Burke: Many words come to mind after trial, except a just one

By Tom Burke / Herald columnist

I’ve been watching Trump’s impeachment trial via C-SPAN. I’ve also channel surfed (MSNBC, Fox and CNN) to listen to the punditry about the proceedings. I’ve read (or at least skimmed) a dozen-plus newspapers, magazines, journals and tweets both straight news and opinion.

I’ve observed a jillion words opining whether Trump’s guilty of “incitement of insurrection.”

And I’m not going to litigate his impeachment here. With 60 percent of Republicans still believing the election was “stolen,” it isn’t worth my time. (But, if someone can show me one bonafide, court-accepted, state election commission-accepted, or governor-accepted case of fraud big enough to change the election, I’ll be happy to pass it along next time I write.)

I will, however, just because it comes from an exquisitely ironic source, quote one MAGA-respected person: a staunch Republican, Trump insider and longtime friend and supporter, Chris Christie, who said at the height of the insurrection — when people were being murdered and maimed by rioters; the Vice President of the United States was being hunted down by the mob so they could assassinate him; and the Proud Boys and other white supremacists were fighting to overthrow our government — “The president caused this protest to occur. He’s the only one that can make it stop.” (For the record, Trump did nothing to stop the attempted coup.)

Four days later Christie added, on national television: “What we had was an incitement to riot at the United States Capitol, we had people killed, and to me, there’s not a whole lot of question here … if inciting to insurrection isn’t an impeachable offense, then I don’t really know what is.”

So Trump was impeached as Christie suggested and was tried as the Constitution, and the Senate, prescribes.

The House impeachment managers were logical, comprehensive, detailed and specific presenting their case.

Trump’s lawyers, on the first day, “did a terrible job,” to quote Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.

But what I’ve been struck with through all of this has been the inadequacy of the English language to fully describe the horror of the day, or the depths of Donald Trump’s perfidy.

His claim, that the election was stolen, has been described as the “Big Lie” and the motivating factor behind the attempted coup. While the term is nice shorthand, it doesn’t come even close to describing the cold, calculating, deliberate heart-shot Trump took at our democracy. He wanted to kill our republic to either stay in power or avoid litigation (or both). He began his plot months before a single vote was cast by avowing that unless he won, the election was rigged, crooked and a fraud. This calculating depravity is so much more than a “big lie,” but one struggles finding the right words to describe it.

Now a lot of commentators and news readers have used words like shocked, dismayed, sad, shameful, dismaying, tragic, disgraceful, disgusting, appalling, unacceptable, completely unacceptable, totally unacceptable, distressing, reprehensible and infuriating. But they’ve been using those words for more than four years to describe Trump’s actions, and I fear they’ve lost their impact; because Trump and his MAGA cult just shake them off and care not a whit and because we’ve become inured to them and the behavior that triggers their use.

(The House managers, knowing this, didn’t use words, but employed images to drive home the point of Trump’s guilt. And the horror of those images and the calculated plot behind them, has been burned into our consciousness like words never could.)

So, is there any word that might resonate? Well, “Guilty” would be a good start.

But that ain’t gonna happen and the consensus is he’ll be acquitted. Why?

Because Trump’s defense team didn’t produce a defense, they produced a fig leaf. They focused on process and ignored his behavior leading up to the election; his behavior after the election; his behavior summoning the rioters to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6; and his behavior during and after the insurrection; giving Senate Republicans just enough cover to hide behind when they vote his innocence.

As of this writing the prosecution and defense have rested.

As of Friday afternoon, there is no verdict.

So I think I’ll let Congress’s No. 3 Republican, Liz Cheney, F-Wy., comment for me, and have the last word.

“The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney said. “Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.