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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCan a Freshman Congressman Prosecute Trump for High Crimes -- and Still Keep His Faith in Humanity?
Moral flexibility is kind; I'd call it something worse.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/jason-crow-impeachment-donald-trump-trial-colorado-951631/
February 14, 2020 6:00AM ET
Can a Freshman Congressman Prosecute Trump for High Crimes and Still Keep His Faith in Humanity?
Rep. Jason Crow opens up about what it was like for a rookie politician to argue an impeachment trial, face death threats, and not lose hope
By Andy Kroll
WASHINGTON A few hours after the U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Trump, bringing a swift end to the third impeachment trial in American history, a pair of armed police officers escorted Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado for the last time back to his Capitol Hill apartment. As one of the seven House impeachment managers, Crow had spent the last three weeks making the case to senators, and to the American people, that Trump should be removed from office. He had stood in the white-hot center of our politics. The scrutiny, hed expected. The death threats, not so much. Hence the security detail.
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If somebody acknowledges that something isnt right privately and then is a different person publicly, thats troubling, he told me. What it shows to me is a kind of a moral flexibility that means youre willing to do whats necessary to keep your own job and to protect yourself instead of doing what youve sworn an oath to do.
Straightening up in his chair, he went on: It makes me angry, actually. And the reason it makes me angry is because Ive seen people who have taken the harder road. That have sworn the oath and given everything everything to keep it.
I asked him if he thought differently about his colleagues on the other side of the aisle after watching all those Republican senators cast votes to block new evidence and witness testimony and then acquit a lawless president.
There are certainly some of them that Ive struggled with, he said. But he wasnt ready to write them off. The impeachment trial had tested his optimism and shaken his hope, but it hadnt extinguished them. He still believed in the power of individual connection, even if it hadnt worked during the impeachment trial. He still believed the individual connection was the only way out of the darkness and the dysfunction of this chapter in American history.
Since he got elected, Crow gets messages from people he served alongside in Iraq. They still call him sir despite being out of the military for 15 years. Many of them are supporters of the same president Crow had said should be removed from office. Crow thought back to one such guy whod contacted him. He was like, Listen, sir, I dont agree with your politics, and Im a supporter of the president, but I still trust you, Crow recalls. You always took care of us, and Ill never forget that. I trust you and I wish you luck.
No matter how visceral or tribal politics gets, that connection still matters. Thats what Crow took away from the story. If you can make an individual connection with folks, and if they trust you not the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party, not whatever that is still more powerful than anything, he told me. I disagree, you disagree, but maybe theres still something bigger that connects you. That sense feels like it is seeping out of our society that maybe bothers me the most.
He went on, Donald Trump is not going to be president of the United States forever. When this is done, we have to figure out how we rebuild, how we move forward. And the only way we do that is if we have relationships and connections that survive this. And Im just not going to walk away from that.