Donald Trump’s trial for incitement to insurrection is bound by two key facts. First is the fact that all but three or four Republican senators will vote to acquit him no matter what. The second is the nature of ‘incitement’ as a crime. Incitement is at the outer bounds of what we normally consider to be criminal actions inasmuch as it amounts to using words to get other people to do things absent compulsion. It is a crime, as it should be, but in a criminal trial context it is a high bar for prosecutors to meet. Still, we are left to consider how much the President inspired and directed what happened on January 6th, 2021.

The House managers are doing a good job of it. But in terms of what the President thought he was doing … well, he told us in real time.

We just started the second day of House impeachment managers’ arguments as they seek to persuade a jury of senators to convict Trump of inciting the insurrection. All eyes, of course, are on the Republicans in the chamber.

At least five people died during the events of January 6th on Capitol Hill. More than 100 Capitol Police officers were injured, at least 15 of whom required hospitalization. Two Capitol Police officers took their own lives in the days immediately following the assault, presumably spurred by trauma and/or guilt over the insurrection. But the death of Officer Brian Sicknick has loomed over the events of the January 6th like no other. While others were bludgeoned or attacked and could have died of their injuries the fact that Sicknick did die added a gravity to the events of January 6th it would not, for better or worse, otherwise have had.

Because of this, a new ‘truth movement’ has begun to crop up on the right suggesting Sicknick’s death was unrelated to the insurrection and may even be part of a cover-up to tarnish the reputation of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. It’s ugly and utterly predictable.

Even though the last two days of the impeachment trial have included new information about the fact that former President Trump put his veep in harms way, Vice President Mike Pence is standing by his man.

Very surprising, very dramatic events just in the last half hour of the impeachment trial. The Senate has voted to call witnesses, something that seemed all but ruled out just last night. The trial was supposed to end today with a vote to acquit. The shift was triggered by the revelations of Rep. Herrera Beutler (R) of Washington who heard from Rep. Kevin McCarthy of an exchange the day of the insurrection in which President Trump defended the insurrectionists to McCarthy when McCarthy called Trump begging him to call off the mob.

Senate Democrats decision to forego witnesses earlier this afternoon came as a jolt, inexplicable and maddening, to many or most Democrats outside the chamber because Democrats appeared to hold all the cards and all the votes and yet capitulated entirely. The final decision was simply to enter Rep. Herrera Beutler’s statement into the record and move on.

Before getting to what this means let me be candid and tell you that through most of this trial and what led up to it I’ve been ambivalent about calling witnesses. In the abstract of course you should call witnesses. But we’re not living in the abstract. The national interest and the Democrats’ partisan interests rests overwhelmingly on rapidly passing a bold COVID relief bill to end the Pandemic and resurrect the economy.

That is not needed simply in the direct sense of getting shots in arms and dollars in hands. Coming out of the moral and civic catastrophe of the last four years it is critical to vindicate the idea that people’s votes, their electoral exertions can and will translate into tangible benefits in their lives. This is a Newtonian cause and effect with which civic life withers and dies or gives way to obscurantism and authoritarian temptation.

To the extent witnesses or an extended trial delayed that to more than a trivial degree, just push through the trial and get on to repairing the country. This is all the more the case since the chances of conviction are as infinitesimally small as the scope of the evidence is vast.