Trump impeachment (2021)

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      ‘Inciter in chief’: five key quotes from Trump’s second impeachment trial

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      After an emotional and dramatic week in the Senate, the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump finally came to an end on Saturday, capping days of often fraught and emotional argument.
      Here are five key quotes from the trial which saw a US president impeached for a historic second time, but resulted in Trump’s acquittal on charges he incited the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.
      Jamie Raskin, lead House impeachment manager

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      “The evidence will show you that ex-President Trump was no innocent bystander. The evidence will show that he clearly incited the 6 January insurrection. It will show that Donald Trump surrendered his role as commander in chief and became the inciter in chief of a dangerous insurrection.”
      Joe Neguse, House impeachment manager

      Brad Smith
      (@thebradsmith)
      ▶️ @RepJoeNeguse “Standing in the powder keg that Trump created, he struck a match and aimed it straight at this building.”📺 Second Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump, Day 3 on @Cheddar https://t.co/ScXD319CsY pic.twitter.com/8pNwArhA9f

      February 11, 2021

      “Standing in the middle of that explosive situation, in that powder keg that he had created over the course of months, before a crowd filled with people that were poised for violence at his signal, he struck a match and he aimed it straight at this building, at us.”
      Michael van der Veen, Donald Trump defense lawyer

      [embedded content]

      “It is constitutional cancel culture. History will record this shameful effort as a deliberate attempt by the Democrat party to smear, censor and cancel, not just President Trump, but the 75 million Americans who voted for him.”
      Stacey Plaskett, House impeachment manager

      This Week
      (@ThisWeekABC)
      Del. Stacey Plaskett says Vice Pres. Pence, Speaker Pelosi and others “were put in danger” while presiding over election certification.”President Trump out a target on their backs—and his mob broke into the Capitol to hunt them down.” https://t.co/welJUzOXal pic.twitter.com/9NyC6QngY1

      February 10, 2021

      “They [Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi] were put in danger because President Trump put his own desires, his own need for power, over his duty to the constitution and our democratic process. President Trump put a target on their backs, and his mob broke into the Capitol to hunt them down.”
      Madeleine Dean, House impeachment manager

      USA TODAY
      (@USATODAY)
      Rep. Madeleine Dean emotionally recounts being inside the U.S. Capitol during the attack: “Because the truth is, this attack never would have happened but for Donald Trump.” pic.twitter.com/yY7uqUeopM

      February 10, 2021

      “This attack never would have happened but for Donald Trump. And so they came, draped in Trump’s flag, and used our flag, the American flag, to batter and to bludgeon. And at 2.30, I heard that terrifying banging on House chamber doors. For the first time in more than 200 years, the seat of our government was ransacked on our watch.” More

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      The heroes and villains of Trump's second impeachment trial

