Bruce Castor confuses Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during Trump Impeachment Trial – CBS Philly

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PHILADELPHIA (CBS / AP) – Social media is once again poking fun at the defense of former President Donald Trump by Bruce Castor during his second impeachment trial before the US Senate. At Friday’s hearing, former Montgomery County district attorney mistakenly confused Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Trump infamously shot up, asking Raffensperger to reverse Georgia’s presidential election, which President Joe Biden won by just over 11,000 votes.

Twitter took note after Castor mistook the Steelers quarterback for Raffensperger.

Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, defended him against impeachment on Friday, accusing Democrats of waging a campaign of “hatred” against the former president and manipulating his words in the run-up to the deadly siege of the Capitol. Their presentation included a blizzard of their own selectively edited fiery commentary from Democrats.

After hours of arguing, Trump’s legal team characterized the impeachment case as a politically motivated “ witch hunt ” – an outgrowth, they said, from years of effort to oust him from office – and tried to reduce the case to Trump’s use of a single word, “fight”, in a speech preceding the January 6 riot. They played dozens of clips featuring Democrats, some of which senators are now serving as jurors, and used the same word to encourage supporters in speeches that spoke against Trump.

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“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Trump attorney David Schoen told senators. “But please stop the hypocrisy.”

The Trump defense team omitted that what Trump did by telling his supporters to “ fight like hell was to undermine a national election after each state verified the results, after the Electoral College confirmed them and after almost every election case brought by Trump and his allies had been dismissed in court. Instead, they claimed, he told the crowd to back the primary challenges against his opponents and push for sweeping election reform – something he was entitled to do.

The case is nearing an end and an almost certain acquittal, perhaps as early as Saturday. The defensive arguments and quick turnaround to the Democrats’ own words deviated from the central question of the process – whether Trump is inciting the attack on the Capitol – and were instead intended to put impeachment managers and Trump opponents on the defensive. to place.

After a two-day effort by Democrats to synchronize Trump’s words with the violence that followed, including through raw and emotional video footage, lawyers suggested Democrats typically engage in the same overheated rhetoric as Trump.

But by trying to draw that parity, the defenders minimized Trump’s months-long time, his attempts to undermine election results, and his exhortation of followers to do the same. Democrats say a long campaign rooted in a “big lie” laid the groundwork for the crowd that gathered outside the Capitol and stormed in. Five people died.

Without Trump, who in a speech at a rally before the violence told supporters to “fight like hell,” the violence would never have happened, Democrats say.

“And so they came, draped in Trump’s flag, and used our flag, the American flag, to hit and club,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean, one of the impeachment managers, on Thursday as she stifled the emotion. “

On Friday, as lawyers replayed their own videos over and over, some Democrats chuckled and whispered among themselves as almost all their faces flashed on the screen. Some past notes. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal apparently threw his hands in the air as his face hit the screen in amusement. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar rolled her eyes. Most Republicans watched closely.

During a break, some made fun of the videos and others said they were a distraction or a “false equivalence” to Trump’s behavior.

“Well, we’ve heard the word ‘fight’ a lot,” said Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who consults with the Democrats.

Colorado Senator Michael Bennett said it felt like the attorneys were “setting up front men and then taking them down instead of dealing with the facts.”

“Show me any time that the result was one of our supporters pulling someone out of the crowd, and then we said,” That’s great, good for you, “said Delaware Senator Chris Coons.

Trump’s defenders told senators that Trump had the right to contest the 2020 election results and that he was not inciting violence. They tried to turn the side of the plaintiffs by comparing the Democrats’ doubts about the legitimacy of Trump’s 2016 victory with his challenge of his election loss. When Trump begged his supporters on Jan. 6 to “fight like hell,” he spoke figuratively, they said.

“This is normally political rhetoric that is virtually indistinguishable from the language that has been used by people across the political spectrum for hundreds of years,” said Michael van der Veen, another Trump attorney. “Numerous politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles.”

The defense team did not dispute the horror of the violence, which was carefully reconstructed earlier this week by impeachment managers, but said it had been carried out by people who had ‘hijacked’ for their own purposes what was supposed to be a peaceful event and planned violence before Trump spoke. .

“You can’t instigate what would happen,” he said.

Acknowledging the reality of the January day is meant to tone down the deep-seated impact of the House Democrats’ case and quickly focus on what Trump’s defenders see as the core – and more to gain – issue of the process: whether Trump actually sparked the riot. The argument will likely appeal to Republican senators who want to be seen as people condemning the violence, but without condemning the president.

Anticipating defense efforts to dislodge Trump’s rhetoric from the rioters’ actions, the impeachment managers spent days trying to fuse them through a reconstruction of never-before-seen video footage alongside clips from the month in which the president urged his supporters to to undo the election results.

Democrats, who closed their case on Thursday, used the rioters’ own videos and words of January 6 to place responsibility on Trump. “We were invited here,” said an intruder from the Capitol. “Trump sent us,” said another. He will be happy. We fight for Trump. “

The prosecutors’ goal was to profile Trump not as a spectator, but rather as the “chief” who spread electoral falsehoods, then encouraged supporters to challenge the results in Washington and stir dissatisfaction with rhetoric about fighting and take back the land.

Democrats are also demanding that he be banned from holding future federal office.

But Trump’s lawyers say that goal only underscores the “hatred” the Democrats feel for Trump. During the trial, they showed clips of Democrats questioning the legitimacy of his presidency, suggesting as early as 2017 that he should be impeached.

“Hatred is at the heart of the house managers ‘fruitless attempts to blame Donald Trump for the rioters’ criminal acts based on double rumors from far-right groups based on no real evidence other than rank speculation,” said Van der Veen.

Trump’s lawyers note that in the same Jan. 6 speech, he encouraged the crowd to behave “peacefully,” and they argue that his comments – and his general distrust of the election results – are all protected by the First Amendment. Democrats strongly oppose that claim, saying his words were not a political speech, but rather amounted to direct incitement to violence.

The defense attorneys also came back to Tuesday’s arguments that the trial itself is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. The Senate rejected that claim when it voted to go ahead with the trial.

On Thursday, with little hope of conviction by the required two-thirds of the Senate, the Democrats delivered a harrowing case to the American public, describing in grim, personal terms the terror they faced that day – some of it in the Senate Chamber where senators now sit as jurors. They used security videos of rioters threateningly looking for house speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, smashing into the building and waging bloody hand-to-hand battles with the police.

They showed the many public and explicit instructions Trump gave his supporters – long before the White House rally that unleashed the deadly assault on the Capitol when Congress upheld Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

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(© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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