The Trial

Well, the trial isn’t going well for Donald Trump. The prosecution opened strong, with a powerful video of the break-in at the Capitol (break-in is bit of a mild term, but it associates it with the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, in which precisely zero people were killed but, nonetheless, Richard Nixon was forced to resign over it), and phone records that showed by time stamp, which have been convicting people for the last two decades of detective thrillers regular as clockwork, that his infamous ‘Get Pence!’ tweet came after he knew the protesters were inside the capitol building, thus actually making it an attempted murder case.
And the defense, well, if the defense was his defensive line and Trump the quarterback, he just got sacked. His lawyer’s opening statement was the most cringeworthy piece of oratory I’ve heard since that time Joe Biden talked about how much the little black kids at the pool liked to play with his hairy, blond leghairs. And, of course, there’s himself refusing to put in an appearance and testify. That’s probably the best strategy for him, no matter how bad it looks.
Anyway, it may be bad enough that enough Republicans desert him (remember, it was the Republicans turning on Nixon that forced him out), but I expect it to go more like the Kavanaugh hearings. Lindsey Graham will make a long and hysterical speech and everybody else will just forget about it and call it a day. Because that’s the way it goes.