“And it doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words I say or time of day it is,” George Harrison and the Beatles sang in 1967, aptly describing Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial that appears certain to end with enough Republicans holding the line to ensure Trump is, again, acquitted of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. This is all a matter of politics, not law.
And yet… wow.
I can’t tell which of Trump’s two main lawyers was worse. His first, former district attorney (and non-prosecutor of Bill Cosby) Bruce Castor, was so dull and incompetent as to make My Cousin Vinny look like Clarence Darrow. But his second, David Schoen, was so outrageous and extremist in his rhetoric that he resembled nothing so much as his client on trial for just that rhetoric.
Castor’s performance was the more befuddling of the two. While ostensibly yesterday’s session was to debate the constitutionality of impeaching a former president—an interesting question with strong arguments on both sides—he mostly just said “law law law words, thingy thingy law,” starting with a monotonous word salad of irrelevant legal provisions that reminded me of that annoying windbag who lectures everyone at Thanksgiving dinner.
The Trump camp claimed that was a deliberate tactic to deflate the emotion of the House Managers’ presentation, especially Rep. Jamie Raskin’s harrowing personal account of the Jan. 6 insurrection, and perhaps to give Trump’s other lawyer more time to tweak his presentation. If so, his client wasn’t impressed; a CNN reporter tweeted that “multiple people tell me Trump was basically screaming as Castor made a meandering opening argument.” Nor were several GOP senators: Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) absolutely roasted the Trump team’s presentation that “did everything they could but to talk about the question at hand.”
I hope it’s true that Castor was stalling. Because otherwise, wow, what an idiot. He spent 10 minutes reminding senators not to be overcome by emotions (with utterly irrelevant analogies to legal provisions on emotional state), another nine on how senators are extraordinary (“gallant” “patriotic”), followed by five minutes of rambling and incoherent quasi-constitutional history, and then, finally, after nearly a half-hour of logorrhea, an irrelevant argument: that the president’s words are constitutionally protected free speech.
That is completely absurd. First, it’s not relevant to the question at hand. Second, just like shouting fire in a crowded theater, hate speech, or defamation, “fighting words” like incitement to violence are obviously not protected by the First Amendment. And anyway, the impeachment trial isn’t about whether Trump should go to jail; it’s about whether he should be barred from holding office in the future.
To paraphrase a well-worn Trumpism, according to Castor’s argument, Trump could have said, “Hey, Q Shaman, shoot that guy on Fifth Avenue right now!” and that would just be “free speech.” Fortunately, that’s not how any of this works.
But if Castor was the windbag at the Thanksgiving table, his follow-up, Trump lawyer David Schoen, was the racist uncle, full of anger, hyperbole, and outright lies.
First Schoen complained that he wanted to cry because the impeachment proceedings will hurt the Constitution. Which maybe sounds moving, except when you remember that members of Congress wanted to cry because they were in serious danger of being executed by a crazed and heavily armed mob of extremists. That is perhaps more moving.
Then, Schoen, simply ignoring all of the legal and constitutional points at hand, charged that the trial is a “chance by a group of partisan politicians seeking to eliminate Donald Trump from the American political scene and seeking to disenfranchise”—here, he banged the lectern—“74 million-plus American voters.”
Now, unlike Castor’s drone, Schoen’s vitriolic, patriotic slam fight may have pleased his client in Palm Beach. But it is exactly the sort of hyperbole and falsehood that landed us in this mess in the first place. In exhorting the Senate to exonerate Donald Trump, Schoen showed why they should convict him.
Disenfranchise 74 million Americans? What does that even mean? They’ll still have the right to vote, unlike, say, the ex-felons in Florida who were given the right to vote by the state’s population only to be promptly stripped of it by the state’s Republican legislature, and unlike the non-white voters in Georgia who are being systematically disenfranchised by a Republican party that can’t believe what just happened in the state’s senatorial elections.
Then Schoen said that “elitists” (David, bubbele, that is a white supremacist code word for Jews like you and me) called “Americans who believe in their country and their Constitution… deplorables.” Actually, Hillary Clinton only used that term for the white supremacist hardcore base of Trump’s supporters—you know, the people who murdered cops at the Capitol last month.
And on and on he went, too, except where Castor droned, Schoen ranted. Democrats want to “deprogram” Trump supporters! “They don’t want unity! And they know this so-called trial will tear the country in half!” he thundered—the same kind of demonization of the “other side” that, again, led to Jan. 6. “This trial will tear this country apart, perhaps like we have only seen once before in our history.”
This is profoundly irresponsible speech, delivered at a trial about irresponsible speech. Not only has Schoen learned nothing from the insurrection, he seems to want to incite (or “predict”) another one.
Which, in the end, is an amazing feat. Schoen managed to transform what could have been a meaningless spectacle into yet another dangerous incitement of murderous mobs across the country. So much for George Harrison’s “Only a Northern Song.” Schoen, with a thousand Charles Mansons watching, decided to sing “Helter Skelter.”
