Who Won?

Not Trump. He can’t plausibly claim to be the victim of a partisan witch hunt after seven GOP senators voted to convict him. The images of the riot will haunt him for the rest of his political life.

Not the GOP. It is still officially the POT (Party of Trump), with some isolated dissenters who are looking at primaries in 2022.

Not the country. The GOP has shown, yet again, that impeachment is a broken reed. If Trump had shot a man in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue, they would have found some pretext to acquit him.

Not the rioters. Trump sold them out. Any attempt they might make in a future judicial proceeding to use Trump’s words to justify their behavior will fly in the face of Trump’s legal arguments.

The Democrats? Maybe. They put on a convincing case and widened the split in the GOP. They exceeded expectations by getting seven GOP votes (I predicted five several weeks ago). In the end, though, they didn’t get what they asked for, in spite of everything.

The correct answer to the question is “nobody.”