MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Well, with the Senate's impeachment trial coming to a close today, we wanted to know how engaged Americans have been and what they think about how all this has unfolded on Capitol Hill. Detroit native Kaylan Kennedy is a Ph.D. student in psychology. He said he was watching the impeachment proceedings closely when the action was on the House side, but he expected today's outcome, so he has had his eyes on the Democratic campaign trail this week.
KAYLAN KENNEDY: I've honestly been paying more attention to Iowa because I'm just expecting that they're going to acquit.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In Milwaukee, a 67-year-old Democrat and retiree, Mary Jo Johnson, says that the impeachment was a sham and the president is a bad role model.
MARY JO JOHNSON: How do you have a trial without calling witnesses? Do that make sense? Somebody ask him - do it make sense? The whole thing was corrupt from the beginning. Now, how do you - the whole United States watching this man do what he do, how do we expect for kids to get any better when he do stuff?
CORNISH: Republican David Grosse is also in Milwaukee. He's retired, which, he says, left him lots of time to follow the impeachment of President Trump, whom Grosse supports.
DAVID GROSSE: From Day 1 when he was elected, there seemed to be a push to get him out. And it seems to be under any conditions that were there.
KELLY: Raleigh, N.C.'s, Robert Lipscombe is a semi-retired 60-year-old maintenance technician who spent more than 20 years in the Navy. He says he's been following the impeachment saga pretty closely.
ROBERT LIPSCOMBE: I catch up with it daily like on CNN, and I talk it over with some older, experienced guys.
KELLY: Lipscombe said he would have liked to have heard from witnesses in the Senate.
LIPSCOMBE: They put the spin on it a lot, the Republicans did. And they danced around and tried to hide behind a lot of accomplishments instead of just answering questions directly. And Democrats had a really tough time of getting their message across.
CORNISH: Voices from around the country on the day that the U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Trump on two articles of impeachment, the third such impeachment trial in American history. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.