Trump's victory rally in the East Room of the White House the morning after his acquittal, where Republican jurors stood to applaud, may well come to be seen as a definitive moment - when the party of Reagan truly became the party of Trump. Striking, too, was how the Attorney General, William Barr, got up from his seat at the event to clap and salute Trump's legal team, suggesting the wall that should exist between prosecutors at the Justice Department and political operatives at the White House has been flattened.
The Senate's rural bias, where a small red state such as North Dakota wields the same power as a blue state behemoth such as California, has helped a minority party that has lost the popular vote in six out of the last seven presidential elections remain in the majority. In the impeachment trial, the 48 Senators who voted to convict represent 18 million more people than the 52 who voted to acquit.
A conservative-leaning Supreme Court has offered vital assistance, with rulings such as Citizens United, which opened the floodgates for a torrent of dark campaign money from billionaire plutocrats, and Shelby County which invalidated much of the 1965 Votings Rights Act, the landmark legislation which did so much to boost black enfranchisement.
What the Trump presidency has shown is the lengths the Republican Party has been prepared to go with this win-at-all-costs ethos. Party leaders have expressed little outrage over Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In voting for acquittal, they decided to give Donald Trump a pass in trading US military aid to Ukraine for political dirt on his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
On Tuesday night, we witnessed American polarisation play out in real time. During the impeachment trial it often seemed that the very idea - and ideals - of America was on the stand.
A broken politics, a broken democracy, a broken country.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51417722
