The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

by Peter Baker

As if that were not surreal enough, Trump’s team then handed the lectern to Ken Starr so that the man who helped impeach one president could argue against conviction of another. More than twenty years earlier, Starr said quite soberly that the rule of law was so important that a president should be held accountable for defying the judicial system even if the underlying issue was just about sex. Now he contended that a president’s subversion of foreign policy for the purpose of tearing down a domestic opponent did not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. “The Senate is being called to sit as the high court of impeachment all too frequently,” Starr told the senators. “Indeed, we are living in what I think can aptly be described as the Age of Impeachment.” It was, of course, an age he played a role in ushering in. “Like war, impeachment is hell,” he allowed. “Or at least presidential impeachment is hell.”[23]