When former President Donald Trump’s defense takes center stage at his Senate impeachment trial, so will Democrats who voiced support for rioters during the violent unrest that resulted in looting and vandalism in multiple cities last summer.
Bruce Castor, who is representing Trump along with David Schoen, was asked about his planned use of Democratic support for violence during his Friday appearance on “The Ingraham Angle.”
“Will you then respond with Maxine Waters, a number of other Democrat officials not speaking out about the antifa and other extremist rallies over the last summer?” Ingraham asked, according to Politico.
“I think you can count on that,” Castor said. “If my eyes look a little red to the viewers, it’s because I’ve been looking at a lot of video.”
“There’s a lot of tape of cities burning and courthouses being attacked and federal agents being assaulted by rioters in the streets, cheered on by Democrats throughout the country,” he said, according to a Fox News transcript.
Although House Democrats filed an article of impeachment against Trump claiming that his words and actions on the day of the Capitol incursion incited insurrection, Castor said that fiery language has become part and parcel of Washington politics.
“Many of them in Washington are using really the most inflammatory rhetoric possible to use. And certainly there would be no suggestion that they did anything to incite any of the actions,” he said. “Certainly, there wasn’t, anyhow.”
Democrats are saying through impeachment that such language is only wrong when Trump used it.
“But here, when you have the president of the United States give a speech and says that you should peacefully make your thinking known to the people in Congress, he’s all of a sudden a villain,” Castor said.
“You better be careful what you wish for.”
Castor also noted that impeaching a private citizen, which Trump now is, is unconstitutional as well as just plain wrong.
“By the House impeachment resolution logic, they can go back and impeach Abraham Lincoln,” Castor said. “They could impeach Donald Trump if he was dead because he’s not in office.
“So they could go and erase him just like they were erasing his name off of the schools in San Francisco. Isn’t that where Nancy Pelosi is from? Right?”
On Sunday, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Congress needs to move on, according to The Hill.
“I’m ready to end the impeachment trial because I think it’s blatantly unconstitutional,” Graham said on “Face the Nation,” The Hill reported.
“As to Donald Trump, he is the most popular figure in the Republican Party. He had a consequential presidency. Jan. 6 was a very bad day for America, and he’ll get his share of blame in history.”
Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, meanwhile, called Trump’s impeachment trial, which begins Tuesday, a “meaningless messaging partisan exercise,” according to The Hill.
Story cited here.
