…I can’t look…
Well, what exactly was stipulated?
My understanding is that the only thing that was stipulated was that Rep. Herrera Butler said she heard Rep. McCarthy say the things she described, and that it does not stipulate that she actually heard him say those words, let alone that he actually said them.
And sure, McCarthy is surely having an amnesia attack with respect to this phone call. But if a GOP back-bencher heard him say these things, chances are she wasn’t the only one. She can testify as to who else was in, erm, the room where it happened, so that their testimony could also be obtained under oath.
To me, it makes no sense to have spent the past week making these arguments - the point of which was really to put on trial the Republicans voting to acquit - only to punt when evidence drops into your lap that makes the case twice as powerful.
(The notion that the GOP was somehow going to hijack the proceedings with a hundred witnesses and that the Dems sensibly backed down to avoid that possibility, when the Dems control the Senate, strikes me as total bullshit. Can’t believe people are giving it the time of day.)
Oh, you mean that the game was really all about getting 67 votes in the Senate.
No, the Dems were wasting time from the get-go if that was the game.
That wasn’t the real game, and we weren’t down by two touchdowns in the real game. We were winning, and it was time to run up the score and fucking dominate.
And done… not guilty…
And there goes the vote, more guilty votes this time.
More, and a couple R’s this time.
But Mike Rounds put it over the top with the 34th Not guilty vote.
Jesus.
57-43. Even attacking the sitting senators, sending an uprising to you, isn’t enough to convict trump.
Do you know what the Republicans will take from this?
“We can be absolute dicks, in public, and get away with it.”
So, 7 Republican senators out of 50, or 14%, have at least a shred of integrity. That’s slightly more than I would have expected. 
Conversely, 86% are irredeemable douchebags.
Yeah, I didn’t expect them to get more than 5 Republicans to vote guilty, and they got 7.
I still feel defeated.
I wonder what comes next, and who’s going to die first. Because there is already blood on the ground from this bullshit, and there’s going to be more.
Surprised we got 7. Expected were Collins, Murkowski, Romney, and Sasse. Slightly less expected was Cassidy (because he had earlier voted against most other Republicans on the procedural question of jurisdiction). The real surprises were Toomey and Burr. Good for them; bad for all the other Republicans.
“Next time, we need to try even harder to murder our political opponents. There is no way to stop us from doing this.”
Yep, this will just embolden the crazy.
Unless some criminal trial can put Trump & Co behind bars, but I’m not holding my breath.
Pretty much.
What is even sadder is that there will be those who pretended to be on the fence, some of them who might participate on this message board, that will who throw off that thin veneer of even-handedness.
McConnell’s post-acquittal speech right now is pretty confusing, given his vote.
But not given his cravenness
I’m not holding my breath, either, but the sad fact is that if your or I or any ordinary person had organized a huge mob to assemble in DC and then given a speech inciting them to attack the Capitol and wreak destruction and death, for the ostensible purpose of overturning an election that this person falsely claimed to have been “rigged”, that person would without question face numerous federal charges, most likely including sedition. And they would be tried in a real court, under real rules of evidence. Instead Trump got this political farce, and the case is apparently closed. What’s preventing Trump from being charged criminally?
A Republican with shame is like a gloryhole attendant with a gag-reflex. They don’t last long.
I’m glad Burr went for guilty, I’ve had my eye on his vote.
He’s my age and I went to my high school and he was an ass even back then, even though I didn’t know him well.
I know a few of his neighbors, they were friends of my parents, and they are moderate suburban Republicans. At times I wondered how much of their Republicanism came from having a US Senator on the block -simply because they have access to Burr, also they sometimes have to deal with Democratic protesters.
Burr is not up for re-election, and I’ve been really tweaked that he was signaling a guilty vote. I still think he’s an asshat, but this helped.