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      From tears of grief and anger, to images of terrible violence and moments of deep compassion, the second impeachment trial of Donald J Trump, 45th president of the United States, produced an all-encompassing spectacle of human emotion.Its diverse cast of characters featured heroes and villains, several charismatic new faces and some familiar old ones, politicians and lawyers arguing in support of or against the former president’s actions surrounding the 6 January attack on the Capitol, and others who were central to its action.While the outcome of the trial was predictable, those who took part ensured the spectacle itself was anything but. These are just some of the individuals who contributed prominently to the historic, and memorable, proceedings.Stacey PlaskettPlaskett, of the US Virgin Islands, made history as the first delegate (non-voting Congress member) to be part of a team of presidential impeachment managers. But she will be remembered for the confident delivery of her powerful, punchy and colorful vernacular, which quoted lyrics from the rappers Run The Jewels and GZA. Plaskett emerged as a skilled storyteller, leading senators through the developments and drama of the day with a clear and detailed narrative.Jamie RaskinThe Maryland congressman and lead impeachment manager captivated the chamber with his emotional and highly personal opening address, recounting the terror of the violence one day after his son’s funeral. Raskin took his daughter Tabitha and a son-in-law married to his other daughter, to Congress so they could stay together “in a devastating week”. The family became separated as rioters surged through the Capitol, and Raskin was close to tears as he recalled them texting their goodbyes to each other.Officer Eugene GoodmanThe US Capitol police officer was already an unsung hero of the riot, seen luring the mob upstairs and away from Senate chambers in a widely shown video last month. But dramatic new footage of Goodman saving the Utah senator Mitt Romney’s life by diverting him from the path of rioters was a standout moment of the trial. Goodman, and several other officers who were on duty that day, was awarded the congressional gold medal, the highest honor Congress can bestow.Bill CassidyThe ranks of dissident Republicans gained an unexpected new member when the Louisiana senator joined five colleagues in supporting Democrats in the vote over the constitutionality of the trial. It earned him censure from local party members as “an object of shame” and a rebuke from his “disappointed” state GOP. Cassidy stood his ground. “The American people are counting on us coming to this with a mind ready to receive information,” he said. “There’s a lot at stake here.” At the culmination of the trail, he was joined by the same five senators and another, Richard Burr of North Carolina, in voting to convict.Donald TrumpThe 45th US president spent much of his second impeachment trial as he did his term in office: on the golf course. He was said to be angry at his legal team’s opening, having watched segments at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, but perked up when his lawyers showed numerous clips of him on Friday. Trump will view his second acquittal as vindication, but dozens of Never Trump Republicans are mulling a breakaway party and the extent of damage the trial has inflicted on the conservative cause has yet to be calculated.Lindsey GrahamOn the night of the Capitol assault, the enigmatic Republican senator for South Carolina and Trump ally insisted he was done with his friend. “We’ve had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Enough is enough,” he said. But as the trial progressed, Graham proved he was firmly back on the Trump train. He found the House managers’ presentation “offensive and absurd” while other Republicans praised it, and conferred openly with Trump’s defense lawyers, alongside Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah.Bruce CastorThe ex-president’s lawyer struggled to recover from his rambling, rocky start to the proceedings, drawing ire from Trump and dismay from Republicans. His “defense” argument amounted to an attack on Trump’s political opponents and a near-endless loop of video clips of senior Democratic politicians using the word “fight”. His biggest faux pas was admitting inadvertently what his boss never could, that Trump lost the election. Ultimately, however, his performance is unlikely to have swayed many senators.Mike LeeThe Republican Utah senator ended the first day of testimony hopping mad, not over the riot in the building where he works, but at House managers who invoked his name during evidence about a phone call Trump made during the riot as he sought to further delay certification of the presidential election. Lee’s display of anger led managers to withdraw their narrative. Later, the supposedly impartial juror was one of three Republicans, with Graham and Cruz, to confer with Trump’s legal team. More

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      Trump’s acquittal seals his grasp on the Republican party

