The presentation for the prosecution by Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) during this past week’s remarkable Senate hearing was very simply magnificent. It was stunning. It ought to be archived somewhere, prominently, to be replayed for generations to come so that they will know about the guilt of Donald Trump in inciting the riot on Capitol Hill on January 6 and about the intellectual and ideological ruin that is the current Republican Party.
His presentation
was exacting, forensic, logically irrefutable, nearly flawless in execution and
a masterpiece of rhetoric—some of the best of which was more or less extemporaneous,
as when he embraced the “tag” put forward by Trump’s hapless and incompetent
lawyers that the charges against the former president were a new “Raskin Doctrine.”
The video evidence, much of which was new, brought home again the seriousness of
what happened that day. That Raskin performed this brilliant service to his
country in the immediate aftermath of the death of his college-age son by suicide….what
can you say?
In the Twitter-sphere and elsewhere a lot of people were disappointed
or furious that Democrats “folded” when they declined Saturday to call
witnesses. This was after a report from a moderate conservative who was with
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy during an angry phone call with Donald
Trump in the middle of the riot, urging the president to call off the rioters.
Trump had (of course) expressed that the rioters were antifa, to which McCarthy
angrily responded that no, they were his supporters. To which Trump reportedly said,
“Well, Kevin, I guess these people care more about the election than you do.” (And
McCarthy reportedly responded, “Who the fuck do you think you are talking to?”)
A most damning bit of evidence. But Raskin and colleagues’
presentation was already damning as to Trump’s comportment during the riot.
Their presentation was electrifying and sobering all at once, an effect that would
have been diluted as the trial wore on. And Republicans were going to drag it
out, endangering passage of Biden’s COVID relief and the confirmation of
judges. And all the most damning witnesses imaginable were not going to get a
conviction in this Senate, owing to the moral, intellectual and ideological rot
of the Republican members—a rot that was now recorded, along with Trump’s guilt,
on national television for all of time. Raskin was able to get the report about McCarthy's phone call on
the record, which was enough. Mitch McConnell’s scorching condemnation of Trump
after the acquittal—which may have been part of the bargaining that happened Saturday
morning—underscored that despite the acquittal, this was no victory for Trump
or Trumpism.
It was a massive defeat. His lawyers were a humiliated
laughingstock, and everyone who watched it knows it. David Frum wrote a couple of great columns during the trial, one
about the incompetent buffoonery that has always seemed to be endemic to anything
Donald Trump touches, and a later one
after the acquittal, titled “It’ll Do.”
It will more than do. There is nothing more important than
that the Biden Administration have a successful first year---that means
massive COVID relief and the acceleration of the vaccine rollout. We might,
just possibly, be moving back toward something like normal by September. This
will do more to neutralize Trumpism than all the witnesses that might have been
called. That can happen now because the House managers quickly wrapped up a
searing, brutally winning case against the former president.
And Jamie Raskin is a national hero.
