Trying to wrap my head around the fact that I know and love some people who will not be glued to cspan today

Like how are we friends

Jamie raskin out here with graphics

I am steeped in these videos and I’ve never seen it all put together in a timeline cut with trump’s video and tweets

I just...wow. If I was in a different line of work Idk if I’d have been able to watch it all without having a small meltdown. That’s...a lot.

Also not for nothing I’m surely a partisan on this issue but I think everyone can stop and realize that Jamie raskin would have been well within his rights to take a couple weeks off rather than take point on a historic trial

That dude is stronger than most of us are.

And I’d say the same if he was heading up the opposite case.

Kinda interesting to just listen to lawyers trying to stay formal when you know they’re dying to just yell WE HAVE BEEN OVER THIS HERE IS THE PRECEDENT WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING HERE

This is why I’m a writer and not a lawyer, because I absolutely would just have a slide deck and spend all my time pointing at it, and every slide would be a meme to convey how absolutely juvenile the whole process felt

Though they’re absolutely doing the grownup version, now they’re just quoting conservatives acknowledging the precedents

It’s lawyer petty

it’s a fairly convincing case that they should have a trial. Remember this isn’t the trial, this is the question of whether they have standing to hold a trial

Which is hilarious, when’s the last time the GOP argued against senatorial control

Oh right when they were minority

Cilline now just reading trump tweets with passion

If this wasn’t a fairly monumental thing and people hadn’t died this would be hilarious

Imagine all the rioters and trial is gonna be “well your honor let’s just watch the footage that the defendant paid to promote”

Or having your footage used as a congressional exhibit and then trying to argue you weren’t there

They really brought on a dude to eviscerate the legal case and then got a dude to eviscerate the political case

Huge shift in tone and tbh people will disagree but you might as well cover your bases

Thing is the legal case can’t be too pugilist and the fighters lack the gravitas

It’s two different jobs.

For example, he just said Trump “sided with the bad guys” which got an audible harrumphing from the senate floor

He’s not fucking wrong tho

“With all due respect, every part of...that is wrong.” Re: the unity argument

That’s a good line, worth getting the full quote

Raskin now talking about how his daughter and son in law were in the capitol on the 6th and they’d asked would they be safe, the day after his son died, and he said he had to go vote and would they come

Every senator in the chamber absolutely understands how heavy this anecdote

I do not envy whoever has to get up after raskin retells the time they had to put on their gas masks while “they placed what they thought would be their final texts” to argue dry precedent

I don’t give a fuck what your political affiliation, if you can watch this and not get chills you’re not human

“Senators, this cannot be our future. This cannot be the future of America.”

-Jamie Raskin, fighting back tears

Schumer asks for a ten minute break and you can *feel* how heavy that air is.

I think it seems far away to people who’ve never thought they might die in the midst of political violence

I am here to tell you that when you have lived through a thing like that you do not ever forget the terror of it

And you either run from it or remember it intentionally.

It takes more courage than you think to live through that and then make it your argument because whenever you talk about it you relive it.

Which is a thing that politicians and journalists don’t talk about much because the job is to minimize it.

Just. Wow.

This poor bastard now representing Trump

Bruce Castor now stands to defend Trump’s right to not have a senate trial and he’s having to try to follow Raskin

Aaaaaand he’s already lost it. He’s trying so hard to say that insurrectionists should be prosecuted but that isn’t to do with Trump, that human nature wants retribution

Oh buddy idk why or how you took this client but it’s going poorly

“Passion and rage blinding logic and reason”

This is personally hilarious to me

Is he now arguing that spousal privilege doesn’t exist?

This dude had a whole opening statement ready and he can’t read it because Raskin closed the way he did

“Here’s little Bruce at 8, 9, 10 years old” listening to the Senate

The his is his segue into how great the Senate is? And he’s taking about how he’s met Senators before

This was not his opening he wrote, or he’s the worst lawyer in history

Honestly I feel bad for this guy

Imagine already being on the wrong side of history but you’re doing your job and then WELP TIME TO AD LIB THE MOST IMPORTANT FIVE MINUTES OF YOUR CAREER

He’s now mad about someone who said something (he’s not sure who or what) who did or didn’t say something and this is why we had the revolution

I’m about to send the dude a bottle with a note saying “you tried and you failed. The lesson is never try”

He’s managed liberty and security and also defending the right to say it, because we have armies around the world to induce governments to enjoy freedoms and we can’t possibly be suggesting that we punish people for political speech

He’s like us to consider that none of the insurrectionists were charged alongside Donald trump

Presumably he hasn’t seen the defense lawyers who said trump was an unindicted coconspirator

Now he’s talking about how rare it is to see a president impeached and since Clinton was impeached and then trump that if trump was impeached now it’d be a slippery slope to impeachment willy nilly

He’s arguing against a senate trial, trump has already been impeached twice

I’ve rarely thought “man someone should have given this dude some cocaine and some bourbon” but now he’s asking what if the next person to be impeached was Eric Holder with Fast and Furious

Give the man some bourbon

Now he’s talking about how Sasse took some shit at home but “Nebraska, you’re going to hear, is quite a judicial-thinking place.”