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      Donald Trump’s highly anticipated acquittal at his US Senate impeachment trial is the least surprising twist in American politics since … well, his acquittal at his first US Senate impeachment trial a year ago.On that occasion, with Republicans virtually unanimous in his defence, the then president lorded it over Democrats by staging a celebration in the east room of the White House and gloating over a newspaper front page that proclaimed: “Trump acquitted”.But this time Trump, already stripped of the trappings of power, suffered a somewhat bipartisan defeat in the Senate has been spared the prospect of becoming the first American president in history to be convicted only because a two-thirds majority is required rather than a simple majority.The final vote tally was 57-43. Seven Republicans turned on Trump: Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.However, Trump and his supporters are likely to claim victory again. The cloud of January gloom that descended on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in sunny Florida after seemingly endless defeats at the ballot box and in courts will have lifted a little. The historic debate that played out in the Senate last week is also the final proof positive of a claim made by his son, Donald Trump Jr, at the fateful rally before the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January: “This is Donald Trump’s Republican party!”If the chilling images of havoc that day – with police under attack and Vice-president Mike Pence, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mitt Romney narrowly escaping with their lives – were not sufficient to wrench the party from Trump’s grasp, then surely nothing is.Kurt Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide who switched allegiance to the Democrats, commented: “It’s a demonstration that his status as the leader of the Republican party is unchanged, even though the results of the election have shown that his agenda is a losing agenda for the Republican party.”One explanation is that senators’ actions are ultimately shaped by Republican state parties, which are ever more radically pro-Trump, and by grassroots supporters, who were not necessarily paying much attention to the trial.On Tuesday afternoon an average of 11 million viewers watched the opening arguments across five networks, according to CNN, rising to 12.4 million on Wednesday – a sliver of the US population. Notably, the pro-Trump Fox News’s ratings plummeted during the trial until it cut away to other subjects.In short, the evidence that was devastating to Trump’s reputation, and could harm his future political chances, was not necessarily seen by much of his “Make America great again” base.That is worth bearing in mind when considering whether or not Trump might take advantage of the fact that his ultimate acquittal will clear the way for him to run for president again in 2024.Some commentators believe the trial hammered a final nail in that possibility. Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, said: “No matter what the verdict of the senators, Trump is going to come out of this disgraced and his political career is over. He’s not going to be able to recover from this trial.”The Hill website reported that some Senate Republicans, including those intending to vote for acquittal, say the trial has “effectively ended any chance of him becoming the GOP presidential nominee in 2024”. It explained: “The emotional case presented by the House impeachment managers stung – and will likely lessen his influence in the Republican party.”Moreover, Trump faces business troubles, myriad court cases and time’s arrow: he would be 78 by election day and might find the lure of the golf course irresistible. He could instead play the role of kingmaker, inviting a series of Republican hopefuls to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring.[embedded content]On the other hand, the former president has made comments in the past suggesting that he might consider another run and the Hollywood drama of “the greatest comeback ever” would surely appeal. An Axios-Ipsos poll last month found that 57% of Republicans said Trump should be the party’s nominee in 2024.Bardella noted: “There are obviously a lot of legal landmines still out there that he’s going to have to overcome. You can never underestimate the ambition of other people in his own party who certainly are interested in being the next standard bearer of the party.“I believe that he will project the idea that he intends to run to maintain a certain level of power and position and fundraising, but what someone’s going to do two years from now is impossible to forecast.”It is certainly a threat that the Democrats take seriously. Their impeachment managers warned this week that, unless the Senate acts now to stop him, Trump could renew his assault on democracy. Lead manager Jamie Raskin said: “If he gets back into office and it happens again, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.”Indeed, Trump has always thrived on the principle that what does not kill him makes him stronger. The Russia investigation and his first impeachment over coercing Ukraine for political favors were both weaponized by him to convince supporters that he was the victim of a “witch-hunt” by the deep state.The second impeachment would surely form part of the same narrative. The clues were there in the arguments presented by Trump’s defense lawyers. Michael van der Veen described the trial as “a politically motivated witch-hunt” and an “unconstitutional act of political vengeance”.In what sounded like a potential passage from Trump’s reelection campaign launch in 2023, van der Veen added: “It is constitutional cancel culture. History will record this shameful effort as a deliberate attempt by the Democrat party to smear, censor and cancel, not just President Trump, but the 75 million Americans who voted for him.”Whatever Trump’s future plans, critics fear that a precedent has been set. The upshot of the trial – held at the very scene of the siege – is that a president can lie about an election and incite a riotous mob yet still not endure the ultimate sanction available to Congress. That is Trump’s dangerous legacy.Bardella added: “If you send a signal that someone who vocally led a violent insurrection against American democracy can do so without consequence, you’re only sending the message that he should do this again, that it’s OK: you are condoning that behavior.“And it’s not just Donald Trump. The people that perpetrated this are extreme and radical and will only see the Republicans like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio as partners in what will be an ongoing effort to continue to destabilise the democratic process.” More

