Today began the second
impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump, which is supposed to be presided over by Chief
Justice John Roberts, who “recused” himself, apparently telegraphing his belief
that it is “unconstitutional.” The article of impeachment states that
President Trump gravely endangered the security
of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the
integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of
power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his
trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore,
Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a
threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain
in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance
and the rule of law. Donald John Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal
from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust,
or profit under the United States.
In response to this, Trump’s attorneys deployed the usual hyper-partisan hyperbole: “fevered hatred,” “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” “a master’s class in the art of political opportunism,” “intellectual dishonesty and factual vacuity.” They even claimed that “Trump’s comments echoed his sentiments expressed the day of the rally, as he repeatedly urged protesters to stay peaceful, and told rioters to go home.” Charles Manson should have used this line of “defense” in regard to the Tate murders, since he wasn’t “there,” and his followers believed he was the personification of “love.”
Trump’s defense argument
just flies in the face of the known facts. He spent the entire hour or so of
his January 6 speech running down every
debunked election fraud conspiracy; was that “inciting” the crowd? Of course it
was. Did he expect the crowd to do something about it? I mean, why were all
those white supremacists and white nationalists even there unless they planned
on doing something horrific?
So we’re going to, we’re going to walk
down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the
Capitol and we’re going to try and give… The Democrats are hopeless. They’re
never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give
our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our
help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they
need to take back our country.
Trump’s attorneys must have imagined the part about Trump “repeatedly” urging his followers to be “peaceful” and to “go home.” Surely he knew what Don Jr. was going to say next:
To those Republicans, many of which may be voting on things in the coming hours: You have an opportunity today. You can be a hero, or you can be a zero. And the choice is yours. But we are all watching. The whole world is watching, folks. Choose wisely…be a message to all the Republicans who have not been willing to actually fight. The people who did nothing to stop the steal. This gathering should send a message to them: This isn’t their Republican Party anymore! This is Donald Trump's Republican Party!
Of course
Trump wasn’t actually going to march down to Capitol Hill himself with all
those plebians, he just went to a “secure” location in the White House and had
his eyes glued to the television, where he watched with apparent amazed
satisfaction and excitement how much power and influence he had to persuade a
violent mob to action. Trump had to be “persuaded” by fearful aides to even make
a tepid statement well after the rioting was underway, and then the next day
made a canned video statement that was both insincere and far too late. But as
even the Wall Street Journal
commented soon afterward, this wasn’t just about what Trump said on that day:
It took just a few hours for pro-Trump
rioters to storm the Capitol Wednesday. Before that were weeks of rhetoric and
encouragement from the president and a circle of close allies, whose actions
are certain to draw closer scrutiny. In the weeks after the election, President
Trump and a handful of key, high-level supporters urged in news conferences,
speeches and social media posts that followers of the president should rise up
against the outcome of a national election they said was rigged. In December,
they started targeting Jan. 6, the day set by law to ratify the Electoral
College vote in Congress, to air their grievances.
To
wit, for months Trump and his sycophants both in and out of the media hammered
home the demonstrably false claims that the election was “stolen,” and after
failing to prevent battleground states from certifying their electors, Trump
focused attention on the January 6 counting of the electoral votes that was
happening not in 50 states, but in one targeted location. We know that the
invasion of the Capitol building was indeed a planned operation, and those
involved were incited by Trump’s lies to do so, and they certainly did not hear
him say during the January 6 rally to advance to the Capitol in a “peaceful”
manner, in fact quite the opposite. They only needed him to say that they had his blessing to do so and “stop the steal.” How? By standing around shouting?
No, by being “bold”—and we discovered what exactly that meant.
Meanwhile, most Republicans are acting fearful themselves
of inciting the anger of Trumpists
and even Republican state leaders. Despite his slobbering support of Trump,
even Lindsey Graham faces censure by the South Carolina GOP by voting to
certify the election results after the riot. Others, like Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan,
parroted the Trump defense’s “legal” rationalization for acquittal by insisting
that it was “unconstitutional” to try a president no longer in office. Of
course a partisan fanatic of the far-right Freedom Caucus like Jordon will go
even further, telling FBN’s Neil Cavuto that Trump’s speech was “normal”—at
least for Trump—and that Democrats have done “far worse.” When Cavuto noted
that Trump clearly “ginned up the crowd” and must have some responsibility for
“lighting a match,” Jordan insisted that Trump bore “zero responsibility,” and
chose to critique the security arrangements rather than the behavior of the
rioters.
It is safe to assume that no matter how much evidence
there is to show that Trump—either himself or through those he either enabled
or directly order to—had been engaging in a months-long campaign to impugn the
integrity of the election even before election day, especially with surrogates
like Sidney Powell who kept up the drumbeat of insane conspiracies that were clearly
a product not of fact but by the even more insane cult of personality
surrounding Trump. I mean, we are talking Jim Jones and the People’s Temple
insanity here. These people might not literally kill themselves bodily at
Trump’s command, but they have certainly “killed” whatever sense of civility,
morality and simple human decency they ever possessed at his “command.”
These people for now control the Republican Party, and
although the impeachment trial of Trump will likely end in his legal acquittal,
in the eyes of the nation and the world, there can still be a “higher
authority” that Trump must answer to, and that is the court of public opinion
and the American electorate.
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