Defense, schmefense
Bring on the monkeys! And pinwheels!
If you spent time with Impeachment II — or even if you just dipped in — you saw a solid case built by House managers, compared to, well, I’m not sure what to call the former president’s lawyers’ performance. Painful? Tragically out-gunned?
Nevertheless, the U.S. Senate voted 57-43 to acquit the former president of inciting an insurrection. But then, when almost half of the jurors said up front they thought the impeachment was unconstitutional, Trump could have just as easily sent moderately trained monkeys and he’d still have walked. Or Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) could have placed a sea of pinwheels in the Senate chamber, aimed fans at them, and we could have watched them twirl for the time allotted for the defense. Same diff.
On Saturday, I stepped away when the Senate decided to allow witnesses, and when I sat back down, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, was giving closing statements. It took a moment of furious googling to figure out that Democrats had dropped the idea of bolstering their case with witnesses. Yes, that would have extended the impeachment trial for days if not weeks or months, but isn’t it important to understand precisely what Trump knew and when he knew it? Or did we already know?
Of course, this is just Monday morning quarterbacking. Daniel Goldman, the lead counsel of Trump Impeachment I, wrote in a Twitter thread this weekend:
For his part, Raskin, whom I want to adopt as my representative and my rabbi, said it best: You cannot argue with a religious cult.
I’m still not convinced not calling witnesses was the right move. Despite getting the outcome we all expected, I still believe it was important to get people on record, and I intend to stay mad about this for a while.
You?
I'm mad witnesses apparently would not have changed the outcome. I'm mad that the impeachment process proved itself to be useless, start to finish. To proceed with almost half of the "jury" claiming impeachment of a past President cannot be done, without insisting they must proceed under the assumption he can be impeached, is ridiculous. To allow blatant lying by the defense lawyers? It's a sham. We should either discard our impeachment process altogether or change it. It's ineffective. I'm mad that he can get away with inciting an insurrection and the GOP will not hold him accountable, no matter what. While it would be good to have witness testimony on record, I think it would only be useful to those who were really paying attention. Those people already saw how clear it was that Trump had incited the insurrection and then sat back and allowed it to happen without a response for hours. And then he followed up by telling the insurrectionists he loved them. We see he should be held accountable. However, another narrative, filled with sound bites from the defense lawyers' video, is flowing thru conservative sources to Trump supporter ears. Witnesses or not, the people who need to hear the truth aren't getting it. They continue to receive the warped storyline that Trump and his cronies want them to hear. I'm mad truth doesn't matter to a lot of people. I'm mad the House Managers only had this flawed process, that should be in place to protect us, but in the end was controlled by the accused. We are left unprotected from this happening again. Lots of mad here, too.