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      Donald Trump acquitted in impeachment trial

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      Donald Trump has been acquitted by the Senate in an impeachment trial for his role in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol – a verdict that underscores the sway America’s 45th president still holds over the Republican party even after leaving office.
      Rendering its judgment for history, a divided Senate fell short of the two-thirds majority required to convict the former president of high crimes and misdemeanors over his months-long quest to overturn his election defeat and its deadly conclusion on 6 January, when Congress met to formalize the results of the election.
      After just five days of debate – the fastest presidential impeachment trial in American history – seven Republicans joined every Democrat in declaring Trump guilty on the charge of “incitement of insurrection”.
      Trump was the first US president to be impeached twice and is now the first president to be twice acquitted. If convicted, he could have been barred from holding office in the future, but this decision now paves the way – should Trump want to run again – for another tilt at the White House in 2024.
      Trump’s acquittal was never in doubt. Seventeen Republicans would have had to join all Democrats to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors. Several Republicans argued that the trial was unconstitutional, even though a majority of the Senate voted on Tuesday to proceed with the trial.
      The final vote tally was 57-43. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana joined five Republican colleagues who were expected to turn against Trump: Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
      Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, was among those who voted to acquit the former president.
      Explaining his decision in a floor speech after the vote, McConnell said Trump committed a “disgraceful dereliction of duty” by refusing to intervene as his supporters carried out a violent insurrection at the Capitol.
      “There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically, and morally, responsible for provoking the events of the day,” McConnell said, before concluding that the Senate was never meant to serve as a “moral tribunal”.
      In a statement, Trump thanked the Republicans who stood by his side during the trial, which he denounced as “yet another phase of the greatest witch-hunt in the history of our country”.
      “No president has ever gone through anything like it,” Trump said, “and it continues because our opponents cannot forget the almost 75 million people, the highest number ever for a sitting president, who voted for us just a few short months ago.” More

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      in Elections

      The GOP representative at center of Trump impeachment trial drama

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      Jaime Herrera Beutler, the congresswoman for south-west Washington state at the center of last-minute drama at Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, has been a rare Republican supporter of the Democrat-led effort to convict the former president of “inciting violence against the government of the United States”.Herrera Beutler, who has served as a representative since 2011, made her support to impeach Trump known six days after the Capitol riot in early January. “The president of the United States incited a riot aiming to halt the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next,” Herrera Beutler said then.In the statement, Herrera Beutler described Republican leader Kevin McCarthy as “pleading with the president to go on television and call for an end to the mayhem, to no avail”.Late on Friday, Herrera Beutler went further, saying she was told by McCarthy that Trump initially sided with supporters. She urged Republican “patriots” to come forward and share what they know about the conversation in which Trump is alleged to have told McCarthy that rioters at the Capitol were “more upset about the election” than the congressional minority leader was.For a few tense hours it looked as if Herrera Beutler might upset the whole impeachment trial, as Democrats, backed by a handful of Republicans, suddenly decided she needed to be called as a witness – a move that would ensure Republicans would call witnesses too.But amid scenes of farce, chaos and frantic negotiations, a deal was struck to merely read Herrera Beutler’s statements into the record, in lieu of personal testimony. Suddenly, the prospect of weeks of lengthy witness testimony in the impeachment trial receded again.But the incident has focused senators to focus – even if briefly – on what Trump knew and when he knew it on the day of the riot, something that may leave a lingering impact on how the American public views the trial.Herrera Beutler first came to national attention in 2014, when then speaker John Boehner introduced her 13-month-old daughter Abigail, who has Potter’s syndrome, a rare condition in which a child is born without kidneys, to the legislative chamber with the Johns Hopkins doctor, Jessica Bienstock, who had helped save her life.Herrera Beutler later co-sponsored a bipartisan bill that would allow children on the Medicaid program with complex medical conditions to seek specialty care outside their coverage areas.She also drew attention as one of a growing number of women balancing motherhood and elected political life. At the time of her daughter’s birth, she was just the ninth lawmaker in history to have a baby while serving in Congress.Now again she is a rare politician: an eloquent voice in her Trumpist-dominated party, arguing for a return of the party to its pre-Trump values and standards of political life.In her 12 January statement on the Capitol riot, the congresswoman wrote: “I understand the argument that the best course is not to further inflame the country or alienate Republican voters. But I am also a Republican voter. I believe in our constitution, individual liberty, free markets, charity, life, justice, peace and this exceptional country. I see that my own party will be best served when those among us choose truth.” More

