Senate Republicans are begging Trump not to tweet during impeachment trial

Never tweet, especially when you're facing impeachment in the Senate.

That's the message President Trump is receiving from Senate Republicans, who Politico reports are very much hoping he won't be tweeting during his upcoming impeachment trial.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Politico that "we don't need a bunch of distractions" during the trial, while Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine.) said Trump would be "best served by letting his lawyers speak for him and not doing any comment" and Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D). offered this evergreen remark: "There [are] many cases in which I hope he doesn't tweet."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Even Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) felt the same way, saying Trump "has a right to express his grievances but if I were him I would ... keep a low profile."

"Tweet less, smile more,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) also implored Trump.

Still, considering just how active Trump's Twitter account has been throughout the impeachment process — he broke his own record for the most tweets and retweets in a single day of his presidency as the House Judiciary Committee was debating articles of impeachment — these Senate Republicans probably shouldn't get their hopes up.

As The MassINC Polling Group President Steve Koczela tweeted in response to the report, "I have run this through our elaborate, deep learning, Bayesian, multi-level, multi-dimensional, multi-vitamin, AI-based neural network, and concluded there is a 0 percent chance of this."