(Screenshot image taken from the YouTube account of 'C-SPAN')
For this critique I’m going to have to write a lengthy introduction since there are some things that I want to get off my chest in regards to this topic. At the risk of inflaming the passions of anyone who reads this, I’m just going to be straightforward and blunt about it. I never liked the notion of Donald Trump as President of the United States. From before the 2016 election, I regarded him as someone who was tremendously unqualified to hold the position that he was seeking based on, what appeared from a distance to be, a toxic personality combined with the fact that he had never served in public office before in any capacity. I think Trump’s tragic flaw is his massive hubris which I suspect has triggered the most nefarious and unhinged parts of his character to rise to the surface in response to losing the 2020 election. That being said, I don’t wish to berate anyone for holding positive opinions about Trump, or for even casting a vote for him for any reason that they may have held, whether that be the policy positions that Trump stood for, or for their disgust at the flaws of his political opponents. And let me be frank, all of Trump’s political opponents had their share of flaws (whether they want to admit to this or not), and if Trump possessed any competency within the political realm it was his ability to exploit such deficiencies for his own gain. Still I do not hold the notion that it is proper to pass moral judgments on a vote that is cast to represent one’s own personal inclination, nor for simply holding certain beliefs. Human actions though should be subject to such judgments and what transpired at the US Capitol on January 6th of this year was a prolific aggregation of human action that practically begs to be morally condemned by people from all across the political spectrum.
If I were to assess Trump’s behavior between the election and the insurrection in a vacuum completely devoid of any specific context or extenuating circumstances, I would argue that he deserves to be impeached from office. I hold this opinion for several reasons. First, Trump spent two months denouncing the results of the election, perpetually making unfounded claims of fraud that put him at odds with several government officials who contradicted such arguments. Such officials included Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; Gabriel Sterling, a high ranking election official from Georgia’s Secretary of State’s office; and William Barr, Trump’s former Attorney General, in addition to all the state election officials who certified their vote totals and the judges who rejected Trump’s numerous motions in court. In his persistent belief that he was cheated, Trump sowed the seeds of distrust amongst the public in our electoral process.
Second, Trump made requests to select members of the government to violate current legal statutes in order to overturn the results of the election and unilaterally thwart the will of the electorate. On a Jan. 2nd phone call that took place between Trump and Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the President made several subtle, implicit suggestions that Georgia’s vote totals should be amended based on Trump’s unverified claims of voter fraud, thus resulting in Trump winning the state and its allotment of electoral college votes. At times Trump was discernibly coercive in his appeals. For instance one point Trump stated:
…I think you’re going to find that they are shredding ballots because they have to get rid of the ballots because the ballots are unsigned. The ballots are corrupt, and they’re brand new and they don’t have a seal and there’s the whole thing with the ballots. But the ballots are corrupt. And you are going to find that they are – which is totally illegal, it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.
And this was not an isolated occurrence. Later in the call Trump states:
…and I watched you this morning and you said, uh well there was no criminality. But I mean, all of this stuff is very dangerous stuff. When you talk about no criminality, I think it’s very dangerous for you to say that.
Towards the end of the call Trump flat out accuses the election officials in Georgia of committing election fraud. When Raffensperger’s lawyer, Ryan Germany explained to the President that there was certain election information that they were unable to provide due to the law, Trump responded by saying:
Well, you have to. Well under the law you’re not allowed to give faulty election results, OK? You’re not allowed to do that. And that’s what you done.
If this wasn’t enough Trump made false claims regarding Vice President Pence’s role in the counting of the Electoral College votes. Despite Pence’s best efforts at clarifying his role in this process, I would argue that Trump succeeded in establishing the false notion that the outcome of the election could still be determined based off actions taken during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6th. And this was something that he was able to impart on both his supporters and members of Congress.
And lastly, at 4:17pm on Jan. 6th, after the attack on the Capitol had begun, Trump publicly expressed affection and loyalty to those who brazenly invaded the building and who committed an untold amount of violence and destruction. Trump posted this video message to Twitter at a time when it was widely known that such persons had accessed restricted areas without authorization, and that anyone who entered the Capitol complex in conjunction with this invasion, were at the very least guilty of violating Section 1752 of Title 18, Chapter 84 of US federal law.
