Vampires and Voldemort

Impeachment Two, Day One: Yesterday morning, during a Senate hearing on her nomination to serve as the head of the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden was skewered by Republicans for the critical, sometimes polarizing tweets that she sent out during the Trump years.  Apparently, they failed to see the humor in her comparing Ted Cruz to a vampire and “Moscow” Mitch McConnell to Voldemort; nor were they pleased about the ones where she said that Susan Collins was the worst and that Tom Cotton was a fraud. That’s the same group of Senators who rarely admitted to even seeing Trump’s tweets and/or excused them with a shrug.  So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that after sitting through the thorough and heartbreaking presentation provided by the House Democrat’s impeachment team followed by an incoherent, rambling, factually inaccurate one provided by Trump’s lawyers, forty-four of them voted that trying the out of office Trump for inciting an insurrection would be unconstitutional.  Only one, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy joined the five other Republican Senators, Romney, Murkowski, Collins, Toomey and Sasse, and all the Democrats who had previously indicated that proceeding with the rest of the trial was the way to go by voting that the trial is constitutional. Cassidy who was just reelected to his seat was almost immediately condemned by his state’s Republican Party for his treachery. Apparently, they, unlike him, failed to notice the incompetence of Trump’s lawyers.  Nor did they appreciate the Democrat’s chilling opening video or the presentations provided by the Democrats, most notably the legally convincing and thoroughly heartbreaking words from Maryland Congressman/team leader Jamie Raskin or the calm yet forceful ones from Colorado’s Joe Neguse, who, judging by his performance is one to watch in the coming years. Even some of the Republican Senators who voted against the constitutionality of the trial continuing, including Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, admitted that the Democratic team had done a far better job than Trump’s lawyers. Utah’s Mike Lee just said that everyone including Trump is entitled to make mistakes, that’s why there are mulligans.  Lee by the way was one of the eleven Republican Senators who actually voted against the hearing rules agreed to by Senator leaders Schumer and McConnell.  The other ten were Cruz, Hagerty, Hawley, Johnson, Marshall, Paul, Rubio, both Scotts and the ever clueless Tuberville.  

Only the Best: Getting back to Trump’s legal team’s performance, it embarrassed a lot of Wicker’s colleagues who had hoped that they’d be able to justify their votes to end the trial by saying that Trump’s lawyers’ arguments were brilliant, or at least decent.  As to Trump, unlike Joe Biden who was too busy running the country and dealing with the virus to stay glued to the TV, he spent the day watching the trial but fortunately not rage tweeting since he remains banned from Twitter.  Reports are that he was furious, at the ineptitude of his legal team and because the more rambling of the two, Bruce Castor actually complimented the Democrats on their performance, admitting that he and his colleague David Schoen reordered their remarks in an attempt to diffuse the Democrats’ effectiveness.  Trump was apparently also less than pleased that his lawyers actually acknowledged his election loss while also suggesting that there are other ways to punish an out of office president for his criminal activities.  One of those criminal activities worth looking into might involve Parler, the currently out of commission far right version of Twitter.  Apparently, back when he was sitting in the Oval Office Trump entertained pledging to post only on Parler in exchange for a 40% ownership interest.    

Up Next: With the constitutionality vote over, the trial moves forward today.  House Democrats will lay out their case, touching on whether Trump was just exercising his First Amendment rights when he urged the mob of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and those other willing/gullible insurgents to move on to the Capitol, whether the House violated his due process rights when and how it impeached him, and whether this is a “bill of attainder,” as in legislation singling out an individual or group of people for punishment without trial.  Trump’s lawyers may or may not do a better job laying out their defense arguments but who are we kidding, their incompetence probably doesn’t matter.  Trump may be furious about their performance, but it looks increasingly like he was right when he said just a few weeks ago that he didn’t need to waste money on good lawyers because given the jury he didn’t need the best ones or even good ones.  That’s not to say that there’s no chance that a few more Republicans won’t see the light, Voldemort Mitch has apparently told his crowd that they’re free to vote their consciences but it would be absurd to think that enough of them actually have consciences or are willing to go up against their state parties and those threats of censure.  And, its worth noting that Senator Voldemort is the same Mitch who delayed holding the trial until after Trump was out of office, setting up the constitutional debate in the first place. 

Human Resources: Neera Tandem probably shouldn’t have sent off all her exasperated tweets during the four years of Trump darkness given her government aspirations, but really who among us thinks that anything she said was wrong? Anyway, with Democrats controlling the Senate, she’ll probably be confirmed even if she fails to get a single Republican vote, possibly before the widely respected Merrick Garland, who with Lindsey Graham demoted from the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, replaced by Illinois’ Dick Durbin who replaced the less than coherent Diane Feinstein as the committee’s senior Democrat, finally has a confirmation schedule.  By the way, most of the Trump era US Attorneys have been told to pack up their bags. Among those who will be spared for now are Connecticut’s John Durham who is still working on that investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation and  Delaware’s David Weiss who is heading up the investigation into Hunter Biden. Could anyone ever imagine Trump who routinely fired uncooperative US Attorneys holding on to any involved in inconvenient investigations?        

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