After House impeachment managers played that emotional and compelling video of the Capitol riot on Tuesday, Fox News’ Martha MacCallum tweeted, “Methinks they could have showed that video and said. ‘The Prosecution rests.’ But brevity is rarely the Congressional way…”
Indeed, it was a mic-drop moment. The video was devastating. A part of me thinks the prosecution should simply show it on a loop. This would have the benefit of reminding open-minded viewers what the trial is really about, and also torturing Republicans who have decided to acquit no matter what.
Having made the case for Trump’s culpability with footage, Reps. Jamie Raskin and Joe Neguse then made the constitutional case for conviction, preemptively rebutting team Trump’s predictable arguments, citing legal scholars, clearly establishing that a president can be impeached after leaving office, and showing how anything else would essentially give a lame-duck president a get-out-of-jail-free card. Rep. Raskin also touched on the emotional impact of the Capitol insurrection, telling the story about how his daughter and son-in-law were with him on January 6, in part to comfort him after the death of his son just days before, on what Raskin called “the saddest day of our lives.” He described the sound of rioters pounding on the door “like a battering ram,” saying “It’s the most haunting sound I ever heard, and I will never forget it.” Afterward, he said his daughter told him, “Dad, I don’t want to come back to the Capitol.”
But let’s be honest, the video—which juxtaposed Trump’s words with videos of the insurrection—was the most compelling thing to come from day one. In my opinion, it would be impossible for an intellectually honest person to watch it and not conclude that Trump was guilty of inciting violence. After that, it’s an open and shut case.
Perhaps that’s why Trump’s day one defense barely attempted to prove otherwise. Trump attorney Bruce Castor’s presentation was especially confusing. I’m not actually even sure what argument he was making. At one point, he seemed to suggest that impeachment was unnecessary, since the American people had been tired of Trump and smart enough to vote him out. Or at least that’s what I took from his clock-eating word salad. Say what you will about Trump, but his willingness to defend the indefensible means that he is, at least, coherent in his crassness and cruelty. Castor’s attempts to present a more folksy argument for Trump just felt discordant.
Maybe there was a reason for this? Toward the end of his talk, Castor conceded that he riffed his opening statement because Democrats preemptively undermined many of his arguments. “I’ll be quite frank with you,” he said, “we changed what we were going to do on account that we thought that the House managers’ presentation was well done, and I wanted you to know that we have responses to those things.” This is what you call an admission against interest.
Then good cop Castor passed the baton to bad cop David Schoen, who attempted to argue that the trial wasn’t even constitutional. You know the old saw: “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.” Schoen pounded the table. He argued that the whole thing was unconstitutional. He argued that Trump was deprived of due process by virtue of the speed at which the House impeached him. And he argued that House Democrats took too long to impeach him by waiting until after Trump left office to refer the article of impeachment to the Senate, specifically to make sure Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy—not Chief Justice John Roberts—presided.
All this focus on whether Trump could be impeached had the effect of making me think the defense doesn’t really have a good argument as to whether he should be impeached. Speaking of that amazing video the prosecution showed, there really was no attempt by the defense to dispute what it showed. It wasn’t even, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes,” but rather, “Yeah, lots of people died, but let me explain to you why your interpretation of the Constitution is technically not right.”
This is pretty much just begging for jury nullification and, of course, the Republican jurors here have already all but pledged to do just that. It may work to get Trump off, for what that’s worth, but it’s not a good look for these senators who, unlike Trump, still have offices and public duties that they’ve sworn to uphold.
As a conservative, I have spent years feeling like my side lost arguments where we were right on the facts, but lacked the emotional appeal. But in this case, I have to admit the Democrats have it all. They have the evidence (the video), they have the emotional appeal (the video and Rep. Raskin’s account), they have the more compelling legal case (buttressed by legal scholars—some of them even prominent conservatives), and they have precedent (including the case of former Secretary of War William Belknap, who was, that’s right, impeached after leaving office).
So that was day one: A bad day for Trump.
There is really no way for Republicans determined to acquit Trump to come out of this looking good. Any intellectually honest viewer is going to come away with a very clear understanding that the Republican Party is still basically just a vehicle for Trump, no matter what—and that “his” senators are covering up for a man who incited a riot that tried to overturn a free and fair election, and ended up killing a cop. This is what Republicans are going to have to come to terms with. Maybe they’ll even see that video when they sleep.