This may not represent a complete list of potentially impeachable offenses that Trump committed but I’ll stop here, since I think this is sufficient. It goes without saying that members of the US House in response to the events of Jan. 6th introduced a resolution to impeach the President. In spite of everything that I’ve stated above, this resolution is one that I think deserves a critical appraisal.
If I view this resolution within the full respect of its historical context and with all of its extenuating circumstances, its timing makes me question its very existence and necessity. According to Article 1, Section 3 of the US Constitution, an impeachment process can only bring about two specific consequences; removal from office and “disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit…”. It should have been clear to everyone in the House chamber, both Democrats and Republicans alike, that the impeachment process would never come to fruition before the inauguration of the next administration, and thus the first consequence would offer no justification for this resolution. As for the disqualification consequence, there is some debate as to the interpretation of the phrase “Office of honor, Trust or Profit”. While I personally think that this should be applied to elected offices, the notion that this would bar Trump from seeking office again is something that could be challenged in the courts. Given that few people have even been convicted by the Senate, and that even fewer have ever dared to seek office again, it’s hard to know how the courts would rule on this potential matter. The language in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, is much clearer in regards to someone being barred from public office. In fact some have argued that for the purpose of restricting Trump’s further political ambitions a joint resolution of Congress that cites Section 3 would be a better option than an impeachment trial, even though Trump could still challenge this in court as well, should he ever choose to run again.
And this is another issue that few have ever brought up. Why would anyone seriously think that Trump will ever run for public office again? Even if he gets acquitted by the Senate, and even if he could win a court ruling on his eligibility with respect to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the fact remains that Trump is currently 74 years old and his lone foray into public office will forever be marred by a violent, insurgent attack on the legislative branch of the federal government. If there is a sizable potion of this country that still believes that Trump could be President again some day, then there is something deeply wrong with this nation. In a nation constituted of a rational, sensible citizenry, Trump’s career as a politician would be unequivocally finished. I would offer an addendum to this notion by asserting that it is not simply the duty of Congress or of lawyers to procure this reality but also of the American people themselves.
The impeachment process could also have other minor consequences due to other laws, such as the benefits that would be granted to Trump as the result of the Former Presidents Act. Granted, subsection (f) of this law states that a president will still get such benefits as long as they were not terminated due to a removal by impeachment. Since Trump’s term ended as the result of the normal transition of power from one administration to another, some would argue that Trump could still get these benefits even if he were to be convicted.
Thus at the time that this resolution was introduced, it was known that it would not remove Trump from office, and thus potentially not cancel his post-presidential benefits. There was also doubt about whether or not this even would bar Trump from future office, in the dim possibility that he would even attempt such a quixotic bid. I understand the need and the urgency for the House to respond to what took place on Jan. 6th, especially given that their own chamber and members came under attack. I will also recognize that there is a certain tragic element to the fact that what may have been the most treasonous act ever committed by a President in the history of this country should occur so soon to the end of his term as to render an impeachment motion as consequently ineffective. However the members of Congress should not be blamed for the poor timing of such egregious offenses and ultimately I would still contend that this was an appropriate response to make at an extremely poor time in which to undertake it.
The waning days of Trump’s term created another issue in that there was a certain speed and efficiency that was required in order to draft and submit this resolution. It took a mere 5 days after the insurrection for an impeachment resolution to be introduced into the House. In comparison to previous Presidential impeachments, it took two and half months for the House Judiciary Committee to draft and vote on articles concerning Nixon’s impeachment. While the Clinton impeachment largely depended on the Starr Report, it still took two months for the House to conduct a floor vote on the articles after initially agreeing to commence with impeachment proceedings. Even Trump’s first impeachment was followed by months of inquiry that included public witness testimony. As for the resolution itself, I don’t think it was well served by the haste in which it was produced.
The lone article drafted by the House asserted that Trump was guilty of incitement of insurrection. The main argument for the charge was given as follows:
In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials.
