Republicans Unmasked

They needed seventeen Republican votes to convict Donald Trump. They got seven. The final count was decisive -- 57 for conviction, 43 against. In one sense, the senate saw Trump for who he is. But given that 67 votes were required for conviction, there is another obvious conclusion. The Republicans have been unmasked. The whole world sees who they are. Frank Bruni writes:

I keep thinking about the late 1990s, Bill Clinton, that whole melodrama and how Republicans used it in the service of a particular identity for their party. I keep thinking about what a lie that identity was then and what an absolute joke it is now.

Monica Lewinsky dropped into that crusade like a gift from the gods. What you saw on the faces of many Republicans as they discussed Clinton’s dalliance with her wasn’t indignation. It was glee, and it fueled the charade that men like Newt Gingrich — who was then the House speaker and was cheating on his second wife with the much younger woman who would become his third — were the bulwarks against moral chaos.

Republicans sought to define themselves as the caretakers of tradition, the guardians of propriety, the proudly old-fashioned champions of honor, order, patriotism and such. Clinton’s background, especially the accusations of infidelity, helped them do that. They turned him into a symbol of America’s turpitude. They reasoned that the more thoroughly they demonized him (and Hillary), the more persuasively they sanctified themselves.

He was lies and they were truth. He was lust and they were modesty.

Consider what has happened to the Republican Party in the era of Donald Trump:

Along came Trump, and Republicans decided that decency and decorum were overrated. Truth, too. Heck, everything that they claimed to stand for in the Clinton years was now negotiable, expendable, vestigial. Nothing was beyond the pale.

And, as jurors, some Republicans were simply disgraceful:

Rick Scott, who of course voted “not guilty,” was seen studying and then fiddling with a map or maps of Asia. Dare we dream that he’s plotting his own relocation there? [Josh] Hawley, who also voted “not guilty,” at one point moved to the visitors gallery above the Senate floor and did some reading there, his feet propped up, his lanky body a pretzel of petulance. What happened to Republicans’ respect for authority? What happened to basic decency and decorum?

On a simple majority vote, Donald Trump was unambiguously guilty. And, with the exception of seven Republican senators, the Party has been exposed for the fraud that it is.

Image: KIMT

A Trumpian Defence

Donald Trump finally got the lawyers he wanted. Their defence of Donald was, indeed, Trumpian. Dana Milbank writes:

They misstated legal precedents. They invented facts. They rewrote history. Trump lawyer Bruce Castor, panned for his rambling opening argument Wednesday, closed the argument Friday by confusing Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger with Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

The personal injury lawyer, Michael Vander Veen -- who sued Trump last year, claiming that Trump's insistence that the election had been stolen was based on "no evidence" -- didn't deal with the evidence. Instead, he

reinvented history for the senators, telling them that “the clearing of Lafayette Square” last summer, done for Trump’s famous photo-op with a Bible, actually happened because, in van der Veen’s fanciful vision, racial-justice protesters had “pierced a security wall.”

And he insisted that Trump did what civil rights leader Julian Bond had done:

Van der Veen claimed that a 1960s legal precedent involving civil rights leader Julian Bond was about “the exact type of political speech which Mr. Trump engaged in.” Bond’s speech involved opposing the war in Vietnam, not fomenting deadly violence.

Trump lawyer David Schoen attacked the House managers' arguments for gross inaccuracies:

He announced, dramatically, that he had “reason to believe the House managers manipulated evidence.” His support for this heavy charge? One graphic wrote the year as 2020 instead of 2021, and one highlighted tweet should not have had a “blue checkmark.”

That's what Trump wanted to hear. And Van der Veen and Schoen spoke to and for him yesterday.

Image: The Washington Post

Air Tight

The case that House Managers presented yesterday -- and will continue to present today -- is a master class in good lawyering. E.J. Dionne writes that it is airtight:

The House impeachment managers moved efficiently on Wednesday to close off the escape hatches and back doors for Senate Republicans. Quietly but passionately, they put the lie to the sham alibis that weak and cowardly members of the GOP are likely to invoke if they decide to do Donald Trump’s bidding one more time.

Those who vote to acquit the former president will now own it all: the incendiary speech that made the nation’s capital a killing ground but also the months of incitement and lying that built up to the violence.

That doesn't mean that Trump will be convicted of insighting a riot. But it does mean that those who vote to acquit Trump will become his accomplices:

They will own the threats against elected officials who refused to cheat on Trump’s behalf, the attacks on Black voters in big cities, and the savage mendacity of his all-caps tweets. Voting to acquit will mean joining in Trump’s rejection of the democratic obligation to accept the outcome of a free election and in his declarations even before the voting began that this was a “rigged” and “stolen” contest.

The video the managers presented was devastating:

The managers turned again to video late in the afternoon to bring home the frightening horror of the mob’s violence. Plaskett emphasized their targeting of Capitol Police officers and Vice President Mike Pence, which ought to give some Republicans second thoughts about acquittal. I don’t want to hear the words “law and order” from Trumpists ever again.

And they showed that Trump did not make just one speech to get that violence rolling:

“This clearly was not just one speech,” said Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.). “It didn’t just happen. It was part of a months-long effort with a specific instruction: Show up on January 6.”

Importantly, the managers showed how Trump’s criminality involved not just whipping up the shameful, quasi-fascist violence (although that alone would justify conviction) but also his attacks on the entire democratic process, an argument carried by Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif). “He had absolutely no support for his claims,” Swalwell said. “But that wasn’t the point. He wanted to make his base angrier and angrier. And to make them angry, he was willing to say anything.”

And lest anyone imagine that the day’s violence was an accident, [Stacey] Plaskett pointed to the planning and coordination on pro-Trump, far-right websites that included discussions of D.C.’s gun laws and which police and military forces might be arrayed against the mob.

Trump will not be convicted. But that's not the point:

We will owe a debt to the House impeachment managers for many years to come. They have created an indisputable record. They catalogued lie after lie about the election’s outcome. They laid out Trump’s long history of promoting political violence, including his praise, shortly before the attack on the Capitol, for Rudolph W. Giuliani, right after his lawyer had called for “trial by combat.”

The senators who vote to acquit Trump will live in infamy. They will take their place in American history -- alongside Benedict Arnold.

Image: The Washington Post

Now Is The Time

Lawrence Martin writes that Donald Trump has got to go -- now:

The storming of the Capitol building, more akin to something you might see in Belarus, was brought on by the monstrous fiction that Mr. Trump had somehow been cheated out of what he called a “landslide” election victory. Many Americans shamefully imbibed the poppycock. If they’re not embarrassed now, they should be, as should be the Canadians who have supported this President.

As the day of infamy ended, the mad king said he would go peacefully but ominously warned, “It’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again.” He should be taken at his word. If he isn’t stopped, more insurrections will come.

The question is whether Republican Party members will find a way of putting a nail in the coffin he has just rolled out for himself. Lawmakers talked of the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. It should happen. But his cabinet is likely too cowardly and sycophantic to pursue it.

It's clear two days after the riot that Republicans won't do that. They and their party are morally bankrupt. So the only option left is to impeach Trump a second time -- and put every one of the Republican congressional caucus on the record. The names of those who vote to allow Trump to stay should live in infamy.

Image: The Guardian