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      Five Republicans join vote for witnesses in Trump Senate trial – video

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      Five Senate Republicans voted with the Democrats on Saturday, that the Senate should call witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
      Before the 55-45 vote, Trump’s impeachment lawyer Michael van der Veen warned senators that if Democrats wished to call a witness, he would ask for at least 100 witnesses and insist they give depositions in person in his office in Philadelphia – a threat that prompted laughter from the chamber.
      Impeachment: five Republicans join vote for witnesses in Trump Senate trial More

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      For Trump, V is for victory – while his lawyers flick a V-sign our way | Richard Wolffe

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      You may have thought the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump was somehow connected to the fascist mob that staged an insurrection on Capitol Hill last month.According to Trump’s lawyers, you are clearly an idiot.In actual fact, the former president was impeached for using the word “fight” – a crime committed by everyone in Congress and a good number of other people you might know.Madonna, for instance. Johnny Depp too. Seriously, America. If it’s OK for Madonna to talk about fighting, or voguing, or being a material girl, what’s the big deal?If the star of Pirates of the Caribbean can talk about walking the gangplank or shivering his timbers, then who is to deny our beloved former president the right to also don an eyepatch and wave a cutlass in our general direction?There was lots of video on the day of the greatest Trump lawyering of all. Mostly the same video, played over and over again, sometimes two or three times in quick succession like a Max Headroom compilation of politicians saying the word “fight”.There was President Biden, and Vice-President Harris. There were a bunch of former Democratic presidential candidates. Also some House impeachment managers.The only challenge for Trump’s lawyers is that none of them led an insurrection. None of them urged a mob to storm Congress. None of them timed their fight song for the precise moment when elected officials were carrying out their constitutional duty to certify an election’s results.[embedded content]But we digress. Back to the best lawyering in the land, a veritable elite strike force of jurists not seen since the last one outside that landscaping business next to the sex shop in a particularly lovely corner of Philadelphia.The strike force featured a new striker. Not the bumbling, rambling Bruce Castor, or the endlessly pedantic David Schoen. No, this time Trump bestowed upon his historic impeachment trial a personal injury lawyer from – yes, you guessed it – Philadelphia. An ambulance chaser, best known in Philly for his radio ads, asking if you’ve tripped while walking down the street.“If the walkway isn’t clear, and you fall and get hurt due to snow and ice, call 215-546-1000 for Van der Veen, O’Neill, Hartshorn and Levin,” the ads say, according to the Washington Post. “The V is for Victory.”Last year Mr V was actually suing Trump for his unfounded claims about mail-in voter fraud. This year, he is not so much chasing the ambulance as driving it.First, Mr V claimed that Trump was encouraging his supporters to respect the electoral college count, not to “stop the steal” as the entire mob was screaming in front of him. Then he claimed that the first of the mob to be arrested was a lefty antifa stooge, not a Trumpy fascist thug.But mostly he claimed that he – and his client – were defending the constitution at the precise moment when they were burning it to crispy charcoal husk.OK, so the Trump mob unleashed violence to stop the constitutional counting of the electoral college votes. But the idea that Congress might stop Trump’s free-speech rights to whip up that mob is an outrageous, unconstitutional human rights abuse that