False Equivalence: Trump defense lawyer Michael van der Veen

opened his arguments saying Donald Trump did nothing to incite the Capitol riot and “Like every other politically motivated witch hunt the left has engaged in over the past four years, this impeachment is completely divorced from the facts, the evidence, and the interests of the American people.” 

  Closing arguments and even a vote on the former president’s guilt could come today.

  The Trump defense is based on the schoolboy cry that “He did it, too.” The former president’s lawyers presented a long video montage of Democratic politicians from Nancy Pelosi, Chick Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris repeatedly using the word “fight” in their speeches just as Donald Trump did during his speech on the Ellipse before the January 6^th insurrection.

  The video montage showed Democrats questioning the electoral college vote in previous elections, claiming election fraud, and failing to condemn rioters. It included President Biden’s claim on the campaign trail that he would have beaten “the hell out of” Mr. Trump in high school.

    The videos also contained clips of Trump calling himself a “law and order” president.

  Trump’s lawyers played the videos several times to drive the point. It’s all true and an unflattering portrayal of American political rhetoric. 

  Trump’s lawyers claimed the former president, just like his antagonists, had a free speech right to say what he said. The difference is, Trump urged a crowd to March on the Capitol armed with lies about election fraud and free speech does not cover incitement of insurrection.

  “The reality is Mr. Trump was not in any way shape or form instructing these people to fight using physical violence,” van der Veen said of Trump’s January 6 speech. “What he was instructing them to do was challenge their opponents in primary elections, to push for sweeping election reforms, to hold big tech responsible — all customary and legal ways to petition your government for redress of grievances.”

  But the primary elections were not happening that day at the Capitol, where Trump urged his crowd to go. The only thing they could do up there was interrupt certification of the election.

  Van der Veen dismissed the thousands of Capitol rioters as “a small group who came to engage in violent and menacing behavior hijacked the event for their own purposes.” 

  He said, “In short, this unprecedented effort is not about Democrats opposing political violence, it is about Democrats trying to disqualify their political opposition. It is constitutional cancel culture.” 

The Fix is In: Trump is unlikely to be convicted. Party loyalty to Trump is mostly ironclad. 

  Three Republican senators who took an oath to be impartial jurors in the impeachment trial actually consulted with Trump’s lawyers about strategy on Thursday. Others don’t even care. At varying times, 15 senators haven’t even been in the chamber listening.

  Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Chuck Grassley of Iowa were reading papers. CNN’s Jeremy Herb said Sen. Rick Scott of Florida “had a blank map of Asia on his desk and was writing on it like he was filling in the names of the countries.”

Fracture Lines: Former South Carolina Governor and potential Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley separated herself from Donald Trump signaling that the Republican Party’s devotion to the former president is weakening.

  “We need to acknowledge he let us down,” Haley told Politico magazine in an interview. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

  It’s a declaration that she’s willing to run for president against Trump, or without his followers.

  The NY Times reports that in the weeks following the insurrection there was a rush of people exiting the party. The paper reports that, “An analysis of January voting records by The New York Times found that nearly 140,000 Republicans had quit the party in 25 states that had readily available data.” 

Viral News: As many as 36.4 million Americans have received at least their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. That’s about 11 percent of the total population.

  As of this morning, 480,902 Americans have died of the virus.  That’s about 20 percent of worldwide deaths.

The Bulletin Board: The Trump trial concluded last night with the award of a Congressional Gold Medal to Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman the day of the insurrection. He was the one who distracted rioters away from the Senate chamber. — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is facing accusations that his administration covered up the extent of Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes to avoid investigation by the Trump Justice Department. As many as 10,000 residents died.

The Obit Page: Keyboardist, composer, and bandleader Chick Corea, a musician whose work merged classical and jazz, has died of a recently-diagnosed cancer at age 79. He was a pioneer who won 23 Grammy awards and was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2006. 

Love Hurts: In the first mini-scandal of the Biden administration, White House Press aide TJ Ducklo has been suspended for a week after threatening a reporter who was inquiring about his love life.

  Ducklo is reported to have told a reporter from Politico “I will destroy you” if he wrote about Ducklo’s romance with Alexi McCammond, a reporter from Axios. McCammond was covering the White House and her relationship with Ducklo, although evidently an open secret, is considered an ethical lapse.

  As one newspaper editor famously said, “You can sleep with elephants if you want to, but if you do, you can’t cover the  circus.”

The Standup Corner: A Trump follower who dies in the Capitol insurrection goes to heaven and is met by St. Peter at the gate. St. Peter asks the man why he’s there and he says, “I died defending American democracy.”

  St. Peter tells him, “The election wasn’t rigged and Trump lost.”

  The man says, “Wow, this conspiracy goes much higher than I thought.”

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