In his column “The Trump trial is bad drama,” Cal Thomas claims former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial occurred because of Trump’s fervency to drain the swamp. Oh, what hyperbole and hokum.
Criminaldefenselawyer.com notes that certain speech or acts receive little or no First Amendment protections: obscenity, child pornography, threats of violence, and speech that incites riots, violence or insurrection. However, the threshold is high. The Supreme Court held the speaker must intend to incite or produce imminent action.
Thomas contends that bad drama incited Democratic senators to engage in low political posturing. Does that snipe include the seven Republican senators who voted Trump guilty?
By the way, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) sat alone in the gallery, feet propped, poring over paperwork, which he said concerned the trial. NPR’s Lisa Desjardins reported that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) notably and clearly intentionally turned his back when impeachment managers played October videos, in which pro-Trump drivers pursued a Biden campaign bus.
This uncouth and unconscionable behavior would get an eight-grader expelled from class. Yet Thomas absolves GOP senators’ craven attempts to ingratiate themselves with the Trump base.
House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) acquitted Trump, and afterward said Trump proved morally and practically responsible for the insurrection, but was immunized because he’d left the White House. McConnell delayed the trial until Biden was inaugurated.
In his Jan. 9 column Thomas said Trump stoked fires of resentment, and his comments after the breach, in which five people died, were weak and insincere.
Did Thomas get amnesia?
Marc D. Greenwood, Camp Hill, Alabama
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