There’s no doubt that Trump did this, especially if you read his Tweets from this time period (which you can still do thanks to the Trump Twitter Archive). Based on his text tweets alone, it was almost two straight months of election fraud hysteria. The question to be asked though is, did this actually incite violence? This may be an unpopular stance but I don’t necessarily view Trump’s extremely biased opinion of the election results as a call to action. If you read most of his text tweets on the election, very few of his claims could be classified as exhortation, even on a vaguely implied level. Most of Trump’s arguments are simple, unactionable cries of mischief that range from specific, targeted criticisms, like one of his tweets from Nov. 11th
A guy named Al Schmidt, a Philadelphia Commissioner and so-called Republican (RINO), is being used big time by the Fake News Media to explain how honest things were with respect to the Election in Philadelphia. He refuses to look at a mountain of corruption & dishonesty. We win!
to more generic, PR bluster, as seen in a tweet from Nov. 15th.
He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!
On the far end of the banality scale are terse, disjointed proclamations like “RIGGED ELECTION!” which Trump initially tweeted on Nov. 25th, and which he would reiterate several times again in December. I don’t know if anyone would honestly assess such messages as proof of incitement. Granted there are times when Trump does creep closer to the notion of provocation, but even then nothing really explicit or specific is suggested in regards to how people are supposed to react. And of course the Trump Twitter Archive doesn’t allow one to view his posted videos, so I can’t assess the language from this content. Nonetheless no specific examples of such false statements made prior to Jan. 6th were cited in the actual article that the House drafted. I don’t understand why this is, because let’s be honest, they were not hard to find.
The only cited examples of such statements were completely restricted to the speech that Trump gave on the Ellipse on the morning before the insurrection. In the article, they cited the following passage which Trump stated early in his speech:
we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.
This honestly is no different than the concise declarations that Trump spent two months flooding Twitter with. Again I have to ask, how exactly does this notion turn into an impulse to storm the US Capitol? The other excerpt cited was the following statement, made near the end of his speech:
If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.
Seriously, this is the evidence of incitement? The phrase ‘fight like hell’ is a rather generic figure of speech that often is ambiguous in its interpretation. The word ‘fight’ itself does not necessarily carry a violent connotation. Consider how Trump used the word ‘fight’ in other parts of his speech. In regards to Rudy Giuliani, Trump stated:
Rudy, you did a great job. He’s got guts. You know what? He’s got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican party. He’s got guts, he fights. He fights, and I’ll tell you.
In his context are we to hold the notion that Rudy Giuliani engages in physical violence? In regards to Trump’s staunchest allies in the House he remarked:
We have great ones, Jim Jordan, and some of these guys. They’re out there fighting the House. Guys are fighting, but it’s incredible.
Again, does the word ‘fight’ here entail physical violence? Perhaps Trump could also be blamed for the two altercations that took place on the floor of the House later that night. In regards to what Trump referred to as ‘weak Republicans” he commented:
Unbelievable, what we have to go through, what we have to go through and you have to get your people to fight. If they don’t fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight.
Now here’s a specific call to action, albeit to simply vote people out of office. When considering all of Trump’s 75 minute speech I see the word ‘fight’ often being used in a decidedly non-violent context, which to me weakens the main argument asserted in the article. Granted in comparison to Trump’s twitter feed, this speech was certainly more provocative, and other excerpts could have been cited in the article. There was the phrase “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved”, not to mention the numerous instances of Trump saying that “We’re not going to let it happen”. In both of these is a certain implied course of action being suggested, but ultimately nothing truly specific can be inferred from either statement. In the forthcoming trial, the prosecution would also have to address parts of the speech that clearly did not call for violence, like this:
We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
I must confess that the use of the word ‘peacefully’ here is less ambiguous than the use of the word ‘fight’ that was cited in the article. Also the fact that Trump used the phrase “make your voices heard”, undoubtedly conveys the notion that people should primarily use their speech in this effort. If you’re going to rely on speech for an incitement of violence, I would personally like to see something a bit more explicit than what I’m seeing from Trump’s words. A better example of violence inducing speech might be the following:
Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. Let’s have trial by combat.
