After about three hours, the defense rests its arguments about the impeachment. (I am still looking forward to the Q&A sessions and the closing arguments). It was all pretty amazing. They showed a long montage of video clips showing many of those present in the act of using the word “fight” in their political activities. That is extremely obvious, one video would have made the point. They seemed to be attempting to use this to numb the minds of watchers as if that had anything whatsoever to do with the allegations. Clearly the question was never the simple one of the word “fight” being so incentive as to incite the riot. It is clearly all in context, and their arguments along those lines were childish at best.

And then there was a huge and lengthy discussion about the first amendment. Once again, they presented a specious argument at best. Generally, what they had to say was more or less true, but none of it applied to the case at hand. An interesting point was the political speech has a little “extra” protection, and that is they are not required to tell the truth or to not lie. Obviously Trump has made extensive use of that exception, he has told a record number of lies over the past five years (including the time leading up to the last election) and in no instance was there ever any attempt to punish him or make any contention that he had somehow done anything illegal in doing so. His lies were discussed a lot, and many people on all sides howled and complained about then, but everyone accepted that he was within the letter of the law to do so. That was never a contention, and still isn’t. Once again, the defense spent a lot of time presenting something that is generally agreed to – in the apparently hopes that agreeing with those points somehow had something to do with the trial. They did not, it was just a bit of hot air.

There was also an attempt to make the timeline for inciting the riots narrowly confined to the hour or so that Trump was addressing his crowd. There point was that the charge is only limited to determining if what he said was sufficient to spark the riot – which it clearly would not have been if he hadn’t primed it beforehand. The issues is setting up the situation, bringing in the powerkegs, and then lighting the fuse. It is true that if he hadn’t done what he did to set it up, he could probably have given his speech and nothing much would have happened. But that is not the case. He set it up, he knew what others were doing with regard to bringing the set and setting (and figuratively the barrels of powder), he made sure that all was set and not only did he not try to minimize the possibility of an explosion, but actively and continuously attempted to make sure the energy and anger continued. He picked the timing, the location, the people attending, and he (him personally plus the other speakers) fanned the mood of the crowd. That is all very obvious and true – but the defense lawyers elected to take a few carefully chosen words out of context to “prove” that similar speeches are common and don’t result in the kind of reaction that this one did.

A lot of the defense’s “evidence” that Trump is a long time supporter of what we might like to think of a “truth and justice” is that he uses the term “law and order” as a center piece of his rhetoric. I suppose the defense is hoping that most of the listeners and audience haven’t recognized that this is a highly charged “code word” harking back to racism, white supremacy, the abuses of people like George Wallace, the klu klux klan and other hateful and disturbing parts of America. He uses those terms specifically because they are powerful and important code words to his “base” – there is no doubt that they know exactly what he is talking about – and it doesn’t have anything whatsoever to do with “truth and justice”, peace for all, equality, or anything else that his defense team was pretending that it pointed to. It points to hate and intolerance, it does not point to equality, peace, or justice for all.

And finally there was the evidence that Trump did everything he could in the hours during the event to provide support (by way of the national guard or others), attempted to message the group sufficiently to get them to stop. That was a hollow defense. The most that he did was after four hours of rioting was to suggest that they go home, adding that he really thanked them, loved them, and they were true patriots (I am paraphrasing here, he used slightly different terms).