threatens to silence all politicians everywhere.OK, so the Trump mob might have silenced Mike Pence permanently by hanging him on the gallows they built on the steps of Congress. But if Congress tries to stop a president from using a mob to intimidate Congress, where will it end?Pretty soon, Mr V argued, we won’t even have access to lawyers. The hallowed right to counsel, if not ambulance chasers, might be threatened. “Who would be next,” he asked, indignantly. “It could be anyone. One of you! Or one of you! It’s anti-American and sets a dangerous precedent forever.”To his great, sighing chagrin, Mr V lamented the state of political discourse. “Inflammatory rhetoric from our elected officials – from both sides of the aisle – has been alarming frankly,” he said, in sorrow, as if his client were just a hapless symptom of a bigger sickness: a pandemic of mean words from Democrats.“This is not whataboutism,” he declared, after rolling his whataboutist video for the second or third or fourth time. “I’m showing you this to show that all political speech must be protected.”The key to the defense was about incitement to violence and the legal test of Brandenburg v Ohio. Appropriately enough, the Brandenburg in question was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and the test – as Trump’s lawyers helpfully explained – was about whether the free speech in question “explicitly or implicitly encouraged the use of violence or lawless action”.“Mr Trump did the opposite of advocating for lawless action,” said Mr V. “The opposite!”The worst news of all was that Bruce Castor was at the microphone, pretending to be a half-decent lawyerThis is only true if it’s opposite day, when opposite means the opposite of opposite. As it happens, it was indeed just that day at the impeachment trial of our great defender of the constitution, free speech and peaceful politics.Which is why Mr V’s partner, the now legendary Bruce Castor, concluded the defense case. Castor explained that because he was the lead attorney in this legal shenanigan, he was going to take “the most substantive part” of the case for himself. That wasn’t to say, he added hastily, that his learned friends had done a bad job, oh no. The good news, he said, was that the case was almost over. The bad news was that it would take another hour for it to be over.The worst news of all was that Castor was at the microphone, pretending to be a half-decent lawyer.“Did the 45th president engage in incitement – they say insurrection,” began Castor. “Clearly there was no insurrection,” he continued, defining the word as “taking the TV stations over and having some idea of what you’re going to do when you take power”.As a description of the Trump presidency, that sounded pretty accurate. Unlike the part Castor read from his notes about Trump’s attitudes towards mobs in general.“By any measure,” the lawyer said in his most Trumpy way, “President Trump is the most pro-police, anti-mob president this country has ever seen.”From that point on, the defense case smooshed together some condemnation of the Black Lives Matter protests, some justification of Trump’s campaign to overturn the election results in Georgia, and some accusation of a supposed effort to disenfranchise Trump voters – who lost the election.Like so much else connected to the scrambled neural networks inside one Florida resident’s cranium, it made no sense. It was a radio echo bouncing around the cosmos from a distant star that collapsed into a black hole of disinformation and delusion long ago.“Spare us the hypocrisy and false indignation,” said Mr V, as he wrapped up another hypocritical and falsely indignant response to the same old video of Democrats saying fiery things.Now all we have left is the hypocrisy and false indignation of Republican senators who value their own careers above their own lives or the democracy that elected them. The V is for venal. More

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      Fight, fight, fight: Trump lawyers subject senators to repetitive strain | David Smith's sketch

