President Donald Trump, next to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, speaks to reporters upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Sept. 3, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows revealed new insights into former President Donald Trump’s political plans, coming as the Senate holds its ongoing impeachment trial to convict him.
“America and the 75 million voters are not done with Donald Trump and all he did for the country,” Meadows told Sebastian Gorka, a former White House adviser, in an interview. Trump wants to “put America first, but he also plans to stay in the arena,” he added.
Over the past month or so, Trump has been uncharacteristically quiet. His accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and other big tech platforms were suspended. Twitter this week, via an executive, announced that Trump cannot come back on the social media website.
The former president met with House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) at his Mar-a-Lago resort and home in Palm Beach, Florida, last month and released a photo of the two after their meeting. Both described their talk as cordial and warm, with Trump’s team saying the former president would assist McCarthy in re-capturing the House majority from Democrats.
In the meantime, House Democrats and 10 Republicans impeached Trump for allegedly inciting violence on Jan. 6. Trump, through his lawyers, denied the allegations and his allies have pointed to his Jan. 6 speech where he called on supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard.
House Democrats made two days’ worth of arguments this week during the Senate impeachment trial, claiming that the former president was singularly responsible for inciting a small subset of the crowd that breached the Capitol. On Thursday evening, House impeachment manager Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) called on senators to “convict President Trump for the crime for which he is overwhelmingly guilty of. Because if you don’t, if we pretend this didn’t happen, or worse, if we let it go unanswered, who’s to say it won’t happen again?”
Trump’s lawyers are scheduled to begin their arguments on Friday. They have said in pre-trial briefs that Trump’s speech on Jan. 6 was protected under the First Amendment and asserted it is unconstitutional to convict a former president in an impeachment trial.
Several high-profile GOP senators on Thursday predicted that Trump won’t be convicted.
Meadows, for his part, joined the Conservative Partnership Institute group as a senior partner. The group is headed by former Republican. Rep. Jim DeMint.
Meadows told Gorka that he is slated to meet with several representatives in the conservative House Freedom Caucus to strategize against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “and all that she has in store for her liberal leftist agenda friends.”
Former White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, who helped craft Trump’s immigration agenda, is looking to push a group of lawyers to file lawsuits “against some of the radical executive orders that are coming out of this new administration,” according to Meadows. He didn’t go into more details about the plan.