I have no idea what’s going on

Perhaps I need bourbon

“The downfall of the Greek republic and the Roman republic and perhaps the American republic...is the senate”

Just stupendous argumentation

I’m absolutely out this is like transcribing a trump speech and trying to divine what it means

He’s now saying that the people who wrote the bit about impeachment were confederates?

I feel like if I was a lawyer I wouldn’t say “I couldn’t even write a response because I didn’t know how to even respond to a wide net argument”

Oh good he’s calling out Manchin

“Congress shall make no law abridging all of these things”

Hon it’s the first amendment it’s not that many words

I feel like I’m watching a dude actually drown

The lawyer is hoping his colleague will do the legal analysis

Now he’s basically saying that they had whole arguments but then raskin talked

My god I’m a better lawyer than this and I have never taken con law

When you’re sighing and saying your colleagues can give the legal arguments and you’re the lead attorney

Holy fuck

I’m hyperventilating

He turns his time@over to the dude who will do the legal argument and his last line is “now I’ve taken all his time”

Dear all that’s holy

New lawyer now! Oh man he is aggressive

He is gravely concerned for the institution of the presidency because he always thought he’d get to talk to the senate about something nicer

Also. I maybe wouldn’t say it made me want to cry what with going after raskin

Also: nobody give this dude cocaine, he’s doing just fine

This is like if Tucker Carlson got five minutes on the senate floor

He’s mad someone spliced together the insurrection footage and I think is trying to imply crisis actors?

He’s now arguing that impeachment is itself chilling to public officers

YES DUDE THAT IS THE POINT

CANCELED.

The dude just yelled CANCELED

I wasn’t fucking wrong about Carlson

Okay I just had someone at the door

Did the GOP just air a supercut of people trying to file impeachment against trump as an affirmative defense against a senate trial?

And now he’s arguing against impeachment even though he’s already been impeached and this is about a senate trial which is a wholly separate thing that only happens after impeachment isn’t a question

Do they...not have pocket constitutions?

Because I know a lot of dudes in militias and one of them gave me a whole box of pocket constitutions

I could spare one

I am absolutely not a lawyer and certainly no constitutional expert but isn’t arguing in front of the senate that impeachment is conceptually bullshit kinda like arguing to a criminal judge that indictment is conceptually bullshit

Like if I was up on charges I might argue the charges instead of arguing the general merit of grand juries

And now he’s arguing due process to argue against...a trial in which due process is guaranteed

What the fuck is happening

My favorite part of this is that this guy is gonna walk off trying to high five his team and everyone is gonna be shrinking off into the plants because who wants to tell him

Now he’s arguing that because the senate didn’t take up the impeachment articles quickly enough that the charges can’t stick because he was impeached when he was the president and now he’s not president

It’s the closest to a procedural point I’ve heard yet

“Finally, on the subject of due process on this matter...”

Buddy you’ve been misdefining due process for a solid ten minutes now what do you mean finally

Hang on

Dude here is gonna invoke the death penalty like it’s some bogeyman and he’s defending a dude who rushed state executions

I see

And he ends with “and also the guy lost the election!”

Strong legal argumentation

I really cannot tell you all often enough how often while I was embedded in the armed rebellion before the last one people angrily asked me about various articles of the constitution

this has powerful ARTICLE ONE energy and it makes as much sense as the battle flag people do

Ironically my language was unclear there

What I meant was that usually when I’m hanging out with people who want to subvert the constitution, they angrily tell me about the articles of the constitution to justify their actions

Of subverting the constitution

Pretty great to hear trump’s attorney complaining about populism tho

This dude talking about unambiguous meaning and the whole thing is corrupt unless the Chief Justice presides is (and I cannot tell you how strongly) really fucking reminiscent of how lots of people think that constitutional clarity means that only local sheriffs are authority

Bring me a campfire and some subzero temps and a militia or two and I’d be listening to this speech waiting for the musical interlude in the community meeting

He’s parsing was the guy president when he was impeached but he’s not president now so this is an illegal body

Y’all remember three days ago when the last guy said he’d taken up all the time

Anyway this dude has been talking through at least five years of life, right?

KEN STARR REFERENCES NOW

If I were to make an argument in front of a political body and my whole strategy was boring my audience into saying “idk he said a lot of words he’s probably right” I would absolutely not say the name Ken Starr in the middle

I will personally find a cocaine dealer in the DC area and get someone to just wave it in his eye line to make him stop because literally nobody is listening

Even he knows it, he’s reading things into the record now and everyone knows it and nobody is still listening

He’s just said “the disjunctive or, and mr Starr uses the comma”

One hour ago or possibly ten lifetimes

Raskin was talking about the time his kid dies and his other kid thought she would

Dude is out here on the disjunctive

I’m a writer and I’m bored

I’m a language nerd and I just...don’t even give a fuck enough about what this dude is saying to even complain that he’s using the disjunctive improperly and you’d think this was my time to shine

Do they not have time limits

How many infinities do we have to live through

Didn’t the last dude just say he took all the time

Now we’re talking about page 37 of the brief

Fucking now he’s got a book

He’s saying he’s summing up but I don’t buy it

Wait now he’s just mad that people voted against Trump because it’s too partisan

He’s gonna close but he has two thoughts

Sure let’s quote Longfellow about sailing

Raskin now just saying “I think we’re done here did anyone want to stay and argue more or?”