Arguments About Arguments

During the second day of the impeachment hearings on Wednesday, we got some more video ...

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During the second day of the impeachment hearings on Wednesday, we got some more video evidence from the House impeachment managers exhibiting just how close the rioters got to lawmakers during the Capitol siege. “A lot of this was more fully fleshing out how dire the situation was on January 6,” David explains. Stick around for an update on the criminal prosecution of Paul Manafort, new developments at the Department of Justice, the super viral Zoom video of the cat lawyer, and a lament on football-splaining.

Show Notes:

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  1. Avatar photo
    The Boyes Gang

    I'm late here, I only listen on my way to work and I'm behind with my 'casts'. But..... Sarah, holding is a prepass penalty. Therefore the term uncatchable is not relevant to the conversation. Catchable is very relevant to Defensive Pass Interference. I did expect your SEC-Loving co-host to mansplain that, so David, you' re not off the hook.
    Let me explain. A Chief's DB grabs a Buccaneer WR at the line of scrimmage and does not let go. The pass is not thrown to that area, OR NOT even thrown, at all. That's HOLDING. Same situation and pass is actually thrown to that wide receiver. DB has not let go. That's Defensive Pass Interference, if pass was catchable. Different penalties, different results, different spots, you get the point.

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    Rajeev

    I have to agree with the criticism of Sarah’s position on the Impeachment Managers. You could’ve let the 10 Republicans in the house write the articles and present the case and at best you get 9 senators to vote instead of 7.

    The Republican Party is guilty. Only 4 senators acknowledged the election when it should have been acknowledged. Trump is guilty but so are most of the Republican house members and senators.

    The impeachment managers including Swalwell & Castro put on a perfect case. The message was sober and direct regardless of the messenger.

    Republican senators have been wanting to look away from the beginning. Trumps lawyers were nonsensical.

    The Republican Party is guilty of trying to overturn the election. Period. Mitch McConnell can cowardly pretend that Trump alone stoked the lie. His whole party including himself sold the lie to the people which predictably lead to the sacking of the capital by a seditious mob.

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  3. The BFJ

    It doesn't say the only two judgements (21:02), it says judgment shall not extend further. So a conviction can occur yet judgment fall somewhere short of the two examples listed. Now would the Senate go through with a conviction and impose a lesser judgment? Doubtful. There would need to be a very special set of circumstances involved.

    "Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States..."

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    Larry Seltzer

    Using the vernacular "holding" in a football context is as perilous as using the vernacular "incitement" in a quasi-judicial context.

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  5. Tim Hollingsworth

    I am gonna break with your critics here and say I agree that there was a good amount of preaching to the choir. I had hoped that maybe we would have heard from Ms Cheney or Mr Kinzinger. Hearing from a conservative colleague would make it all the more difficult to ignore the terrible facts. I am not sure that either would actually choose to participate but they have been eloquent and outspoken on impeachment previously.

    That said, the House presentation was powerful. If it's a foregone conclusion a preponderance of lugheads are going to leave there heads stubbornly buried in the sand, then you may as well score some political points while you can.

    Finally a question: if he is not convicted in the impeachment, could he still be tried in criminal court? Or perhaps he could be sued in civil court for the all damage done.

    There certainly needs to be some precedent that you really can not shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

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  6. GregS

    I'm really sorry, but I just have to call BS on Sarah's position regarding the impeachment managers. I really like what she has to say 99% of the time. I'm 100% on board with her position on third party settlements and sue-and-settle.

    But the impeachment article could be one line, "We hereby impeach Donald Trump for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his attempt to cling to power illegally" and the right thing to do would be for every House rep to vote to impeach and every Senator to convict.

    Quibbling about the words and the presentations is just searching for fig leaves. This position that Sarah and Jonah are settling on - that the House Democrats could have done a better job and been more apolitical and *that* would have brought along enough Republicans to impeach Trump - is just utter nonsense.

    There are several reasons:

    1) Suppose you think that the best response to January 6th was for Congress to impeach Trump within days (as I know Jonah has said multiple times - I'm not certain if Sarah agrees with this or not). If Congress is supposed to impeach Trump quickly, do you think that this would have provided enough time for the House Democrats to negotiate with multiple people on the other side of the aisle to come up with something that everyone could agree on, then hold the vote, allow lots of people to talk etc. etc. etc.? I don't think so. When something needs to be done quickly, the only way to do it is for someone to take the lead, and everyone else puts aside minor quibbles and *follows*. And you know who needs to put aside their quibbles in this situation? The people who were responsible for this disaster. The Republican members of Congress have no leg to stand on, they enabled this disaster for years. All they should expect to do now is to shut up and impeach. Spare us the nitpicking excuses.

