Donald Trump has no defense, but he owns a political party

The Republican defense of Donald Trump is a lot flimsier than that put up by Johnny Cochran and his ace legal team for O.J. Simpson in his trial twenty-five years ago. The evidence against Simpson—DNA, hair, and much else—was strong and compelling. The evidence against Donald Trump is massive, overwhelming, irrefutable. And, at least, Cochran had a rabbit to pull out his hat at the end. The famous glove that didn’t fit. “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” Cochran repeated. The Republicans are not likely to come up with such a perfect red herring to cast reasonable doubt.

Otherwise, there are a lot of similarities, starting with the fact that both defendants thought they could get away with murder. One did, despite very strong evidence of guilt. The other, with even more damning evidence against him but a whole political party behind him, may be on the way to getting away with his crimes too.

The Republicans in Congress know Trump committed high crimes and misdemeanors, clearly impeachable offenses, but for them that is tiny concern compared to having the power to continue to lavish huge amounts of taxpayer money to the very rich and the military, squeezing every last dime out of the poor, and having a leader with a giant bully pulpit willing to say what they have always wanted to but were afraid: “Go back to where you came from, all of you too stupid or lazy to have the foresight to arrange to be born white in America.”

Discussing the arguments Republicans are using to defend Trump is a waste of time, like a debate between an astronomer and an astrologist. Let’s just say that there is zero credibility in denying mountains of evidence that President Donald Trump made the President of Ukraine a Mafia-style “offer you can’t refuse”:  Our missiles to defend your country against Russia—in exchange for dirt on my potential political opponent and his son. Or, in the fallback argument, which echoes the title of O.J.’s book: If he did it, it’s not impeachable anyway.

The truth is that Republicans will do anything to get reelected, more than Monica Lewinsky was ever willing to do to score with a president, and for GOP candidates to get elected means a thumbs up from the Capo. And the irony is that these guys, who constantly denigrate “Washington,” are so desperate for voters to send them back to the swamp instead of having to go back to the heartland where the “salt-of-the earth” people live. They seem to be saying, who wants to live in Alabama (Jeff Sessions), Texas (Ted Cruz) or South Carolina (Lindsey Graham) when you can live in a deliciously decadent place like DC. They want that so badly, these three guys who have all been verbally stomped by the president, that still they come crawling and begging for Trump’s support.

Has there ever been a political class that has given so much of their dignity away for so little? You licked Hitler’s or Stalin’s, or Trujillo’s boots or die. And there were still people with the courage to dissent and, in many cases, die. Later, many more dissented in Eastern Europe at a steep price.

The Republicans in Congress? Profiles in cowardice suffering from a serious dignity deficit disorder.

And, to close, there is another similarity here with the O.J. Simpson trial. The Republican senators who will judge Trump, in effect the jury, are planning to do what the O.J. Simpson jury did. It’s called jury nullification. With jury nullification, the jury is saying, damn the evidence, this guy is one of ours, we love him and we hate you, the accusers. We will be damned if we are going to help you convict our boy.

The Simpson jury, which was made up mainly of black women, at least had the historical memory and experience of seeing too many black men railroaded. The Republicans that will make up the majority of the Senate jury have no experience or history of oppression or injustice. They are a lily-white group of guys who have always been on top. They know Donald Trump in the White House is their best chance of staying there, and there is no outrage they will not engage in to keep him there.