Confronted With Evidence, Republicans Can't Claim Ignorance of Trump's Actions Anymore
After castigating former President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign for comments he made about women or various ethnic groups – or even fellow members of the GOP who dared cross him – Republicans adopted a sort of institutional, studied ignorance when asked to reflect on Trump's behavior as president.
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That all changed this week on the Senate floor, where a relatively captive group of senators was forced to sit, listen and watch as Democratic House impeachment managers laid out their case against Trump for inciting a deadly riot at the Capitol.
The prosecution included on Wednesday an utterly chilling video presentation that showed, with previously unreleased footage, how close House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came to being killed by the marauders and how determined the mob was to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence. The shouts and pleas of frantic U.S. Capitol Police officers – assaulted and overwhelmed by the pro-Trump insurrectionists – let the senators know how much danger they, too, were in on that day.
Under the rules of the trial, senators-turned-jurors are not allowed to talk or wander about – though Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican who was the driving force behind the effort to deny President Joe Biden the congressional certification of his win, took advantage of a pandemic loophole to sit in the upper gallery, feet up and flipping through papers. So there they sat, at the actual scene of the Jan. 6 crime, and listened while a tag team of House managers made a brick-by-brick argument for convicting Trump.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/confronted-with-evidence-republicans-cant-claim-ignorance-of-trumps-actions-anymore/ar-BB1dAdd0?li=BBnb7Kz