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      Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. The first rule of Fight Club is just keep bashing your audience with the same word ad nauseam.A video in which Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and other Democratic politicians uttered the word “fight” 238 times, according to a count by the MSNBC TV network, was the most bizarre turn yet at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.The montage was played by Trump lawyer David Schoen on Friday in an attempt to demonstrate that such language is common in today’s political discourse, and protected by the first amendment to the constitution, so Trump’s call for his supporters to “fight like hell” should not be blamed for the insurrection at the US Capitol.“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Schoen told senators, many of whom had seen themselves on TV screens inside the chamber. “It’s a word people use, but please stop the hypocrisy.”He was not wrong that it’s a word people use. Hillary Clinton, who was seen in the video, made Fight Song the theme of her ill-starred 2016 campaign against Trump. The world champion “fighter” is surely Senator Elizabeth Warren, who sprinkles the word in interviews liberally and wrote a book called This Fight is Our Fight.But what Schoen was also doing was displaying whataboutism in its purest form – a wonder to behold, like a flawless diamond or pristine snow.Whataboutism is a dodge often seen in rightwing media. If allegations are made against Trump’s connections in Russia, respond: what about Clinton’s emails? If Trump’s family are accused of exploiting their position, respond: what about Joe Biden’s son Hunter? If white supremacists are running riot, respond: what about antifa? It doesn’t matter if the equivalence is false because it’s all about attacking the opponent in order to muddy the waters.The Trump legal team’s relentless “fight” video was a case in point. Some of the Democrats were quoted out of context due to selective editing. We heard Biden, for example, say “never, never, never give up this fight” but did not hear the full quotation: “I looked into the eyes of people who survived school shootings, and I made each of them a promise: I will never, never, never give up this fight.”(Speaking of hypocrisy, Schoen accused the impeachment managers of “manipulating video” during his presentation.)Still, the Trump defence cleared the very low bar set by their Laurel-and-Hardy opening on TuesdayIn addition, these Democrats were urging supporters to fight for a political cause. Trump was urging supporters to fight against democracy: his cause was based on the mendacious claim of a stolen election. And as the impeachment managers laid out on Thursday, he had spent years deploying incendiary rhetoric and demonising opponents.Still, the Trump defence cleared the very low bar set by their opening Laurel-and-Hardy gambit on Tuesday. On Friday they provided talking points for rightwing media, straws for Republican consciences to clutch at and a boost for Trump’s spirits after some very grim days.It was not hard to imagine the ex-president at Mar-a-Lago, his luxury estate in Florida, nodding in approval as lawyer Michael van der Veen kicked off in Trumpian style: “The article of impeachment now before the Senate is an unjust and blatantly unconstitutional act of political vengeance. This appalling abuse of the constitution only further divides our nation when we should be trying to come together.”Van der Veen even described it as a “politically motivated witch-hunt”, a phrase the former president has used even more often than Warren has uttered “fight”.In a first salvo of whataboutism, Van der Veen played video clips of Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, and other Democrats objecting to Trump’s victory in the electoral college in 2016. “To litigate questions of election integrity within the system is not incitement to insurrection,” he argued. “It is the democratic system working as founders and lawmakers have designed.”The lawyer then falsely asserted that one of the first people arrested after the insurrection was a leader of antifa, when that individual denies any such affiliation and indeed antifa is a broad spectrum of far-left, anti-fascist groups, and not an organisation with a leader.He claimed that Democrats had encouraged “mob violence” during the Trump presidency and played clips accompanied by ominous music.The impeachment is “about Democrats trying to disqualify their political opposition”, he said, accuse them of indulging “constitutional cancel culture” – another phrase sure to play well on Fox News, Newsmax and the One America News Network.Later, lawyer Bruce Castor argued that the attack on the Capitol was pre-planned – pipe bombs were planted a day earlier, for example – and so Trump’s fiery speech on 6 January could not have been the cause. However, the president had tweeted in December that the rally “will be wild”, and the prosecutors have shown Trump spent months laying the groundwork.Castor also misnamed the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, referring instead to the NFL star Ben Roethlisberger, and quibbled over the definition of “insurrection” . After two and a half hours, the defence case rested. They had put up a fight, of sorts, but it was unlikely to be remembered alongside Winston Churchill’s “fight them on the beaches”.Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, tweeted drily: “Of all impeachment defense speeches in American history, Castor’s was the most recent.” More