I was listening to NPR a good portion of today, and the arguments for Trump’s defense sounded to me like:
Trump’s twitter account was banned, right? so you can’t go back and take a screenshot of his tweets on normal twitter. But twitter has an archive mode where you can see past tweets, but past tweets are just the text, not like, the graphical twitter format. So to show the tweets as they actually were, like, how they’d look at tweets, they took the text and placed it in a twitter graphical template, to re-create exactly how the tweets would’ve looked on his twitter account.
“the republicans were like THEY MANIPULATED THE IMAGES!!! THE DIDN’T HAVE THE ORIGINAL TWEETS THESE ONES WERE MADE UP BY THEM… WHAT ELSE DID THEY LIE ABOUT” trying to imply that because they created the text in a twitter image template to appear exactly like they would’ve appear, they were just making up tweets.
witter graphical format
other defenses were like “how could trump possibly have wanted violence when he’s said so many times he wants antifa and blm to stop being violent. also he says law and order a lot”
or like “you’re saying his speech that day incited the violence… but most of his followers were already planning on being violent that day before he ever gave the speech… so clearly that speech didn’t incite violence and trump had nothing to do with it!”
Is that an accurate paraphrasing of the defense’s arguments?
So, Hawley’s question is basically trying to open the door to prevent a sitting Democratic president from running again, even if not convicted, amirite?
Amusing gaffes on both sides. First, the defence denies that Trump was responsible for the resurrection, now the prosecutors demand that he be convicted and acquitted.
I tuned in to c-span radio on my lunch break and heard the defense playing clips of Democrats using the word “fight”. I thought: “Holy shit, that is so supremely stupid and minor-league for a lawyer that Republicans are bound to think that the defense is brilliant.”
I did not know that. I am leaning heavily toward the being goddamned outraged if they don’t vote for witnesses. Fuck Lindsey Graham. Let him call Michelle Obama for all I give a shit.
Michael van der Veen (Trump’s defense lawyer) is doing everything he can to sidestep and deflect, and turn his response into something that addresses an entirely different question. But not always–sometimes, he just gets angry and desperate, and just blathers. I’m not impressed by his responses.
I swear the day after I saw some video from a Black guy who had been at the insurrection. All I can remember is he was claiming to be in touch with 2 republican? Trump people and some conspiracy stuff. It could have been Sullivan or were there any other Black people going inside the Capitol?
I tried finding that video but it was on reddit (public freakouts) over a month ago.
Yes, they did not include that phrase in the video, just as they omitted most of his speech, but they did specifically play the “peacefully and patriotic” clip later in the trial.
Nice takedown of Van Der Veen by Raskin. Quit bitching about not having enough time to determine what happened! Have your client appear here and TELL us what happened!
Trump’s lawyers opinion that the House should have investigated Trump’s knowledge and motivation would ring less hollow if Trump hadn’t refused to testify. Seems like he could clear this whole thing up. I don’t know why Democrats aren’t taking every opportunity to point out that Trump is hiding behind his lawyers.
