His lawyer should just get up there and state it plainly.
“You don’t have the votes to convict, so I’m just here to say that the democrats are a bunch of poopy heads and DJT is the best president ever!”
Then just leave.
If it ever reaches that point, there will still have been massive amounts of damage done to the country and its democracy.
Only if it’s likely to cost him personally.
Basically:
I wonder how the Republicans would be acting if, say, Pence had been killed. Or Mitt. Or Nancy.
Nancy? Publicly mourning, privately celebrating.
Mitt? Publicly mourning, privately a mix of celebrating and concern.
Pence? Publicly mourning, privately crapping their pants.
The man has the charisma of used Kleenex, and I’m not sure how he got elected governor of Indiana-- Indiana has had Democratic governors before, and right now Indianapolis has a democratic mayor, while our current Republican governor is fairly centrist.
Yes, the state has a whole lotta Christian Right types, but it’s also got several very liberal college towns, and the Christian Right is usually savvy enough to know that they want the Libertarian vote, so they need a candidate who doesn’t use the office as a pulpit.
Pence got into office, I suspect, as part of the backlash against Obama, more’s the pity.
But honestly, a lot of people in the state were really scratching their heads over him. He was never popular, not even immediately after the election-- in fact, he was practically a running joke. When he was selected to be the VP candidate, so many people I knew, including people who tended to vote Republican, expressed relief that he would be gone, because in Indiana, you have to resign a current office before running for another.
The issue isn’t whether or not they cared about Pence. The issue is that the President of the United States had literally sent a mob to murder his own Vice President. And while that is still true, since it was unsuccessful they can pretend that it didn’t happen.
Had Pence (and his family) ended up hanging outside the Capitol, the realization that Trumpism had finally achieved the “murder someone in the street” stage and that no one, no matter how fawning, was safe would have finally struck home.
The “and his family” is another matter; I’m just saying there might not even have been the public mourning.
I sent an email to my two Republican senators last night, making many of the same arguments I see above. First and foremost, that this is the second impeachment trial in the span of a year; that Trump did not “learn his lesson”, as Susan Collins, but rather learned that he could act with impunity and no Republican would bat an eye; that he sent an angry mob to lynch Pence and Pelosi (and if that’s not impeachable, what is?); that if you let him off again, things are going to get worse, not better.
What I really wanted to put at the end, but decided not to, was a paraphrase of Trump’s own words: are you going to be a patriot (convict) or a pussy (acquit)?
He could at least sing some Hamilton lyrics…
You don’t have the votes (you don’t have the votes)
Aha-ha-ha ha
You’re gonna need congressional approval and you don’t have the votes
Such a blunder sometimes it makes me wonder why I even bring the thunder
Why he even brings the thunder
You wanna pull yourself together?
I’m sorry, these Virginians are birds of a feather
Young man, I’m from Virginia, so watch your mouth
So we let Congress get held hostage by the South?
My bold.
No, not even then. It would not have been trump’s fault or even the Republicans’ fault. And certainly not due to their support of trump and failure to shut him down. Probably antifa, aliens, Mexicans, Middle Eastern terrorists, BLM people, college graduates, etc. Or even Hillary. After all, she has killed before (cf. Vince Foster).
Nothing will ever “strike home.”
I like it, but there is no way a lawyer for Trump could remember all those words!
The question they ought to consider is: “if you excuse this, who will save you when the next mob comes, sent by someone who learned from the mistakes of the last one?”
But, as noted, they will learn nothing.
Virginia doesn’t really fit in there either, but I liked the part about the south.
Some advice:
I’ve heard on many occasions that emails to your Congresscritters are a waste of time; they continually get deluged with emails from bots, and don’t keep any counts of how many emails are on which side of an issue.
The advice I’ve seen repeatedly is to either call, or write via snail mail. They keep track of those, and respond to letters, though it may take them several weeks to respond.
Also, don’t bother calling/writing to Congresspersons you’re not represented by. They don’t count those.
Calling only takes a minute or two per Congresscritter, if you keep it simple. Usually my conversations go like this:
“Hello, Congressman Oldfart’s office”
“Hi, I’m Rufus Firefly, and I’m a constituent of Congressman Oldfart, I live in [name of town]. I’m calling about [issue]. [Short summary of where I stand, usually under 30 seconds.]”
“Thanks, I’ll pass that along to the Congressman.”
“You’re welcome, and have a nice day.”
Sometimes the person answering the phone asks me to repeat my name and give my number (which I do), but that’s really the only variant.
ah, unconstitutional, other people said violent things, and antifa.
they have made their own video.
Michelle Goldberg has a cogent opinion piece in the Times (possibly paywalled) about how impeachment managers are deliberately avoiding implicating GOP senators in the events of Jan 6. She says:
It’s easy enough to understand why the impeachment managers are working so hard to separate Trump from the Republican Party: They still hold out hope of persuading some Republican jurors.
“When they played that clip, for example, of the insurrectionists chanting against the G.O.P., it was a powerful way to make the point that these people don’t represent you, senators, they represent Donald Trump and how disruptive an influence he’s been,” said Adam Schiff, the lead prosecutor on Trump’s first impeachment trial.
She concludes with:
Republican senators are being given the opportunity to get on the right side of that history, to distance themselves from a disgrace that they must know their descendants will someday read about. They’re being given a chance to rewrite the shameful history of how the Republican Party has behaved for the last four years.
They will almost certainly not take it. For rhetorical purposes, the Democrats waging this quixotic battle for accountability have to pretend that the Republican Party is redeemable. The rest of us do not.
Both sides do it. That’s their defense.
they have found a better lawyer. amazing how 3 senators shined up this pile.
It’s hard to think of a whiter guy.
While watching the Defense lawyer he said something that had me say to myself “Huh??” He said something like “A leader of Antifa was arrested and already has been released.”
Anybody know who he was referring to?