Convict Now
No one can deny that the House Impeachment managers are performing astoundingly well. They are outclassing Trump’s team. If Republicans in the Senate are going to vote to acquit, they ought to be forced to reckon with the implications of that choice.
The simple fact is that Trump spent months laying the kindling for his bonfire of insanities. He lied to his gullible base telling them the election was stolen. He lied to them about the 60 court cases he lost. He lied to them about Congress being able to stop the electoral college count. He lied to them that the Vice President can ignore the votes. In all of these lies, he fueled the crazed conspiracist mob.
Then he called them to the Capitol.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” the oaf tweeted. “Be there, will be wild!”
Once the mob was there, he only fanned the flames of their mass psychosis: “If you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore … show strength.”
His mob did as instructed.
In their craven bloodlust, they beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher. They injured hundreds of other officers. And it is abundantly clear that, if not for a few acts of heroism and some good luck, it would have been an utter calamity.
The Dispatch has a good summary of the new evidence that show’s how bad this failed-insurrection almost got:
Security footage of Officer Eugene Goodman running into Sen. Mitt Romney in a hallway and redirecting him away from the rioters. Radio dispatches between obviously distressed Capitol police officers reporting “ multiple law enforcement injuries ” and that they’ve “ been flanked ” and “lost the line.” Members of Congress evacuating the chamber just feet from where a police officer was holding a rioter at gunpoint. A video of staffers for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi barricading themselves in a conference room just minutes before the rioters— shouting “where are you, Nancy?”—reach their office. Vice President Pence being ushered to a secure location with his family while a mob chanting “hang Mike Pence!” was less than 100 feet away.
How did Trump, the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military on earth, sworn to defend the Constitution and the Constitutional order, respond? With gleeful excitement, if reports are to be believed.
Mere minutes after Sen. Tommy Tuberville informed him that Mike Pence had been evacuated, the President sicced the mob on him: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution …”
Despite pleas from members of his party, he never once condemned the rioters. He still hasn’t. He has said he loves them and that they are special. He has defended them.
If Republican senators can look at all of that and decide that Donald Trump shouldn’t be barred from ever holding federal office again, they deserve the scorn of every freedom-loving American.
One more thing: