But today was the day the defense got to present their case to the Senate and to the public. And, as promised, they brought a helluva lot of receipts to the game.
Central to the Democrats’ case against Trump is that he “incited” the Capitol riots when he used words like “fight” and “fight like hell”, not just during his January 6th speech but over a period of two months after the election. They have used emotional videos of the Capitol building being stormed and manipulated videos of Trump speaking which leave out context – including where he talked of rally attendees marching “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol.
In their presentation today, Trump’s team argued that Democrats were not only hypocritical but were also setting a dangerous precedent in charging Trump with incitement simply because he used words like “fight” and “fight like hell.”
Those exact same words, lawyer David Schoen argued, have been used over and over by many Democrats, including some of the House impeachment managers and Senators in the chamber as well as Democratic leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, President Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris.
The 10 minute video the defense showed was absolutely brutal, and Rep. Maxine Waters, Schumer, Biden, and Harris took center stage in them. They also used a full two minutes of Sen. Elizabeth Warren talking about bringing “the fight” and not backing down:
“That’s ok,” Schoen stated at one point. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” Fight “is a word people use,” he noted. “But please stop with the hypocrisy.”
Towards the end of the same compilation video, we saw Pelosi and Harris among other Democrats talking during various interviews last year about how the BLM/Antifa “uprisings” needed to continue, and their words were juxtaposed alongside clips of cities burning, businesses being looted and destroyed, federal courthouses being attacked, and retired police officer David Dorn’s brutal and senseless murder:
In a second video, Trump’s team argues that it’s rather curious that House impeachment managers were arguing it was “wrong” to call for questioning election result certifications considering how often Democrats had done it in prior elections where Republicans won the presidency, including when the House’s lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin objected to 10 of Florida’s electoral votes for Donald Trump in January 2017, just 3 days into his time in Congress:
There are legal arguments being made and political arguments being made during the trial by both sides. While the minds of the senators watching are likely to remain unchanged by any of it, it was imperative that the defense team show the American people the darker, much less “tolerant” side of Democrats that the mainstream media has desperately tried to keep hidden.
Why? Law professor Jonathan Turley broke it down earlier this week:
If this trial boils down to irresponsible political rhetoric, the public could find it difficult to distinguish between the accused, the “prosecutors” and the “jury.” That is the problem with a strategy that seems focused not on proving incitement of an insurrection but some ill-defined form of political negligence.
It’s kind of ironic in a delicious way that the Democrats’ own words are being used against them in an effort to expose the predictable sham nature of the impeachment proceedings they demanded. One almost gets a sense of déjà vu…