BREAKING: Remember America? We do.#ImpeachmentDay pic.twitter.com/tzGPwX7zBG
— Eleven Films (@Eleven_Films) February 5, 2020
I didn’t have the strength, so commentor Zhena Gogolia generously bricolaged this tribute:
As recounted by Maxwell King in his biography of Mister Rogers (The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, Abrams, 2018), when Rogers was young and saw upsetting things happening in the world, his mother would tell him, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
We are all too prone to easy cynicism: “The Republican majority in the Senate will never convict and remove Trump, so why should I pay any attention to the impeachment hearings or trial?” Well, I did pay attention, and what I saw was deeply inspiring and hopeful. Rep. Adam Schiff, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, and their Democratic colleagues, as well as the counsel for the Democrats on the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, Daniel Goldman and Barry Berke, did not get cynical, they did not give up or phone it in. They went to BATTLE for this country, day after day, and used everything in their arsenal: intelligence, hard work, and most of all, that unfashionable thing, patriotism. Despite the obstruction of the president and his allies, the Democrats proved Trump’s guilt so decisively that even the Republicans had to admit it. They were left with no fig leaf other than, “Yeah, he did it, but he’s giving us tax cuts so it’s okay.” They were left with no defense.
But although it was a team effort, it was Adam Schiff who carried the biggest burden, especially during the trial. He spoke for hours on end, often without looking at notes. (Compare Pam Bondi.)
Every time I tuned in, I expected to see him tired, or hoarse, or fuzzy. It never happened. Here are some highlights:
‘Give America a fair trial. She’s worth it,’ Schiff urges senators
Jefferson once said:
“I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its Constitution.”
Remove that anchor, and we are adrift.
But if we hold fast, if we put our faith in the truth,
This storm will pass. pic.twitter.com/mh0Ju6ZHZK
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) January 31, 2020
Jennifer Rubin has summarized:
…Along the way, House managers stripped the bark off phony Republican hawks who could find nothing wrong with extorting an ally in a hot war with Russia; decapitated “constitutional conservatives” who have become defenders of autocracy; and showed off some of their brightest stars, including Democratic Reps. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), Jason Crow (Colo.), Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) and Val Demings (Fla.).
History will treat them all well and take note that when truth and constitutional government were on the line they did their jobs in exemplary fashion. That is “winning” by any legitimate measure. And for that we can say, well done.
And I’ll let Jon Zal have the last word:
Excuse me, Mr. Schiff? You dropped this.
Goddamn American hero. pic.twitter.com/zFJvYaX4VL
— Jon Zal (@OfficialJonZal) January 30, 2020
Rep. Adam Schiff’s Closing Argument
WaterGirl
Zhena gets her wish! Thank you, Anne Laurie.
Baud
Schiff/Zhena 2028!
JPL
Thank you. Someone should send his office a link.
Betty Cracker
I watched as much of the trial as I could stand, and Schiff was truly magnificent. Not always, but occasionally, there are people with the strength, skills and courage that are equal to the tough times they live in. Adam Schiff is such a man.
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
It’s “Zhena Gogolia.”
MisterForkbeard
If there’s one person who really comes out of this whole process looking good, it’s Schiff. Most of the Democrats do too, but Schiff has really nailed the whole process. He’s been forthright, eloquent, and has forced Republicans to accept that Trump did the extortion but now they’re just claiming it’s okay
And he did it all with soaring rhetoric and inspiring passion. I’ve been genuinely impressed with him.
Jeffro
All of the House managers were fantastic – Demings, Crow, and Jeffries in particular – and Schiff still managed to stand above the rest. I am glad they’re on our side.
Now then…since the Repubs are about to own this for all time…let’s subpoena John Bolton, let’s see those tax returns, and then let’s grab a nominee and CRUSH THE GOP IN NOVEMBER!!!
HalfAssedHomesteader
OT: Doug Jones giving a very good speech voting to convict.
jc
Schiff showed himself to be so much better a man than Trump. So much better an American. Republicans settle for disgrace, and distraction. The founding fathers would weep to see how far the nation has fallen.
Nicole
Lovely work, Zhena Gogolia. And thank you for finding that great tweet with Captain America’s shield. I may have been a wee bit weepy after seeing it.
Jeffro
Btw Jen Rubin has a great piece up on the WaPo: Republicans sold their souls for so little
So very, very true
randy khan
@MisterForkbeard:
It really is fascinating how many Republicans are now saying some variation of “Trump did a bad thing but we shouldn’t convict him,” although the topper has to be Rubio’s argument that, essentially, conviction is so awful that the Framers never meant for it to happen. (Collins saying Trump has learned his lesson is pretty jaw-dropping, too, but I’ve come to expect such things from her.)
