union address, Senators took to the floor to announce their impending votes in the impeachment trial against him.
The proceedings were little more than a formality, with an acquittal of Donald Trump all but certain.
That doesn't mean it came without unexpected moments.
One of those moments came when Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) took the floor.
Romney, along with Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), was one of the few Republicans to vote in favor of hearing additional witnesses in the trial—an effort that was shot down by the Republican majority.
Collins later announced that she would vote to acquit Trump on both articles of impeachment, insisting that the President had learned his lesson.
Romney teared up at the beginning of his address.
Watch below.
The Senator said:
"The allegations made in the articles of impeachment are very serious. As a Senator-juror, I swore an oath, before God, to exercise 'impartial justice.' I am a profoundly religious person. [pause] I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the President, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced. I was not wrong."
Romney then announced that he would be the first—and likely sole—Republican Senator to vote to convict Donald Trump on the first article of impeachment: abuse of power.
With that decision, he also became the first Senator in American history to vote to convict his own party's President in an impeachment trial:
"My vote will likely be in the minority in the Senate. But irrespective of these things, with my vote, I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it of me. I will only be one name among many, no more or less, to future generations of Americans who look at the record of this trial. They will note merely that I was among the senators who determined that what the President did was wrong, grievously wrong."
You can watch Romney's full remarks below.
Though Romney had expressed disapproval of the President's actions throughout his tenure, few expected him to make the drastic decision to convict, with Romney himself reminding Senators that his votes were congruent to Trump's positions 80 percent of the time.
People gave credit where it was due.
Trump's allies—including Romney's niece and GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel—were...less than pleased.
Though Romney is far from a Democrat, he's now officially made the Senate vote to convict Donald Trump a bipartisan one.
For more information about Trump's testing of America, check out A Very Stable Geniusavailable here.
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