To make that case for his conviction, the House impeachment managers argued that former President Trump has shown no remorse for driving his supporters to violence with his claims that the election was stolen. The defense Trump’s attorney put forward proved that he sees nothing wrong with how he poisoned the minds of his base.
Indeed, Goebbels would be proud.
So…their entire presentation is based on a lie and when the Dems try to bring it back to the central premise that the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES urged, incited, petted and told his followers to go to the Capitol and ‘take it back’ is irrelevant? Huh.
This is straight-up Might.
Trump’s Might.
JFC!!! JFC!!! Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them!!!
Mein Drumpf.
It’s all designed to give the Republican senators the flimsiest of fig leaves to wave around to justify, however pathetically, their already-determined vote. It’s also designed to keep the Trumpist mob, the fact-free cadres, primed for the next round of violence at a time to be determined.
They weren’t really “forced to confront” the issue head on if they refused to answer, though. The most we can hope for is that they face repercussions for not answering.
I am as amazed as Cheeto Jesus that Georgia voted blue twice in two months, though we very much differ on the why.
He thinks it’s because too many of those blue ballots were illegal. I am still awe struck (and grateful) that there were so many willing to vote blue in Georgia. When that is figured out, I hope it is replicated in the rest of the South.
I know that everyone, even Hitler, is entitled to adequate legal representation, blah blah blah.
But you really do have to be a certain kind of scumbag to not only defend certain kinds of people, but do so using lies, distortions, smears and hotheaded appeals to emotion.
Goebbels needs this like he needs a hole in the head. Oh, wait…
In affirming Trump’s big lie, the lawyers who are nominally defending him against charges of incitement are engaging in further incitement of exactly the same sort. If “this is the biggest fraud in history,” and “with a fraud like this, the rules are very different,” and “fight like hell or you won’t have a country anymore” are all just legitimate political speech, well, then…maybe we should attack the Capitol, eh?
There will be blood, I’m afraid.
The difference in this trial is there is no impartial jury. The defense arguments would be laughed out of a real jury trial.
Does anyone know if the senate can vote to disqualify Trump from future office on a simple majority vote even if he’s acquitted, or does the former require conviction? I know it’s been addressed but I can’t recall the answer.
This is how the trial should end:
Well, I suppose the defendants in Nuremberg had defense lawyers too.
NBC Nightly News is pretty much only showing the GOP defense, their attacks on Democrats, and playing the videos of Dems using ‘violent’ language. NBC News is giving only the GOP a platform in the nightly news broadcast to air their disingenuous claims. They gave 1 two sentence soundbite to a Dem. and the rest of the lead off story was repeating GOP lies and false equivalencies.
Dems need to boycott NBC News. Stop going on their shows or talking to their reporters, they have no interest in the ’truth’ or ‘fairnes’. They picked a side in that story.
I love the indignation by the “defense” lawyers. When there’s no reasonable answer to a direct question, take umbrage at the very asking of the question. The mere fact that people died and were badly injured and the Capitol was breached by a bloodthirsty mob is no reason to make a big deal of a little exercise of 1st Amendment rights.
I’d ask how they could look at themselves in a mirror, but that assumes they still have reflections.
What did Trump think would happen if Pence had been hung?
The press and online lawyer Twitter today have, IMO, completely missed the strategy of Trump’s defense lawyers. They are are all making the mistake of thinking Trump’s lawyers are trying to persuade the jurors. They are not. They are trying to incite the jurors’ Fox-addled, Q-adjacent constituents to jam their senators’ phones, faxes and email with demands that they acquit. Everything these yahoos have said and done have been directed at that audience. Pleasing Trump is only a side-benefit. What they really wanted was for wavering senators homies to flood them with exhortations, political threats and outright menace.
It’s the exact same thing they did during the first impeachment. It was the entirety of Rudy’s whole strategy-incitement of fear of Trump’s supporters.
And viewed through that prism, it all makes sense. Because everything they said was made perfect sense to, and was calculated to inflame the sense of perpetual victimhood and hatred of Democrats, of the people who are embedded in the RWQNJ bubble. That’s why they were hostile, evasive, combative, and utterly shameless in spouting the most facially obvious lies. Because it only looked crazy, stupid and mendacious to sane people and they weren’t the target.