Steeplejack (phone)
@Nicole:
That was the best.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you, zhena gogolia; and thanks to Rep. Schiff and his Democratic colleagues.
We flipped the US House in 2018. We flipped State Legislatures and governorships in 2018 and 2019. And with each of us doing a share of the work, we’ll make further inroads in 2020.
Music for winning in 2020, from the immortal Aretha Franklin (many good versions online; this one is from a live concert in 1971.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOXKr7wh1Ac
delk
Beautiful write up Zhena. Serial marriage clown Bondi was a massive hypocrite during the marriage equality debate and she came off even worse during the impeachment. Schiff however was compelling and at ease.
Steeplejack (phone)
@randy khan:
Plus Trump doubled down and said she was wrong, the “call was perfect.” So that was a direct “fuck you” to her.
Yeah, he learned his lesson: that he can do whatever the hell he wants and the Republicans won’t do a thing.
Mary G
Great piece, ZG!
Gin & Tonic
I guess Bolton shot his wad. It’s gonna suck to be him.
tobie
Thank you, Zhena, for the moving tribute.
My parents came to the US as Holocaust refugees, my father as a penniless orphan in 1948. They are in their 90s now. Everything they’ve fought for and suffered for in their life is embodied in Adam Schiff: the dignity, the brilliance, the decency and the belief in the sanctity of the law. I’ve been surprised at how emotional I get about Schiff. He’s been our voice in these dark times and represents the hope that we can survive this chaos and cruelty.
Geminid
Schiff has been great, and Ortiz, Deming, Crow, and Jeffries have impressed. I was especially glad that people got to see Hakeem Jeffries. I have followed him since the leadership contests in Nov.2018. His nomination of Nancy Pelosi for Speaker last January was a masterpiece. If anyone needs some sunshine on a cloudy day, google ‘Hakeem Jeffries nominates Pelosi’. It will bring a smile to your face. He had “the once and future Speaker” grinning.
Josie
Thanks, Zhena and Anne Laurie. Beautifully written.
the Conster
Well done A & Z. Well done.
Adam Schiff spent his boyhood in my hometown of Framingham, MA, where he learned his value system and got a great public school education. We claim him as ours and are proud as hell.
rikyrah
This is a wonderful post to have today.
Thank you so much for this :)
Mr. Longform
Adam Schiff is really good at his job – I wonder if he is a potential Speaker should Ms. Smash (may she live forever) decide to retire.
MisterForkbeard
@randy khan:
This is particularly rich in that Giuliani literally says Trump wants him to keep ‘investigating’ Biden.
Not only did Trump not learn his lesson, he’s continuing the exact same crime right fucking now. It’s like arguing for the repentance of a murderer as he’s strangling the bailiff.
bemused
@randy khan:
Not an ounce of shame in gop legislators. Garbage people.
lee
@HalfAssedHomesteader:
Huh, would have never thought that he would end up with convict.
Kent
I like me some Adam Schiff, but Val Demings has also been a revelation for me. I gotta think she is destined for higher things in the Democratic Party. From the NYT profile:
Totally badass black women, who grew up in poverty, former police chief who rides a Harley and runs marathons at age 62. Gotta think that would be a good look as VP for any of the candidates.
We have so much Democratic talent around the country. How is it that we are stuck with geriatric old white guys sucking up all the oxygen in the party? This is just the worst possible timeline.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lee: I would’ve been on Jones convicting, and Manchin finding some weaselly out. Sinema… slight lean toward weasel
trollhattan
@MisterForkbeard:
Trump did learn his lesson, the lesson being, “Do whatever the fvck you want, nobody will stop you.”
The Moar You Know
@Gin & Tonic: Barr has his orders. I think you’re gonna see Bolton in jail before the month is out. I know Bolton is smart, but he’s also quite rash, and he may not have gamed out what would happen if he wasn’t allowed to testify.
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
I know I should be upset, and I am upset, but, if he had been an actual PATRIOT, instead of going for the paycheck……I’d feel worse. I feel bad for this COUNTRY…not Bolton.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@The Moar You Know:
IANAL, but I don’t think trials move that fast, even if there were discernible criminal charge. I think Barr’s real goal is to harass trump’s enemies, drive up their legal bills and intimidate others who might speak out: Bolton, Comey, Brennan, the Ukraine whistle-blower, Hillary Clinton. I think trump’s survival instinct is too strong to go after Obama in the same way, but who knows.
Gin & Tonic
@The Moar You Know: They’ll block his book, too.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
YES, THANK YOU! This really is a full-service blog. Sorry I was in class when it went up.
