Braun earns Trump's gratitude

President Donald Trump gave a shout-out to U.S. Sen. Mike Braun on Wednesday.

“Mike Braun, he's become a big fixture on television and doing a great job,” Trump said at a White House ceremony where he signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement into law.

Braun, R-Ind., who was in Trump's audience, has appeared recently on NBC News, Fox News, CNN and C-SPAN. But the second-year senator from Jasper has been talking about Trump's impeachment trial, not the free trade deal.

At Capitol Hill news conferences, in media interviews and on Twitter, Braun has defended Trump against charges the president abused his power and obstructed Congress. While many of his colleagues, including Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., have remained either silent or publicly noncommittal, Braun has been a frequent critic of the impeachment proceedings.

Esquire blogger Charles P. Pierce wrote Monday that Braun has transformed from “the very model of a modern nondescript senator” into “one of the most prominent defenders” Trump has in the Senate.

“He has been omnipresent in media gaggles and on television,” Pierce wrote.

During a Wednesday morning conference call with Indiana news media, Braun discussed what a reporter described as “the decision to be out front and center” on impeachment.

“When I ran for Senate, it was because I wanted to come here and really do what I think President Trump embodies, and that's being not happy with business as usual here,” Braun said.

“And being here a little over a year, there is a lot of room for actually taking on what's wrong about the institution. So running for that reason, I thought you needed to step out” in public venues, he said.

“For me, regardless of what you think about President Trump's style, to me his policies and his agenda speak for themselves. But if you're silent, I think that means maybe you weren't on that wavelength,” he said.

He later said, “I'm here for the time I'm going to be here not to sit on the sidelines but to speak out on the issues that are important.”

Braun told reporters that senators “need to be as impartial as possible” in Trump's impeachment trial. But he also said he doubted they could be because “this is political” and “came over in a purely partisan way” when House Democrats approved two articles of impeachment with no Republican votes.

One article of impeachment alleges Trump abused the power of his office by threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless that nation's president agreed to investigate Trump political rival Joe Biden for possible corruption. Former national security adviser John Bolton reportedly backs up the claim in the manuscript of a forthcoming book.

As he has previously, Braun insisted Wednesday that Trump's conduct toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had been “inappropriate” but not a justifiable reason for Trump's impeachment and removal from office.

“The president has sole authority on any foreign affair. Does that mean that you should be weighing in on stuff that would mix politics back home with something you are doing overseas? I'd say probably not. Does that rise to the level of being impeachable? No,” Braun said.

“It's just that this does not arise to the level where you remove somebody from office,” he said.

Asked what he would need to know to vote in favor of convicting Trump, Braun replied: “It would take something that's not even been talked about. Because it would have to be a particular crime that was involved.”

The Senate trial on Wednesday afternoon entered a phase in which senators could submit written questions to House impeachment managers and Trump's defense team. Braun said he told other Republican senators that he wants to know whether the request that Trump made of Zelensky is an impeachable offense.

Summarizing a Trump defense attorney, Braun said: “A quid pro quo, even if it occurred like Bolton said it did, does not come close to rising to the level of being impeachable. Not appropriate, but not impeachable as well. My question is, is that true? Can you articulate that further? I think that was probably glossed over by many” during opening arguments in the trial.

He said Senate Democrats want Bolton to testify because “when your case was weak, you go for delay and try to milk it in other ways,” Braun said.

“There's only a handful of senators on each side that think they need more information,” he said.

bfrancisco@jg.net