The week
Trump has still not admitted losing his election. But his impeachment attorney Bruce Castor did it multiple times.
Former President Donald Trump was in any case angry with his impeachment defense team, particularly senior attorney Bruce Castor, who was looking down the line for his weird, rambling opening speech. “Trump, cocooned on his Mar-a-Lago estate, watched his defense attorneys respond to an emotional presentation by impeachment managers with a series of dry, technical, and sometimes meandering arguments about the due process and the constitutionality of the process.” Politico reports. “As they continued to roar, he became increasingly frustrated by the sharp contrast between their subdued response and the prosecution’s opening salvo.” But Trump, who was watching the trial on Newsmax, wasn’t just dismayed by Castor’s low-energy performance and poor ratings from allies and Senator jurors, Politico reports. Castor declined to “use graphics or video – tools his TV-obsessed customer wanted to provide”. And the former president was upset. Castor “wore an ill-fitting suit and at one point praised the case of the impeachment executives of the Democratic House,” adds the Washington Post, though Trump himself was also reportedly impressed by the impeachment executives and their video presentation. Most of all, Castor “did what Trump himself didn’t do: Joe Biden won the presidential election,” notes The Associated Press. He called Trump a “former president,” said he was “removed from the electorate” and argued that Americans “were smart enough to elect a new administration when they didn’t like the old one, and they just did. ” Trump continues to falsely insist that he actually won the election, and this “big lie” – that the election was “stolen” from him – underpins his entire impeachment process. Castor used Trump’s former president status to represent his Senate-rejected case that it was unconstitutional to try a president after he left office. In fact, “Trump first urged his impeachment attorneys to bring forward the unsubstantiated case that the election was stolen,” the Post reports, “an approach they ultimately rejected while still arguing that the first change was their client’s right protects against passing on misinformation and false claims. “” More stories from theweek.com The 100-year-old accused Nazi camp guard charged with 3,518 murder attacks. Britney Spears is reportedly working on her own documentary. Trump, the operator, is back