Gin & Tonic
@rikyrah: Don’t get me wrong, I harbor not an ounce of sympathy for him, just pointing out that he seems to have mis-judged his plan pretty badly.
zhena gogolia
Thanks, everyone. Anne Laurie’s timing is perfect — I think we all needed something hopeful today.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think you and I both thought Doug Jones would do the right thing. Happy to be right about that. He’s the only one of those in question that I had a strong confidence in.
PJ
@Gin & Tonic: If there’s one thing the Trump Administration has proven, if your plan (or country) depends on Republicans doing the right thing, it is going to fail. They will support lawlessness, indecency, and the undermining of every democratic value, but they are too craven to ever do the right thing.
So, sucks to be John Bolton, and sucks to be us.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Thanks for putting this together.
Kent
@The Moar You Know: Apparently the House is going to Subpoena him to testify on ongoing hearings about Ukraine. They aren’t going to let it go. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/481616-nadler-says-its-likely-house-will-subpoena-bolton
I honestly think Bolton still has the Trump folks by the short-hairs. The man is a snake and operates at a higher level of bureaucratic knife fighting than the amateurs around Trump. Trump may have gotten off the hook for Ukraine, but there is a shitload of crime still swirling around Urkaine and Rudy and none of those folks are off the hook when the next Dem justice department starts taking a closer look.
I can’t imagine they will be stupid enough to jail him and on what charge they would do so. And even if they did, House Subpoenas can reach into prison to haul him out to testify and he would have lost all incentive to keep his mouth shut at that point. I honestly think Bolton is the only administration official that is going to come out of this looking good at the other end.
I would schedule his testimony before the House on about August 24, the start of the GOP Convention.
zhena gogolia
@Kent:
I hope you’re right.
Kent
@zhena gogolia: On what possible charge could they jail him? I don’t see where people are getting that. He has meticulously done EVERYTHING right. He brought in the attorneys and reported everything nefarious and took copious notes during his time in the White House. He submitted his book for review and it was apparently leaked out of the White House, not from him. He hasn’t defied any presidential orders not to testify. He is a master at bureaucratic process and probably has plenty of dirt in his back pocket. God only knows what other illegal shit has been happening there. I suspect Ukraine is just the tip of the iceberg.
Honestly I think Trump is running scared. The whole Ukraine thing was all about him running scared from the very beginning and trying to rig the process. That is not a man operating from a position of confidence. He knows deep down he lost in 2016 which has been what his presidency has been about since day one and the lying about crowd sizes and voter fraud.
Best thing the Dems can do is keep the Trump scandals on the front page through election day. Drip, drip drip. Karma can be a bitch. Maybe Bolton will be Trump’s Comey.
trollhattan
@Kent:
I’d love to embrace this notion but it requires me to believe Bolton’s hatred of Trump and his minions exceeds his hatred of Democrats and their squishy, peace-curious beliefs. Maybe the appeal of future book sales tips the balance further from Trump. Maybe he loves cameras as much as Guliani. Until proven otherwise, I’ll assume he clams up if called before the House.
trollhattan
Joining sane Americans I skipped the SOTU and missed this.
What would a presidential address be without a Second Amendment infomercial?
Mnemosyne
I know that we give our lawyer friends here a lot of guff, but Schiff and Jeffries have really done the profession proud these last few months. They show what a really good lawyer can do even when they know their case is doomed.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: Not only was he ejected from the gallery, he was handcuffed and detained until Pelosi’s office intervened to have him released. Guttenberg said the cops were just doing their jobs and apologized for disrupting the SOTU. He’s a hero in my book. HE deserves the medal of freedom, not that racist, sexist gasbag Limbaugh.
Kent
@trollhattan: Bolton is a traditional Foreign Policy hawk and Russia foe who to my knowledge has never shown the slightest interest in conservative domestic policy like tax cuts or deregulation or “values” bullshit. I expect the utter incoherence of the Trump administration and Trump’s sucking up to America’s traditional enemies like Putin, North Korea, Turkey over the Kurds, etc. must make his head spin.
I would not be surprised if he preferred mainstream Dem semi-interventionalist policy in the Obama and Clinton modes over the totally venal and traitorous horror that is Trump foreign policy.
He also has a giant ego and has been floating presidential ambitions. For that to happen, Trump has to go and Trumpism has to be crushed.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
He worked for Trump. The chances he has done something illegal are very high.
White & Gold Purgatorian
@lee: I am not particularly surprised. Doug Jones is a decent, honest man. I’m proud to have him as one of my senators, at least for a while. And the votes he will lose over choosing “convict” are essentially zero. Those folks were never going to vote for him anyway.
