Bruce Castor confuses Ben Roethlisberger, Steelers, QB, with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during Trump’s impeachment trial – CBS Philly

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PHILADELPHIA (CBS / AP) – Social media is once again mocking former President Donald Trump’s Bruce Castor defense during his second impeachment process before the U.S. Senate. During Friday’s hearing, former Montgomery County District Attorney mistakenly confused Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Trump sadly registered asking Raffensperger to cancel Georgia’s presidential election, which President Joe Biden won with just over 11,000 votes.

Twitter realized after Castor confused the Steelers quarterback with Raffensperger.

Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers defended him Friday against the impeachment by accusing Democrats of conducting a “hate” campaign against the former president and manipulating his words during the deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol. His presentation included a storm of his own selective edition of Democrats ’comments.

In hours of arguments, Trump’s legal team characterized the dismissal case as a “witch hunt” with political motives, they said, an excess of years of efforts to oust him from office and tried reduce the case to Trump’s use of a single word, “fight,” in a speech prior to the Jan. 6 riot. They played dozens of clips showing Democrats, some of them senators now serving on the jury, using the same word to encourage supporters in anti-Trump speeches.

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“You didn’t do anything wrong” in using the word, Trump attorney David Schoen told senators. “But please stop the hypocrisy.”

Trump’s defense team set aside that what Trump was doing in telling his supporters to “fight like hell” was to undermine national elections after each state had verified their results, after the Electoral College he would have asserted them and after almost every election lawsuit filed by Trump and his allies had been rejected in the courts. Instead, they argued, he was telling the crowd to support the main challenges against his opponents and to push for radical electoral reform, which he had a right to do.

The case is accelerating toward an almost certain conclusion and acquittal, perhaps as early as Saturday. The arguments of the defense and the quick pivot of the words of the Democrats deviated from the central question of the trial (if Trump incited the assault on the Capitol) and instead sought to put the dismissal managers on the defensive. and Trump’s opponents.

After a two-day effort by Democrats to synchronize Trump’s words with the violence that followed, even through raw, emotional video footage, defense attorneys suggested Democrats used to engage in the same rhetoric. overheated than Trump.

But in trying to get that equivalence, advocates downplayed Trump’s months, efforts to undermine election results, and his urge on supporters to do the same. Democrats say the long campaign, rooted in a “big lie,” laid the groundwork for the crowd that gathered outside the Capitol and burst inside. Five people died.

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

“And so they came, they included the Trump flag and they used our flag, the American flag, to attack and attack,” Rep. Madeleine Dean, one of the dismissal managers, said Thursday as she drowned out emotions. “

On Friday, as defense attorneys repeated their own videos over and over, some Democrats laughed and whispered to each other as almost all of their faces shone on the screen. Some passed notes. Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal raised his hands, seemingly amused, as his face appeared on the screen. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar rolled her eyes. Most Republicans watched intently.

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

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

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennett said it appeared the lawyers were “erecting straw men to then overthrow them instead of dealing with the facts.”

“Show me at any point that the result was that one of our fans pulled someone out of the crowd and then we said,‘ It’s great, it’s good for you guys, ’” Delaware Sen. Chris Coons said.

Trump supporters told senators that Trump had a right to contest the 2020 election results and that doing so was not tantamount to inciting violence. They tried to turn prosecutors around by comparing the Democrats ’question about the legitimacy of Trump’s 2016 victory with their challenge of their election loss. When Trump implored supporters to “fight like hell” on Jan. 6, he was speaking figuratively, they said.

“This is political rhetoric that is virtually indistinguishable from the language that people from across the political spectrum have used for hundreds of years,” said Michael van der Veen, another Trump lawyer. “Countless politicians have spoken out to fight for our principles.”

The defense team did not discuss the horror of the violence, meticulously reconstructed by the dismissal managers earlier in the week, but said it had been carried out by people who had “kidnapped” for their own purposes what was being done. he assumed it was a peaceful event and that he had had violence planned before Trump had spoken.

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

Recognizing the reality of January aims to dampen the visceral impact of the House Democrats case and quickly pivot toward what Trump advocates consider the central and most win-win issue of the trial: whether Trump really incited the riot. The argument is likely to appeal to Republican senators who want to be convicted of violence but without condemning the president.

Anticipating defense efforts to disassociate Trump’s rhetoric from the actions of the riots, the dismissal managers spent days trying to merge them together through a reconstruction of unreleased videos alongside clips from the months the president urged his followers to undo the election results.

Democrats, who concluded their case Thursday, used the January 6 riot police ‘own videos and words to try to define Trump’s responsibility. “We were invited here,” said a Capitol invader. “Trump sent us,” another said. “She is OK. We are fighting for Trump. “

Prosecutors’ goal was to launch Trump not as a spectator, but as a “chief instigator” who spread election falsities, and then encouraged supporters to challenge the results in Washington and fueled discontent with the rhetoric about struggle and recovery of the country.

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

But Trump’s lawyers say that goal only highlights the hatred Democrats feel for Trump. Throughout the trial, they showed clips of Democrats questioning the legitimacy of his presidency and already suggesting in 2017 that he should be indicted.

“Hate is at the heart of home administrators’ unsuccessful attempts to blame Donald Trump for the criminal acts of riot police based on double-hearted statements by right-wing marginal groups based on no real evidence other than rank speculation, ”he said Van der Veen.

Trump’s lawyers point out that in the same January 6 speech, he encouraged the crowd to behave “peacefully” and argue that their observations – and their general distrust of election results – are protected by the First Amendment. Democrats strongly resist this claim, saying their words were not political speech, but were tantamount to directly inciting violence.

Defense attorneys also argued again Tuesday that the trial itself is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. The Senate rejected this dispute by voting to continue the trial.

On Thursday, with little hope of conviction on the part of the necessary two-thirds of the Senate, Democrats handed a graphic case to the American public, describing in personal and strong terms the terror they faced that day, some d ‘them in the same chamber of the Senate, where senators are now being sworn in. They used a security video of rioters threateningly searching for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, who burst into the building and bloodily clashed with police.

They showed the numerous public and explicit instructions Trump gave his supporters, long before the White House rally that unleashed the Capitol’s deadly attack as Congress certified Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

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

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