On this quiet January Sunday, as we await the start of the
Senate trial of the buffoon who, for purposes of the ritual, is always referred
to as Donald John Trump, I find myself idly speculating on how it will all go
down. The outcome is settled, of course,
but that hardly matters. When I saw the
first, great, film version of Death on
the Nile, I knew how it would come out, having read the book, but that did
not diminish my pleasure in the performances of Peter Ustinov, Maggie
Smith, Angela Lansbury, Bette
Davis, Mia Farrow, David Niven, George
Kennedy and Jack Warden.
I confess I had not realized that the senators will be
required to sit silently, stripped of their cell phones, for hours on end – for
many of them probably the longest unbroken period of waking silence in their
lives. The Republicans, having already
decided their votes, will be condemned to listen to the excruciatingly detailed
recitation of the evidence against Trump, unable to determine, until the
bathroom breaks, how it is playing on cable TV.
Jim Jordan will be absent, but even the Senate version, Lindsey Graham,
will be silent on pain of imprisonment [if the pro forma warning from the Sergeant at Arms is to be believed.]
The commentariat is obsessed with the possibility of
testimony from Bolton and the threat of compensatory testimony from Hunter
Biden, but I must confess my hopes are pinned on a nuclear eruption in the
Senate chamber that I think is at least notionally possible.
The affair will begin on Tuesday, and as it drones on, Trump
will be glued to his TV, tweeting obsessively.
After days of unbroken anti-Trump presentations [at least as I
understand the rules], Cipollone, Sekulow, Dershowitz and company will get
their chance. It will all be terminally
boring, and as the days go on, Trump will lose what little self-control he
retains from his bone spur youth. I
genuinely believe there is a chance that at some point Trump will burst into
the Senate Chamber and announce that he is taking over his own defense from his
idiot lawyers, whom he scarcely knows.
Mind you, this would not change the outcome, but it would be
a moment of world-historical deliciousness.
We shall see.
3 comments:
If you don't mind, my dear Professor, I'm going to re-purpose the phrase, "world-historical deliciousness"---I've got home-made lasagne in the oven.
I'll be right over.
Surely it will be like an ordinary trial. The Prosecution presents its evidence and the Defence gets the opportunity to cross-examine thei Prosecution's witnesses. Or is it NOT going to be like that? I think that that's how impeachment trials used to go before the House of Lords in the 17th & 18th Centuries. The Earl of Strafford ('Black Tom the Tyrant'), Charles I 's Viceroy in Ireland and chief minister during the two Bishop's Wars was so successful in defending himself against his House of Commons accusers, that they had to pass an Act of Attainder , essentially condemning him to death by an Act of Parliament. (Charles I, who had to sign the Act of Attainder for it to become law thought that his own execution was God's punishment for allowing an innocent man to be condemned to death.) So I think it going to be like the usual kind of courtroom drama that we have been watching on US and UK TV screens for the past fifty years so.
The Defence's problem is that there are a lot of highly respectable and credible witnesses against Trump whose testimony it will be really hard to shake. The Defence will have to argue/insinuate that Hill, Viindman etc are a pack of perjurers which is not a very plausible line to take.
Wouldn't it be great if the Senators got to vote in secret!
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