BY TYLER O'NEIL | P J Media
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
On Friday, lawyers for former President Donald Trump
presented a few hard-hitting videos contrasting Trump’s calls for peace and law
and order with Democrats encouraging harassment and coddling Black Lives Matter
and antifa rioters over the last summer.
“To claim that the president in any way wished, desired,
or encouraged lawless or violent behavior is a preposterous and monstrous lie,”
Michael Van Der Veen, one of Trump’s lawyers, argued.
Van Der Veen presented a video contrasting Trump’s law-and-order remarks and remarks from Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Pelosi had said, “I just don’t even know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country. Maybe there will be.” Waters had notoriously encouraged supporters to harass Trump administration staff in public places. Biden had said that if he was in high school, he would “beat the hell out of” Trump.
..
Trump’s lawyers also played a montage showing Democrats’
rhetoric and the violent riots that destroyed black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments over the summer.
Team Trump later played a montage of Democrats repeatedly
pledging to “fight,” just as Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell” on
January 6.
Trump’s lawyers were not arguing that Democrats should be
expelled from Congress, but rather that intense partisan language does not
necessarily constitute “incitement.”
“For those who would say that those quotes must be
understood in their greater context, i.e., that they were clearly
meant to be political speech- we say exactly. The truth is that
both … Mr. Trump’s speech and these comments are acceptable political free
speech; it is the double standard at play here that is entirely unacceptable,
and Mr. Trump [asks] that the Senate reject it in no uncertain terms,” Trump’s lawyers argued in their defense brief.
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Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The
Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on
Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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Uh
Oh… Dem Impeachment Manager Tried to Block Electoral College Votes in 2017
Former President Donald Trump’s defense
lawyers made their case that Mr. Trump was innocent of charges of inciting an
insurrection. They compared speeches by Democrats and others to the former
president’s remarks as part of their defense, and stated that “the article of
impeachment now before the Senate is an unjust and blatantly unconstitutional
act of political vengeance.”
https://www.c-span.org/video/?508916-1/impeachment-trial-day-4-complete
