Sunday School brought us an MTP interview with California's Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead manager on Trump's first impeachment, talking about the managers for Trump's second impeachment, which ended yesterday, pretty much in the way we all knew it would.
Schiff said that the managers for Trump II need to present all the facts, and not presume that everyone - including all senators - are familiar with the full breadth of what the former president did over the course of many months leading up to January 6th. He's confident they'll be able to tell the story.
Tell the story they did. - better than Schiff told his story when it was his turn, IMO.
For your Extra Credit, I highlighted Wyoming's Rep. Liz Cheney, she who won a vote of support from her caucus after issuing perhaps the most scathing Republican condemnation of the twice-impeached insurrection inciter. But, that's water over the damn, under the bridge and down the toilet.
Cheney talked with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, and said she's not resigning, as her state party requested when they censured her for "betraying the trust of Wyoming voters."
The censure language indicated people still believe that BLM and Antifa were behind the Capitol insurrection. She said they've got a lot of work to do, and she blamed Trump and his lies for that.
We need to make sure that we as Republicans are the party of truth, that we are being honest about what really did happen in 2020 so we actually have a chance to win in 2022 and win the White House back in 2024.
Apparently, lots of people in her party don't believe that being the party of truth matters. Not only that, but far too many of them, including the ghastly GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, are willing to continue relying on Trump to help with their future goals.
I wrapped up my Sonofa Gov's State of the State this week, not an easy task. In the first of three Meanwhile Back in Albany (MBIA) posts, I focused on Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan for moving forward in a pandemic and post-pandemic world.
Now it's time to start looking ahead with the same toughness, the same smarts, the same unity, the same discipline, and the same love that brought us through last year.
2021 will be a year of continued challenges, transformation, and change. We will need to adjust to the new social and economic realities of the post-COVID world.
Expanding on his Day 1 message, he spoke of having to reopening New York "smartly and safely." It's not an either/or thing, it's a "a new model of balance" using science and technology to do things intelligently.
As Tuesday rolled around, bringing us the opening of the impeachment trial, I dropped a Poll Watch.
The Senate will have a split vote on whether it's even constitutional to impeach him, with the Rs likely ignoring, for the second time in two weeks, that it was their own rules that made it impossible to impeach him before his term ended.
We will go through the motions: the Rs will claim the impeachment is dividing the country, and Ds will say that Trump continues to pose a clear and present danger to everything that's good and wholesome, so he must be prevented from ever holding office again. Pundits will wear their best outfits, the networks will have their impeachment background music, and when it's over, everything is supposed to be OK.
But will everything be OK? Here's some info from a recent Quinnipiac poll illustrating where we stand right now, on impeachment and some other measures of 'OK-ness.'
The results? We're afraid for our democracy, we're afraid of violence, and we're afraid we're stuck in a partisan nightmare.
Moving on to the third day of Cuomo's SOTS, I dropped another MBIA; this one focused on the greening of New York. In his words,
As is true in so many major issues of our time, the challenge is to close the societal and governmental gap between aspirations and accomplishment, between rhetoric and reality, between saying and doing. Offering hope of a tomorrow that never comes is one of the main causes of our social unrest and distrust in government. We are just not making enough actual progress. Why? Because change is hard.
Have no fear, though: "As the world economy resets, and as change is a necessity, there is an opportunity to raise our efforts to the next level - and New York should seize this moment." And, we can seize the rhetorical moment, too: Cuomo noted that "candles cannot power the future."
We're going to stick a fork in fossil fuels, or something, via a four-pronged approach.
And, finally, the fourth and last MBIA, in which the Sonofa Gov spoke of when we used to lead, and how he wants us to be leaders again.
It's a long-taught lesson, he said, but without focus on the "ancillary" benefits - a collective lifted spirit, a belief in the future, and how those inspire economic confidence and stimulus. FDR, Cuomo said, understood that, and the Sonofa Gov wants us to understand that, too. And, don't forget, FDR was a New Yorker, and New Yorkers understand big ideas, and build big things.
Our country has lost its ambition, he said. Other countries "developed around us," and built the cool stuff - the largest high-speed rail network (China), the longest tunnel (Europe) and even the Middle East is "turning barren desert into economic engines."
He's got monster plans for building, across all three parts of the state: NYC, Long Island, and the vast thing called 'upstate.'
Turning back to impeachment, I was inspired by lead House Manager Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who did a better-than-admirable job with the task he had. I was inspired by his recollection of the Voltaire 'absurdities...atrocities' quote, and how Trump turned so many into believers, with the inevitable end promised by Voltaire.
All the absurdities, every single one of them, was believed. He was convincing in the telling, in the repetition, in the challenge, in the call to action. He is nothing if not relentless, nothing if not convincing, and they were ready and willing to be convinced, to be led, to obey the call. He had them hanging on his every word, hanging on to him.
He made them believe the absurdities, and when he asked, the atrocities followed. To the end, they were hanging on his every word, hanging on to him.
Who are 'they,' you ask? Who are the believers? They're not just his MAGA people - they're in the House and the Senate, too. The Republicans own them, now - don't be a believer when they tell you otherwise.
And finally, it was time for a slightly unconventional TGIF, in which I focused on the last evidentiary day of the impeachment, and Trump's lawyers and their defense, if you could call it that, of the former president.
That the lawyers managed to complain about the fancy media company the House Managers used to create their slick video, and then turn around and do exactly the same thing, but even slicker and, if I heard it right, with music, and Madonna, and Johnny Depp, was indicative of how little defense they had, and how little defense they presented in their time today.
Oh, there was lots of emphasis on Trump's one statement of asking for people to be peaceful, as if the continuum of his incitement began and ended on that phrase on January 6th. I thought Rudy Giuliani was a bad lawyer, but these guys are giving him a run for their money.
I closed with post, and the week, with this:
Soon, we'll know officially that the Republicans are still afraid of Trump, and what he can do to their careers, and there will be an acquittal. The only thing we don' t know is, how many Rs will vote to convict. I hope some of them find the courage to do so; maybe the ones who've already declared they're not running next time?
Good week? Bad week? You pick.
We now know the answer to my question: seven. Senators Richard Burr (NC), Bill Cassidy (LA), Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski (AL), Mitt Romney (UT), Ben Sasse (NE), and Pat Toomey (PA) voted to convict Trump of "the gravest violation of his oath of office by any president in the history of this country," to quote Rep. Cheney. Burr and Toomey have already announced they're not seeking re-election.
You're all caught up. See you later for Sunday School.
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