New York Times (2/11/21): “For all of the drama of the prosecution’s case, most Republican senators appeared unswayed.”
A recent New York Times headline (2/11/21) announced: “House Managers Rest Their Case Against Trump, but Most Republicans Are Not Swayed.”
Today (2/12/21), the paper wrote:
At times, the videos and recordings appeared to strike a chord with the Republicans in the room. Some of them even praised the work of the House managers. But it has not been enough to change their minds.
CNN‘s Zachary Wolf (2/10/21) wondered if “Republican senators will find their conscience changed, or vote the way Trump wants them to.”
After quoting one impeachment manager’s closing remarks (“if we pretend this didn’t happen, or worse, if we let it go unanswered—who’s to say it won’t happen again?”), CNN‘s Maeve Reston and Stephen Collinson (2/12/21) reported:
Those words may weigh heavily on some Republican senators as this trial draws to a close over the next two days. But the initial comments from GOP senators suggest they think the Trump wing of the party is still likely to maintain firm control over the primary process in 2022.
Such reports appeared to be entirely serious—as if these were newsworthy announcements, as if the vast majority of Republican senators could have been swayed.
Times reporter Nicholas Fandos (2/8/21) argued that the second impeachment was similar to the first in that
many of the political questions are the same. Are Republicans willing to punish and cross this figure, who may have committed these acts, but who is also the most popular figure in their party and commands a huge amount of loyalty? That political dynamic is amazingly unchanged.
What was missing from so much of the impeachment coverage was any mention that many of these supposedly persuadable Republicans vocally supported the false election fraud movement—the same movement that violently stormed the Capitol on January 6—for months.
Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent (2/11/21): Media language “implies that Republican senators are weighing the evidence against Trump on its substantive merits and are moving toward rejecting it on grounds of principled disagreement. But is there any serious reason to believe this applies to the vast majority of GOP senators?”
As Greg Sargent wrote in an incisive Washington Post analysis (2/11/21):
News accounts keep telling us that the Democratic impeachment managers are struggling to persuade Republicans to turn on former president Donald Trump. But there’s zero reason to assume the vast majority of GOP senators are open to persuasion at all—and this formulation risks badly misleading people about the true nature of this political moment and where it is heading next….
[One] endpoint here for many Republicans will be to erase the big lie that Trump told for months from this whole terrible saga. In so doing, of course, they will be erasing their own complicity as well, since many conspired to prop up that lie for much of the same period.
Just because the Democratic impeachment managers have decided that it’s strategically unwise to point out the culpability of half of the jurors in their trial doesn’t mean the media must adopt the same framing. In reality, the point of the impeachment trial is to determine how history will remember Trump’s anti-democratic presidency as well as the party that supported him—and media’s framing today will have a powerful influence on that eventual verdict.
Featured image: CNN depiction (2/12/21) of Republican senators Mike Lee, Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz.
Bread and circuses without the bread. The fixation on Trump perpetuates the oligarchy’s propaganda that our political malaise is caused by wicked individuals, and not the plutocratic system that made Trump president in the first place.
*Made Trump and Biden president. Remember that time when all the neoliberals circled the wagons and threw their support behind Biden when it looked like Bernie was going to win the nomination.
Yeah… It’s everybody else’s fault that Bernie couldn’t win. [jerk off motion]
The role of THIS Impeachment has been to: distract from preventing many “rank & file safety committee” strikes, amalgamating into a general strike of essential workers (many, 1099’d into gig work and) totally vulnerable to new strains as states open up EVERYTHING. But, it’s also to end run all the inconvenient stories about: who funded & who organized the various security, police & OathKeeper/ III% veterans & cops, staging this Shock and Awe, protection scam? And who’s agenda stood to benefit? Like Impeachment #1, distracting from COVID & DNC Primary? Kapital Kop Cosplay Coup: Bolivia, Ukraine, Venezuela… What’s DNC’s Lincoln Project owner’s average AGE, huh? Not JUST will Trump walk; we’ll never HEAR from his 0.01% bosses. Cheap theatrics, while we dumped Democrats die?
~https://www.dailyposter.com/p/cuomo-and-the-lincoln-project-are
~https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/useful-idiots-taibbi-glenn-greenwald-1127937/
(Glenn on Andrea Mitchell, his mom’s office highlight)
~https://mronline.org/2021/02/13/is-cnn-jumping-on-the-red-baiting-bandwagon/
nearly All affidavits of proven election fraud were ignored. And it looks political a lost case to ever get fair elections after the last one, because the Dems have all the cards.
Have you ever looked at Mary Fanning ‘s forensic evidence of tens of thousand pages and the Chinese involvement?
Total. Fucking. Bullshit.
Those affidavits where sworn out by delusional morons who would see a poll worker drop a pencil and insist it was part of some nefarious plot.
And The Big Lie got people killed and injured and came within a couple inches of overthrowing the government. But, yeah… whatever… the Dems have all the cards.
Go fuck yourself.
John, you must be literally smoking crack if you think there was any possible chain of events that would result in those rioters “overthrowing the government”.
They were there to try to prevent the certification of electors so that Trump could remain in power and they had allies in the House and Senate willing to support that. They had the President himself wanting them to do exactly that. They were looking to kill Pence and Pelosi and probably others. If that’s not coming close to overthrowing the government, then I don’t know what is.
But to a larger point: What the fuck does it matter whether they could/could not overthrow the government? Dipshits spouting the Big Lie still got people killed and injured and it coulda been way worse. Is that not a big enough problem for you?
https://www.thepostemail.com/2019/12/02/zullo-mary-fanning-attempts-to-mislead-the-president-of-the-united-states/
That linked story is completely incoherent.
The corporate supported media and The Republican senate are following Trumps tactics in operating ABOVE the law against numberous u.s. court rulings that the election wasn’t rigged and decided the u.s capital needed to be storm to secure and loyalty of 75 million voters. The main push? making money while in office after securing enough votes like CAR SALEMAN TACTIC!
The middle and lower class often are require to operate BELOW the law ( small marijuna arrest etc… )
Above the law? Our own Chief Justice refused to sit during this “trial.” He knew it was unconstitutional.
Citation needed as to Roberts’ motivations, chief.