Sometimes the truth is right in front of you. All the pearls of wisdom and the legal references that flowed from the lips of the House impeachment managers couldn't hold a candle to a 13 minute video that clearly and graphically showed a would-be autocrat whipping up his supporters into a lather and then turning them loose upon the Capitol.
The idea that these insurrectionists just materialized out of thin air and then, all on their own, decided to stage an attempted coup is farcical. From the video evidence, these people probably have enough trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time, so independent thought is pretty much out of the question. No, this mob was summoned and dispatched by one man intent on overturning the results of an election he lost. No other rational conclusion is possible.
Not that that stopped his attorneys, though. Bruce Castor and David Schoen spent two hours playing the roles, not of good cop, bad cop, but of substitute teacher, truant officer. I seriously have no idea what Castor was doing up there, and from the looks of it neither did he. As for Schoen, it was clear he had one mission: when he wasn't yelling at Senate Republicans - bad strategy by the way - he was trying to deflect from Trump's actions by blaming Democrats for denying his client "due process." I don't know how many times Schoen uttered that phrase - I lost count after about twenty. Just for the record, Trump was invited to testify at his trial; he declined. So much for the due process argument.
The only consolation prize from having to endure both these sorry-assed excuses for attorneys is that apparently Bunker Boy wasn't all that thrilled with them either. Serves him right. Had he not forced the first team of lawyers to quit, he might've had decent representation at this trial. Now he's stuck with the B team. At least Rudy Giuliani would've been entertaining. We could've watched him both suborn perjury and melt right in front of our very eyes.
But getting back to the video, it's obvious the impeachment managers intend to let it, and any subsequent footage they may present over the next two days, do the bulk of the heavy lifting. And why not? For a president who transformed how we look at politics, it seems only fitting to return the favor. As a local TV sportscaster used to say, "Let's go to the video tape."
From his rallies in which he claimed the election was rigged, to his phone call with Brad Raffensperger in which he practically demanded that 11,780 votes be "found," to that infamous day on the Ellipse, Trump's own words are exhibit A. As for witnesses, there are one hundred of them in that chamber. They may wind up doing their best impersonation of Sgt. Schultz in the end, but to a man and woman they know what happened. The majority of them will likely vote to acquit, but that won't spare them from the verdict of history.
It's high time we as a nation stopped coddling this man and his minions. Yes, 74 million people voted for Trump in the 2020 election, but let's get something straight: those people voted for the losing candidate. Nobody is disenfranchising them or anyone else for that matter. If anything, it is they who are trying to disenfranchise the 81 million people who voted for Joe Biden, and on behalf of those 81 million people, we've had enough!
That wasn't the Kansas City Chiefs hoisting the Lombardi Trophy at last Sunday's Super Bowl, it was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Wanna know why? Because the Chiefs lost and the Bucs won, that's why. That's how it works in this country, and every other country not a dictatorship. The winner gets to gloat, the loser gets to go home. It's called reality and it's about fucking time someone drove that point home to these people.
The reason we're in this mess right now is because of the actions of one reckless individual. Were it not for Trump's groundless claims of voter fraud there would never have been an assault on the nation's Capitol. He alone is responsible for this act of insurrection and he alone must pay the ultimate price for his high crime and misdemeanor.
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