GOP Senators Are Demanding a Show Trial. So Give It To Them.
Make the entire Republican Party the defendant
As the second Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump gets underway in earnest, we know exactly where the Republican Party stands. Most GOP senators voted to dismiss the case before it began, declaring their intention to let Trump off, regardless of the evidence. On Tuesday, 44 of 50 Republicans again voted not to hold the trial after hearing tendentious arguments from Trump’s lawyers, who spoke about everything except what Trump did.
But Republicans’ refusal to even consider the ample proof that Trump incited an attack on the Senate itself actually provides the House managers prosecuting the case with a unique opportunity: to place those GOP senators in the dock along with Trump, before a jury that has not prejudged the case — the American people.
Show trials, where the outcome is decided before the jury hears any evidence, have proven their value before. In 1969, the Nixon administration tried using the trial of the Chicago Eight to prove that student radicals and the Black Panthers were responsible for the riots during the prior year’s Democratic National Convention, and thereby discredit the anti-Vietnam War movement. Thanks, however, to the calculated showmanship of Abbie Hoffman and the other defendants, the…