PST
Bolton is 71 years old. He clearly has no future in a Trump administration or at Fox during a Trump administration. A reformed Republican Party after a Democratic interregnum will come too late for him. In short, professional advancement is probably not one of his goals, although raking in the cash could well be. So what could he be after? Revenge, I hope. Like Steve Zissou.
Elizabelle
@zhena: thank you for this post. We need some bright lights.
Too much 24/7 cable. Joseph Welch’s “Have you no decency” to Joseph McCarthy would have been a one-day story, with pundits sniffing about impropriety. This account appears on the Senate’s website. The very same Senate, where Republicans are violating their oath of office, for their own political survival. Party over country.
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Have_you_no_sense_of_decency.htm
I would guess a lot of people have tuned the Impeachment hearings out. If you care about our country, they are very hard to watch. Painful, really. Otherwise, just sniff about “partisanship.” (I was disgusted to see Lisa Murkowski take that tack.)
But maybe Adam Schiff’s statements will become more widely known, in months and years to come.
Mnemosyne
@Kent:
Keep in mind the fact that Trump is a dignity wraith. The odds that Bolton has compromised himself in some way to gain or keep his position are very high.
The reason it’s a bad idea to go into business with mobsters is that they insist you give them blackmail material first so you can’t betray them. The odds that Trump has nothing he can use to punish Bolton for disloyalty are … low.
Kent
@PST: If he was a Democrat, he could wait 7 more years until he is really tanned and rested and run for president at age 78.
Kent
Do you think that anti-Trump traditional neocon foreign policy hawks would have a wider audience during a 2nd Trump Administration, or during a 1st Democratic Administration?
If it is the Fox news fueled conservative grift we are talking about I think it is VERY clearly the latter. Bolton’s place as a senior GOP statesman and talking head depends on Trump losing in 2020. Because that would generate an absolute rush of commentary on the right about how the new Dems are selling out to Iran or whatever. And we would see Bolton on TV every day telling us how the weak-kneed surrender-monkey Dems are selling out the country.
Miss Bianca
@the Conster: Yes, come to think of it, there is something of the very best of Puritan values in Adam Schiff. A product of a New England culture that believed in public education and the importance and well-being of the commonwealth.
We really need to bring that term back into the public discourse: the commonwealth. The Common.Wealth. Investing in public education, public lands, public art, public transportation, for the commonwealth – the wealth and prosperity of *all*. Not the self-proclaimed MOTUs profiting off public infrastructure for obscene amounts of private gain, which has been the Republican watchword for my entire life.
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
I’m pretty sure he would attribute it to good Jewish values, given his religious upbringing.
Miss Bianca
@Kent: I agree, her image has appeal to me, my Harley snarking aside. However, I can’t help but wonder how the “Kamala is a cop!” crowd is going to react to, you know, an actual cop. The unhinged freak-out from the dirtbag left will be even more nauseous than it is currently.
On the other hand, I would take it as a delicious fuck-you riposte to that same cohort, so maybe you’re on to something after all! : )
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore: Heh, indeed. Well, Jewish culture and Puritan culture both emphasized the need to be educated enough to read and discuss the holy texts, so they have that in common, for sure!
chopper
@lee:
if his internal polling is showing it’s a good move to make, that’s heartening.
Kent
They were the same ones who were saying Kamala wasn’t “black” enough. Well, they aren’t going to say that about Val Demings. Direct descendant of slaves, grew up in a 2-room shack in the south, first in her family to go to college. Unless there is some dash-cam video of her dragging black kids out of their cars and shooting them I don’t expect there is a middle aged black woman in the country who would not vote for her, and they are the actual heart of the party.
Every black family I am acquainted with knows you go into government jobs because that is where you have a better chance of getting a fair shake. Whether it is police or army or teaching or working for the DMV. And the cop thing would probably win a lot more votes with the white union types. Because if she was a cop she was almost certainly in a union.
Betty Cracker
@Kent: As a Florida Democrat, I’ve always got an eye on political talent that can help us rebuild our party statewide. I’m hoping Rep. Demings runs for governor someday. Believe you me, “Val is a cop” nonsense would not fly here!
Kent
@Betty Cracker: If a badass black woman on a Harley can’t turn out the black vote in Milwaukee then I don’t know who could. They also have a big factory in York PA, just outside Philly.
Miss Bianca
@Kent: You’re starting to persuade me to the point that I’ll be kind of crushed if we’re not seeing a Warren/Demings or Biden/Demings ticket! : )
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Every time Adam Schiff spoke, what I really heard was, “At long last, sir, have you no shame?”