Now the word ‘combat’ is certainly stronger than the rather passé verbiage of ‘fight’. It conveys a more definitive intent on the use of violence. Granted the context of the phrase in relation to people going to jail is a bit awkward, but nonetheless the call for action here is considerably more forceful. Of course this was never stated by Trump, but rather Rudy Giuliani in a short statement that he gave prior to Trump’s ‘Save America’ speech. An even better example of violence inciting speech though may have been the following excerpt:
If I don’t have standing to do that, nobody does. And if, part of appropriate defendant is not the Vice President that under the Constitution has the power to make that determination, then there is no… But bottom line is, the court is saying, we’re not going to touch this, you have no remedy. Basically in effect, the ruling would be that you got to go to the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM.
Now this is fairly explicit, especially when you consider that the word ‘violent’ itself was used. But of course Trump never stated this either. This comment came from Louie Gohmert (R-TX-1) on a television interview that he gave after his futile court challenged was rejected roughly a week before the insurrection. If I would to compare Trump’s overall speech (at least the portion that I can access) to the Giuliani or the Gohmert excerpts, the case for incitement of insurrection seems rather weak.
The article’s dependence on Trump’s ‘Save America’ speech brings about other issues as well. One, you would have to establish that those who took part in the violent insurrection were also present at Trump’s speech or had the opportunity to hear Trump’s words prior to the invasion. While this may have been the case for most people, I doubt whether or not it would apply to everyone who took part in the violence. In a fascinating interview with Alison Morrow, independent journalist Brendan Gutenschwager mentioned that there was a remarkably different atmosphere both at the White House and at the Capitol that day. Gutenschwager’s commentary makes me ponder about the difference in the constituency of both groups.
You also have to consider how much planning went into the attack. With enough dedicated research it will become apparent that this riot was not exactly the impromptu, spur-of-the-moment event that it occasionally gets portrayed as. People came to this ‘protest’ with bulletproof vests, military style helmets, and zip ties. Others had gas masks, and handguns, among other weapons. Some even used walkie-talkies and earpieces. There’s also talk that some rioters had received tours of the Capitol in the days before the insurrection. If the work of research groups like Advance Democracy Inc. and others like Jared Holt of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab can be believed, there was plenty of online chatter prior to Jan. 6th that foretold what was to take place. Days before the attack a posted message on ‘TheDonald.win’ suggested to ‘Storm the Capitol’ if Congress didn’t reject the Electoral College votes. On a live stream hosted by Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet on the night of Jan. 5th one commentator is heard saying:
Tomorrow – I don’t even like to say it because I’ll be arrested – I’ll say it. Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol
Even back in mid-December there were calls for violence. According to ProPublica a user on the site mymilitia.com posted the following message on Dec. 12th:
If this does not change, then I advocate, Revolution and adherence to the rules of war. I say, take the hill or die trying
When you see this type of messaging it becomes clear that the notion of attacking the US Capitol had already formed in the minds of people, even before Trump uttered one word of his ‘Save America’ speech. I would attest that it was not one singular Trump speech that led to the violence, but rather the cumulative effect of all of his speech for two months. And I suspect that enough rioters had already resolved themselves to commit violence on Jan. 6th to the degree that Trump’s speech on the Ellipse had little impact.
After this, the article then for some strange reason cites the phone call that Trump had with Brad Raffensperger. While Trump’s behavior here was unquestionably inappropriate, it’s not particularly intuitive how this fits within the charge of incitement of insurrection. Personally I don’t see how this conversation would necessarily lead to any violence. Even if it could, you have to consider that Trump did not record the phone call, nor did he release it to the media. It’s plausible that the conversation could lead to greater levels of resentment from Trump’s supporters towards Georgia’s own government officials for not reversing the results of the election, but it’s not entirely clear how this could be connected to an attack on the federal government. While there were some protests at the Georgia Capitol building on Jan. 6th, these were peaceful. It would have made more sense to cite this evidence under a completely separate article with a charge of something within the realm of ‘abuse of power’. It’s baffling to me why the House didn’t do this instead of awkwardly shoehorning this event into their lone charge of incitement.
