I've been watching the impeachment trial, and I think the House managers are doing a great job, but the Daily Show's Trevor Noah points out that the case will likely crumble when Trump's lawyers get their chance and start talking about how there used to be more creamy filling in the center of Oreos. From the transcript of their opening statement:
I saw on television in the last couple of days, the Honorable gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Sasse, I saw that he faced backlash back home because of a vote he made some weeks ago, that a political party was complaining about a decision he made as a United States Senator. You know, it's interesting because I don't want to steal the thunder from the other lawyers, but Nebraska, you're going to hear, is quite a judicial thinking place, and just maybe, Senator Sasse is onto something. And you'll hear about what it is that the Nebraska courts have to say about the issue you all are deciding this week. There seem to be some pretty smart jurist in Nebraska and I can't believe a United States Senator doesn't know that.
Trying to imagine someone listening to this and thinking, "Damn, he's stealing my thunder!" I guess it's possible if you're a lawyer representing the former President of the United States.
Occasionally the House managers seem determined to flatter the Republican senators, like when they put forward Mike Pence as a great patriot bravely performing his constitutional duty (before he had to hit the bricks to avoid being hanged). I'm afraid that's useless. The managers have to talk about Trump's big lie concerning the election having been stolen, a fabrication that the majority of Republican senators have endorsed, either explicitly or implicitly. Even the most granular evidentiary bits implicate jurors. Today, the least known of the managers, Stacey Plaskett, of the Virgin Islands, spoke of the incident last fall involving a "Trump caravan" of vehicles that tried to run a Biden campaign bus off a freeway in Texas. She meant to establish Trump's pattern of encouraging riotous behavior in his supporters, for he had immediately celebrated their crime in a tweet—but, then, the Republican senator Marco Rubio celebrated it with even more relish and boasted that things like that happened in his home state of Florida all the time.
To convict Trump, the managers need Republican votes, with the result that the corruption of the entire Republican party is the proverbial elephant in the room. The mob boss is on trial and his fate is in the hands of his accomplices and lackeys.