Retired Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) was one of only seven Republicans in the Senate to vote to convict Donald Trump at the former President’s second impeachment trial.
Burr’s vote confirmed — or so it appeared at the time — his belief that Trump committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” in inciting an insurrection against the United States government, an opinion shared by the 56 other senators who voted to convict.
Now Burr, who retired in 2023 after 18 years in the Senate, has changed his tune and — in a stunning about-face — says he will vote for Trump in November, essentially pledging to return to the presidency a man who he accused of disgracing the office and trying to overthrow the government and the will of the American people.
Retired Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina tells @ReubenJones1 he plans to vote for Donald Trump in November, even though he voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial https://t.co/LOtUgwSwoL
— Joel Siegel (@joelmsiegel) August 13, 2024
In an interview with Spectrum News reporter Reuben Jones, conducted before Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, Burr recognized that some people might find it impossible to connect the dots between is current support and his previous condemnation of Trump. It was not “hard” for him, however, he says.
“Maybe someone will have a hard time squaring with it,” he said. “I don’t have a hard time squaring with it because I firmly understood why I voted for impeachment. And like I said, that’s not a disqualifier as to whether you can serve. It’s a bad choice I thought a president made one time.”
Burr made the claim that he voted to convict Trump for his own personal, singular reason — which he never revealed — and not “on anything the House [of Representatives] presented.”
Burr’s reason to convict the President of the United States of treasonous actions? His vote, he said, “was on the fact that I thought that the president leaving the vice president without surging to Capitol Hill a protective detail, to take a vice president with a nuclear football, and to make him secure was a breach of office.”
Remarkably, Burr said he did not share his private, sui generis reason for his vote even with his Republican colleagues, despite the blowback he received for failing to rally to protect Trump, which most Republicans did.
Burr’s claim — and his allegedly secret reason for voting to convict — allows him wiggle room, in his estimation, to vote for Trump in November.
Because even if the reasons to convict Trump that “the House presented” are clearly an automatic “disqualifier” for a commander-in-chief, those reasons (insurrection, et al) weren’t the reasons Burr claims to have voted to convict. He had his own personal reasons, which frees him to claim his November vote is not a contradiction or a capitulation.