In a more general appraisal of the Capitol insurrection and the resulting impeachment effort, I think there’s been too much of a rush to connect Trump’s words to the actions of Jan. 6th, without giving much thought to the path that would have to be traversed in route, and this article clearly was a product of such a tendency. At best Trump was indirectly responsible for the insurrection. Certainly he can be held responsible for a lot of the mindsets of the participants, notably the rage and the hatred that they held towards certain members of the federal government, but as for the specific act of storming the Capitol, I see little that suggests it originated from Trump himself. Thus I have conflicting emotions about the impeachment. On one hand I think Trump deserves to be impeached and yet on the other hand I think the House Democrats have completed botched this process in levying a charge that will be difficult to argue for, while offering an article that is very light on evidence and which contains a misplaced focus on certain events in relation to its singular charge.
But the resolution was just the beginning. Two days after it was first introduced, the House brought the resolution to the floor for consideration, and thanks to C-SPAN’s YouTube channel you can watch all 7 and a half hours of this spectacle. I don’t know how much commentary I need to provide in regards to C-SPAN’s coverage. Their style is extremely drab and their approach basically consists of placing cameras at various locations within the chamber in order to capture the action without any hint of embellishment or flair to speak of. Apart from the contemporaneous jump cutting from one camera feed to another, there is nothing notable about the cinematography. The members of the House are not theatrical performers, and much of the business of the chamber is conducted in a rigidly procedural and formal manner. During recesses or other lulls in action, C-SPAN will conduct segments from their TV studio that are so devoid of any imagination or personality that they’re barely worth mentioning. Apart from the speeches on the floor itself, there is little to hold one’s interest. For long stretches of the video it can be a chore to watch, despite the impact that the proceedings hold on the people that the program is being broadcast to.
As for the business of the House on this particular day, it started with the consideration of H.Res.41. This resolution essentially set the rules for the consideration of the main impeachment resolution, known as H.Res.24. H.Res.41 limited the impeachment process to two hours of debate, with no ability for any member to offer an amendment or to suggest any other motion. It also didn’t allow for any division of the issue, although for a resolution that only contained 1 impeachment article, this wasn’t horribly important. Both Jim McGovern (D-MA-2) and Tim Cole (R-OK-4) took this opportunity to, in earnest, begin the larger debate for H.Res.24. I never got the impression that either representative truly wanted to debate the actual rules of the impeachment. At best Cole would criticize the process by which the impeachment was conducted, citing the warp speed at which it was drafted and introduced and the lack of a thorough investigation or committee involvement that has been the norm in previous presidential impeachments. But that’s about as close as either ever got to discussing the actual rules cited in the resolution.
Granted Rodney Davis (R-IL-13) did make a motion to amend the rules to allow for a bi-partisan commission to fully investigate the events of Jan. 6th, and I think this is a good enough idea to do anyway no matter how the impeachment process plays itself out. Nonetheless there was very little discussion of the rules that had already been established in the resolution from the speakers that followed.
One thought that will easily come to mind if you ever decide to watch the action of a congressional chamber is whether or not some members remain in Congress for way too long. I honestly don’t know what to think, in regards to the ease at which Steny Hoyer (D-MD-5) gets lost in thought during the early portion of his remarks. That being said he still managed to give a very stirring speech. The one thing I liked about Hoyer’s remarks was the brief notion that he touched upon, wherein he stated that one of the Republicans supporting the impeachment motion didn’t need any hearings to come to the conclusion that the President committed impeachable acts. I hold some fascination with the notion that each impeachment process is completely unique and that the requirements to adequately adjudicate whether its offenses have occurred should be flexible enough to account for the specific nature in which such offenses are committed. In other words, some situations may require a deeper inquiry into the alleged acts of impropriety, while other situations may not. This could have been an interesting counter argument to the standards that Cole was arguing for based on historical precedent, but unfortunately Hoyer didn’t pursue this line of thought.
