✔️ We have begun. It's Day 4 of the Trump Impeachment Trial 2.0. The defense is putting on their case. The first lawyer is Van Der Veen.

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Already this is wackadoodle. Seems like the defense is trying to tell us not to believe what we saw. This lawyer has the audacity to say that the people assembled at Trump's speech were peaceful patriots

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This lawyer is claiming that Trump's speech on the ellipse on January 6th was was a policy speech about "turning out strong in the next primaries" and how this was about working on voting law reform.

A mere civics lesson.

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The lawyer is lying. The Clinton campaign never "declared that the election was stolen by Russia."

Also, this Trump lawyer is trying to claim that democrats objecting to some of the electoral votes is equivalent to Trump's incitement of violence.

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As we expected, Trump's lawyers are not going to address the merits. Instead this is what-about-ism

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Whoops!

Trump's lawyer said "litigating questions of election integrity" is not "incitement to resurrection"

I think he meant insurrection. What a dupe.

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He is now cherry-picking the rare instance of Trump hours into the riots at the capitol. A tweet where he said to remain peaceful when they had already siege the capitol.

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He claims these extremists "hijacked the event for their own purposes." He said that the pre-planned the event. He claimed the first arrested was "a member of Antifa."

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Lawyer not very smart. He says you "can't incite what was already going to happen."

FALSE. Trump cultivated them, groomed them, thanked them, organized the rally with the same people who were violent and then gave them the final command so they knew to "fight like hell."

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Trump's lawyer is now blaming the victims. He mentions the events at Lafayette Square from the summer where Barr sent out force to tear gas non-violent protesters so that Trump could do a photo up with a Bible at a church.

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And, he says someone needs to see if that's why force was not prepared to defend capitol

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"If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

He said that is ordinary campaign rhetoric.

Said "no human being believes . . .that is incitement to political violence.

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Untrue. We saw the evidence.

Now he is claiming that the press and Dems said the 2016 election had been "hacked."

ACTUALLY, the u.s. intelligence agencies and Mueller actually indicted Russian groups for conspiracy in our elections. So he is LYING

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Dude, Speaker Pelosi is not on trial. If you want to try her then go for it.

The topic today is the siege of the Capitol on January 6.

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He is now complaining about angry protesters surrounding Senator Collins' home.

Note: No one there was violent.

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So this is a lie. Trump's lawyer has not been consistent in opposition to mob violence.

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It looks like the defense's angle here is to say that Trump's words did not incite the crowd, and that the crowd acted independently, and a partisan effort.

He thinks he is clever to call this "constitutional cancel culture" or something like that.

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He says senate should reject this and "allow nation to move forward."

No. We will not move on. Sorry.

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Up next is Schoen. We saw him on Tuesday when he was supposed to be arguing that the senate did not have jurisdiction over the case. He failed at that as the senate majority found they did have jurisdiction.

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He said that Trump had a "law and order" message throughout his presidency.

Actually, it was law and order for little people. Above the law for him, his family, and friends and the white collar criminals and war criminals he pardoned or whose sentences he commuted.

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He's yelling, "why wasn't this footage never seen before?"

He's asking why wasn't Trump and American people able to see footage as soon as it was available?

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He says we still do not have all of the facts. claims that there is no way to have an investigation through a special commission and also try to bring impeachment case

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So this is chutzpah. He is complaining that the house managers are using news reports about how President Trump was delighted by riot. The reason why they are using media reports is because Trump is refusing to testify

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He claims that you get more due process when you fight a parking ticket, but this is not fighting a parking ticket. This is what the constitution allows and Trump has plenty of chances to present his own evidence.

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he is claiming that he believes that house managers made fake tweets. And now he’s claiming that he is so incompetent that he did not have the time to check. That is sad.

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Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.