Good morning. It's Sunday, February 14th. Happy Valentine's Day. I'm Mehdi Hassan in for my good friend Ali Valshi.

After a day filled with unexpected confusion and drama, the United States Senate voted to acquit former President Donald Trump on one

article of impeachment for incitement of insurrection. The 57 to 43 vote was 10 short of the

threshold needed for conviction, yet represents the most bipartisan verdict in a presidential

impeachment trial in history. The vote almost didn't happen yesterday because Democrats had a chance

to call witnesses and prolonged the trial, but for reasons that still aren't quite clear to me,

they chose not to. They said, nah, let's end it today. Democrats, they never miss an opportunity

to miss an opportunity, do they? In the end, these seven Republican senators, Richard

Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Mikowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey,

voted with all 50 Democrats to accept the evidence they were presented with and to convict

the former president for his failed attempt to destroy American democracy. Notably, just one of those

seven Republicans is running for re-election next year, and two of them are retiring. Yet, as very

conservative Senator Bill Cassidy said in a very succinct statement, this is what matters.

Our constitution in our country is more important than any one person.

I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty.

The Louisiana GOP has already moved to censure the senator, the latest in a string of

censures done by state and local GOP parties across the country against

Republicans who either voted to impeach or have spoken out against the former president.

As Ali asked last week on this show, what was that Republicans were saying about?

Free speech, about being silenced and muzzled by liberals.

Several of the GOP senators who voted to acquit have released statement saying they did so

on constitutional procedural grounds and not because Trump was not guilty in their view

...