As the series of speeches continued, the one thing that stood out for me was McGovern’s need to personally rebut some of the arguments that were being made by the Republicans. It should be noted that Cole never did this when following the Democratic speakers. Generally I didn’t mind this, with the exception of the remarks that he made after Guy Reschenthaler’s (R-PA-14) speech. I found his “so, give me a break” quip as somewhat disrespectful. Personally I thought Reschenthaler gave one of the better speeches from the Republican side. During the initial round of debating, he was the only one to quote the ‘peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard’ portion of Trump’s speech when giving his arguments. If someone wished to contradict the notion that Trump didn’t incite the riot, shouldn’t they also point to specific words that he used?
I also found that the Democrats had the greater propensity to go beyond the time that they were allotted, especially Peter DeFazio (D-OR-4) who violated this so severely that the Chair had to raise his voice to announce that he was no longer recognized. The longer this progressed, the more I grew tired of it. Yes, I know that there are 435 members of this chamber and that as many members should be given a chance to speak as possible, but still I find these types of proceedings to be increasingly trite and progressively more inconsequential the longer that they are carried forward. After 19 members were given the chance to speak, usually for a minute or two, and in which hardly anyone truly discussed the merits of H.Res.41, Cole and McGovern gave their closing arguments to conclude what might be considered Round 1 of the impeachment debate.
The next part of the video is where C-SPAN should embrace the notice of video editing for its online outreach. First, I don’t need to see a continuous feed of the House chamber while the vote totals for a measure slowly accumulate, nor do I need to see the announcements of the proxy votes that are cast. Second, I don’t need to see a recap of the speeches that were previously shown. This may be an appropriate thing to do for television, but not for YouTube. Online I have the ability to skip to any portion of the video at any time. Thus if I wanted to re-watch Steny Hoyer’s speech I would simply adjust the dial on the bottom of the video to locate the appropriate timestamp and then simply replay the video. Ideally online content should be tailored to the specific user abilities that may not be available for television viewers. After nearly two hours of content that would represent the antithesis of enthralling, H.Res.41 was accepted solely due to the majority of Democrats in the constituency of the chamber.
What follows after this was the proper consideration of the impeachment resolution. Once again the lack of focus on the matter at hand continues to be the fashionable routine of such proceedings. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12) gave the first speech and attempted to invoke the words of Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy in her argument. Who needs evidence when you can always resort to historical platitudes? Jim Jordan (R-OH-4), followed this with an address that made mention of the scientific advancements of Kitty Hawk and the 1969 moon landing. Okay seriously, what does any of this have to do with H.Res.24? Jordan also tried to argue on behalf of Trump’s record in his time in office, as if his foreign policy achievements with North Korea and Iran would somehow make it impossible for him to incite a riot. Early on it becomes evident what a preposterous circus this ‘debate’ would become.
Often it was apparent that this was not a true debate at all. For instance at one point Greg Steube (R-FL-17) argued that Trump’s speech did not meet the standards of criminal conduct by citing the ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio. In a proper debate a person who holds an opposing viewpoint would recognize the argument being made by Steube and then perhaps reason that the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” has historically never required the occurrence of offenses that would be considered a violation of criminal code, and thus the ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio would establish a standard for impeachment that’s too rigid. And this debate would continue with both sides building upon what the other side argues. But that never happens. The speakers who followed Steube would never specifically address what he stated, nor of what anybody else had previously stated, choosing instead to offer prepared statements that for the most part were detached from all the commentary that preceded it.
This was not a debate; rather it was the equivalent of open mic night on the floor of the House, with some members being granted a mere 30 seconds to make their case. Such an exercise would run the gamut from excessively, dramatic histrionic speeches as seen by the likes of Matt Gaetz (R-FL-1) and Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-8) to dull, uninspired fare from the likes of Adam Schiff (D-CA-28) and Bill Posey (R-FL-8). In between these extremes, there were few highlights. I held some mild interest in Brian Mast’s (R-FL-18) cute, yet incredibly straightforward and simplistic approach when arguing against the resolution. I thought Donald Norcross (D-NJ-1) came off looking like a fool with a needlessly grandstanding, bombastic speech in which his voice echoed in the chamber. Jaime Herrera Butler’s (R-WA-3) speech was one of the more intriguing due to the fact that she was called to speak by the Democrats. While she got cheered for breaking party lines, I still didn’t care much for her speech. To me it was unconvincing and too hindered by its naivety and vague, clichéd idealism. Overall there was little entertainment value in what I witnessed, although I thought Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO-3) speech was comically awful, and Emanuel Cleaver’s (D-MO-5) speech was just plain weird.
