Trump’s Defense? An Attorney Delivering More of the Same Crazy Talk That Got Him Impeached in the First Place.
Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero/The Daily Beast/Getty
Amazingly, David Schoen deployed exactly the incendiary, lie-filled rhetoric that caused the insurrection to begin with.
“And it doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words I say or time of day it is,” George Harrison and the Beatles sang in 1967, aptly describing Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial that appears certain to end with enough Republicans holding the line to ensure Trump is, again, acquitted of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. This is all a matter of politics, not law.
And yet… wow.
I can’t tell which of Trump’s two main lawyers was worse. His first, former district attorney (and non-prosecutor of Bill Cosby) Bruce Castor, was so dull and incompetent as to make My Cousin Vinny look like Clarence Darrow. But his second, David Schoen, was so outrageous and extremist in his rhetoric that he resembled nothing so much as his client on trial for just that rhetoric.