    2) Any article of impeachment would create opportunities for nitpicking by a subset of the Republican caucus. Focus the article on dereliction of duty? Oh, that's not a crime, and it has to be a crime to impeach. Include twenty different things in the article? Oh its just a scattershot "see what sticks" approach, they're just trying everything they can because they don't actually have a strong case. Do it faster than a week? "This was a careless snap impeachment" (which is something they said anyway, but you know what I mean). Ask Republican members to be impeachment managers? Better hope they do a good job - because if they get up there and give Trump an out *in any way,* then their colleagues will say "Your own impeachment managers don't really think Trump was fully responsible, how can we vote to convict?" I'm sorry but nothing that Republican congresspersons have done in the last 5 years should give House Democrats any reason to believe that any of these scenarios are far fetched.

    3) If Republicans House members wanted to be more involved in impeachment, you know what they could have done? Filed articles of impeachment on January 7th, and January 8th, and January 9th and so on. They didn't. They didn't want to lead because while voting for impeachment might be brave, pushing for impeachment would be leading the charge, and political suicide. If they don't want to lead, then they need to stop complaining and follow. Chip Roy complains that he can't vote for the impeachment because he doesn't like the way the article is written. What was stopping Chip Roy from filing his own article of impeachment on January 8th? He could have done so, and then if the House Democrats wanted to include his language, they could have done so. The Senators who aren't even paying attention to the proceedings aren't going to be brought along by better arguments. It is a fiction to believe that they are deciding which way to vote based on the arguments presented. And complaining about how the House impeachment managers present their case just plays into this fiction.

    This gets back to my point made on the Dispatch podcast yesterday. I love you guys, and you're doing a great job overall. But you're occasionally sliding back into this reflexive position of "both sides bad" and "well the Democrats could be less political about it, and that would help." There's lots of times when this position is true, valuable, and relevant. But in this particular instance re: Trump, NO.

    There is no both sides to this.

    It is on Republicans to take responsibility. They could have done the right thing at so many points along the way, and they didn't. Because they wanted power.

    Well, they lost power anyway, and they also lost credibility, and now if they do the right thing, they might lose even more power.

    Could a few more Republicans have been brought along if they had been given more political cover by Democrats? Maybe. Do we think that this political cover would have given more Republicans the ability to hide? Yes. Do we really believe that these Republicans who took this cover would be people who would do the right thing in the future when it was hard? Not on your life.

    Do we think that any amount of political cover provided by the Democrats would have been enough to get 17 Republican Senators on board, when they had announced weeks in advance that their minds were made up and they didn't care? No.

    I'm done hearing excuses for Republicans in Congress vis a vis impeachment. They have no valid excuses.

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  7. Andrew M

    This comment is not really relevant to today's podcast but rather the blurb at the top of the Morning Dispatch, but the podcast inspired IT so I'm posting it here. I think I shall propose that the next high school to be built in my city be named "Milkshake Duck HS".

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    Tammydd

    I love your podcast, and you often give me reasons to understand actions or decisions that have previously baffled me. But this show just made me think Sarah was searching desperately to find justifications for the unjustifiable votes she knows Republican senators are about to make. You didn't convince me. Does anyone REALLY believe that if the Democrats had just framed this case a little differently or had a different person stand up and talk about the evidence that the outcome would be different? I can hear the criticisms now: the "net is too wide," the charges are "too broad," the case is "too unfocused." "Democrats are throwing everything against the wall to see what will stick." If Pelosi had convinced Republicans to join as House managers (and does anyone know for sure that she did not try?), then Republican senators would be horrified at the "cynicism" and would have to vote against the case just to prove that they don't buy arguments based on the party presenting them. It is really hard for me to buy arguments that the Democrats are the ones acting in bad faith here. I've watched what they presented this week, unlike a lot of the senators who will be voting on "the evidence."

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    1. Andrew M

      It's telling that not a single Republican senator this week (barring the six who had already voted with the Democrats on the constitutionality question), when asked about the House managers' case, answered about the evidence provided. Instead all of them reiterated their view that the trial is unconstitutional. None of them will vote based on the merits of the case.

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  9. Ted Lehmann

    I know she's the "competition," but perhaps ya'll should have had this column by Heather Cox Richardson before your pathetic attack on the House team's effective and telling presentation against terrific odds. Meanwhile, Hawley makes a mockery of himself in the gallery! https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-11-2021

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    Angie

    Well, I disagreed with you guys more than ususal...lol..but, that is ok, I still love listening to you either way...lol

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