What can we calmly but bluntly take away from the acquittal at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial?

Well, first, it isn’t really an acquittal. A majority of the Senate (57 members) voted to find Trump guilty, including seven members of his own party (the responsible ones). The rest condemned themselves as surely as Trump as cowards. Like I said, that judgment comes calmly and bluntly.

Second, it effectively eliminates Trump from another appearance in a national election. He is clearly extremely damaged goods even as he maintains a cadre of of white believers and sycophants. They probably won’t go away in large numbers, but neither will their shouts and screams drown out Trump’s ghastly record of lies and embrace of criminality.

Third, Trump’s record of encouragement to Capitol rioters on January 6 will forever be the most lasting element of his legacy. It was permission of an effort to destroy democracy, an inducement to a mob to storm and even kill members of Congress (including Trump’s own vice president Mike Pence). The films of what actually happened will always be the starting point for consideration of Trumps life. And that consideration will be devastating. Not only will tyrump be viewed by coming generations as our worst president but also as the one who so severely threatened our democracy.

Those are the obvious lessons we have learned from this second impeachment. In some ways they are an affirmation of what we already knew about Trump. In other ways they give us so much more devastating assessments of this man.

He is a criminal offender, a man whose disdain for the rule of law — so many things he did even before his criminal insistence that the elections as stolen from him — forever marks him as America’s great disgrace. shame on Donald Trump, even as he has none.

And why say that? Just these facts: Trump has never condemned the rioters and rioting of January 6. He has never apologized for it. He has never acknowledged he played any role in it.

It is his legacy.