Often it was obvious that this was mere performative theater. I could never quite shake myself away from the notion that this was a massive sham that seemingly lacked any legitimate purpose. While I understand why some people would claim that two hours is not long enough to debate such an important issue, let me assure you that due to the way this procedure was designed and structured, the greater truth emerged from the completely antithetical notion that it was way too long. It was a constant stream of the same pandering arguments being repeated over and over again, with no real ideological progression to speak of, making the consumption of the video a long, excruciating experience.
Occasionally I would encounter a fairly convincing speech. I thought Cedric Richmond (D-LA-2) spoke with a great deal of verve and personality, even though he had to be cut off before finishing his argument. I thought Chip Roy’s (R-TX-21) comments were interesting as one of the few Republicans who admitted that Trump engaged in impeachable conduct, but who saw the resolution as too flawed to accept. Roy’s speech made me question how much of a role the Republicans had in drafting this resolution. This didn’t appear to be a true bipartisan effort in spite of the small number of Republicans who voted in favor of it. I openly wonder if the resolution could have been constructed in a different way to garner more Republican votes. Honestly in regards to how this resolution was drafted, this was the only thing that was truly in doubt.
Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA-23) speech, much like Pelosi’s, was crammed full of historical platitudes and had little focus on the resolution at hand, but was still delivered with great skill and grace. I also liked Tom McClintock’s (R-CA-4) early speech calling the resolution a petty, vindictive act. Like most Republicans he would cite the short time left in the President’s current term as a valid reason against the resolution. Whether you agree this line of reasoning or not, the Democrats would rarely mention this in their remarks and often seemed to argue as if the President had months or years left to serve.
I’m also dismayed at the Democrats’ remarkable apathy when it comes to citing any evidence for their arguments. Consider the following remarks made during Jerrold Nadler’s (D-NY-10) speech:
On Jan. 6th at a rally that was large, angry and widely reported to be armed!, the President’s lies and violent rhetoric reached their crescendo. At that rally the President took the stage…
First, there is no source cited as one which ‘widely reported’ that the crowed was armed. It is too much to ask to list just one trusted publication who committed to such a statement? Second, in regards to the emotional state of the people who were there; contrast Nadler’s remarks with the following statement from Brendan Gutenschwager who was actually at the rally:
The way things were over at the Ellipse and the National Mall for the President’s speech, I didn’t get that sense of the crowd that it was going to escalate to that level. People where just kind of cheering, jubilant, very joyous, uplifted, they were happy that the President was speaking with them.
The Democrats often seemed too willing to engage with narratives and arguments whose veracity largely remains unmeasured. Granted at times the Republicans where guilty of this as well. I found Gohmert’s claim that Speaker Pelosi had presided over half of all the impeachments ever conducted or ever voted for, to be extremely dubious. But ultimately the case for impeachment was being made by the Democrats. They were the de facto prosecution in this debate. The burden of proof was placed more on them and the Democrats did not produce a very strong case.
Ultimately though, it really didn’t matter that they didn’t. Let’s be blunt about it, the votes needed to impeach Trump were already decided before this resolution was ever introduced. Even the few Republicans who voted in favor of the measure let their intentions be known before the debate on the House floor ever took place. I seriously doubt that any minds were altered by anything that was stated in this forum.
This was a flawed resolution that underwent consideration through a flawed process that was largely for show. Furthermore the result of these proceedings will result in the article being received in the Senate by a body of legislators, from whom I suspect many Republicans will be poorly motivated to take any action on a person who has since been disposed from the Presidency. I have to pose the question, how does engaging in a congressional procedure that has little chance of achieving any substantive outcome heal the nation? Allow me to end on an open question to anyone who’s made it this far. Should Trump be acquitted in the Senate (which I think is a very likely possibility), will this result in a nation without anger, or resentment or division?