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TRIAL TRUTHS
1. Donald Trump incited the riot.
2. No amount of detail about pre-planning by some of the insurrectionists undermines in any way the reality that Donald Trump incited the riot.
3. From denying the election’s outcome, to calling election officials, to organizing the rally, to putting pressure on Mike Pence, to watching the insurrection at least somewhat passively from the White House, to praising the rioters – with all that, the former president engaged in the ultimate Trumpian “shocking but not surprising” behavior – although even for a man capable of acting in this manner, this series of events stands out for its cravenness and historical malevolence.
4. There is no reconciling the words “fight like hell” and “peaceful.”
5. As his lawyers say, Donald Trump has First Amendment rights and the Senate trial is political theater; these two factual statements are besides the point.
6. Both camps will present video “evidence” and past statements that will provide the two tribes more grist for the social media, blog, and cable TV mills than one million monkeys on one million keyboards could produce in one million years.
7. The biggest mistake Trumpers make in discussing this impeachment process is saying Democrats are doing all this for “political” purposes; this is not good politics for the Democrats; they have pursued Mr. Trump because they believe it is the morally right thing to do and because of the personal and institutional emotions growing out of the trauma.
8. Democrats don’t need an impeachment trial either to keep their base energized over anger about Donald Trump or to divide Republicans over Trump’s future role in their party; both those phenomena will continue unabated for the foreseeable future, and would have done so without a trial.
9. The Wall Street Journal editorial board gets the Democrats’ motives wrong but it is right about this:
Democrats say it will deter future impeachable acts late in a President’s term, but that is unlikely if Mr. Trump is acquitted, as he likely will be. He will claim vindication. The greater rebuke would come from letting him suffer in isolation, without power and with the stigma of a bipartisan House impeachment vote.
10. This blind quote from Politico is true:
“He’s Teflon, right. It’s been a month since the Capitol riot and I would say, for the most part, the GOP has coalesced back behind him,” said a former Trump campaign official.
As is this one from the same story:
“The story from Nov. 3 on has been an astonishing display of loyalty to Trump and the strength of supporters in the party,” said anti-Trump conservative Bill Kristol. “If you had said [Trump] would fail to recognize the election returns, keep that up, put pressure on secretaries of state and pressure his own vice president to do something unconstitutional, try to call a mob to Washington on Jan. 6 — it’s pretty astonishing and it’s incredible that people kept with him at each step.”
11. There is no legally, historically, constitutionally, or practically right answer to the question of whether it is permissible to convict a former president in a Senate impeachment trial — and this question will not get a Supreme Court adjudication here.
12. Many, many times on Tuesday and beyond, journalists and commentators will wrongly say that what is now at issue is whether Mr. Trump will be impeached in the Senate, when, of course, he has already been impeached.
13. The House managers will produce moments that will make those who believe Trump should be convicted and barred from running for office again even more certain – and/but these moments will not have the slightest impact on the beliefs of the 90% of Republicans who think otherwise or the 90% of Republican Senators who plan to vote otherwise.
14. 45 or so Republican Senators are not looking to convict, and their reliance on process arguments to paper over what the vast majority of them know is behavior that anyone who has taken an oath to the Constitution realizes must be punished is a fitting and depressing coda to their conduct throughout the Trump presidency. The question they should all be required to answer is, “If Donald Trump were still serving his term, would the actions he undertook warrant conviction?” Instead, they will simply be allowed to hide behind the process mantra.
15. The passage of time – and Mitch McConnell’s failed testing of the waters to convict -- has lowered the ceiling on Republican Senate votes against the former president from about 20 to about 6 (or, probably more accurately, from about 15 to about 5).
16. Public opinion polls showing a majority of the public favors conviction have more influence on news coverage than on Republican senators.
17. 95% of the Dominant Media are looking to convict, and that fact will influence (read: “fully color”) the coverage of the trial. For instance, acquittal is not “likely” (or, even, as the Punchbowlers say, “very, very unlikely”); it is far less likely than “likely” (or even than “very, very unlikely.”)
18. Both the pandemic and intense security will hang very darkly and deeply over the trial for those on Capitol Hill and somewhat less so for those who are not.
19. Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani will watch more of the proceedings than will Joe Biden.
20. White House reporters can try all they want to get the president and Jen Psaki to comment on Senate procedure, but the Biden/Psaki replies will follow the same pattern: they mostly won’t reply – except when it serves their own political purposes.
21. The Gang of 500 will be riveted; the Lincoln Projectors will be riveted; Twitter will be riveted; cable news will be riveted; the Resistance will be riveted; Adam Schiff will be riveted; not everyone else will be riveted.
22. The academics, historians, and analysts quoted by the Dominant Media before and during the trial will be about 98% anti-Trump and pro-conviction, even though they will be identified as such only 2% of the time.
23. As the acquittal gets closer, get ready for yet a whole other round of discussion of barring Trump from running again via the Fourteenth Amendment.
24. As the acquittal gets closer, get ready for yet a whole other round of discussion of a vote of bipartisan censure in the Senate.
25. There are a lot of messed up things about this process, but the rushed nature of the enterprise and the fact that Pat Leahy is serving as judge and juror are among the most messed up.
26. The negotiations over the process have not done wonders for the Chuck Schumer-Mitch McConnell relationship.
27. Denizens of the Bluelands should understand for their own good (and for the good of those who want a more united America) what the Redlands mindset is about the context in which this trial is taking place, as described by William McGurn:
Unfortunately, impeachment isn’t the only area where the extraordinary has become the order of the day in Mr. Biden’s Washington. From lawmakers’ calls to abolish the Electoral College or kill the filibuster to President Biden’s flurry of executive orders and the unprecedented move by Democrats to strip GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments over flaky statements she made before entering Congress, today’s Democratic majority has no patience for any rule, practice or convention that stands in its way.
28. Just wait until the Dominant Media realizes just how conservative Liz Cheney is (like, way more conservative than her father, who, uhm, was no hero to much of the Dominant Media way back in the olden days of six years ago).
29. The interpersonal dynamics between the Collinses and Romneys of the Senate Republican Conference and the rest of their colleagues will be on vivid display inside the daily McConnell lunches, and on less vivid display everywhere else.
30. When Trump is acquitted, it is impossible to know how DC Democrats will explain why they did all this, knowing the outcome, or to anticipate how Democrats in the country will feel.
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ESSENTIAL READING
Politico with the latest log on the growing fire – how immigration could be the issue that (1) finally creates an unbreachable rift between Joe Biden and the left; (2) ends whatever honeymoon the president has with much of the center; (3) engulfs the administration in a full-blown new crisis mostly of its own making.
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Have Mark Halperin (that’s me…) speak to your group, company, or meeting.
Topics: the future of the Republican Party, 2024 the new Biden administration, the media, the Presumption of Grace, or whatever you wish.
Send an email to markhalperintalk@gmail.com to set up an event.
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