One essential theme of the Trump presidency was that practically nothing is sacred-not norms, not alliances, not the rule of law, not common decency. These two vignettes struck a tone that has been rarely heard in recent American political life. The other moment, he said, was “watching someone use an American-flag pole, with the flag still on it, to spear and pummel one of our police officers-ruthlessly, mercilessly tortured by a pole with a flag on it that he was defending with his very life.” “Of all the terrible, brutal things I saw and heard on the day and since then, that one hit me the hardest.” “She said, ‘Dad, I don’t want to come back to the Capitol,’” he said. After the rioters were expelled, Raskin apologized and told her it wouldn’t be like this the next time she visited the Capitol. She had come to the Capitol and taken shelter under a table, fearing for her life. Raskin described two low points from that day. But his focus was not on the fear he and others felt but on what was left after the riot. “All around me people were calling their wives and their husbands, their loved ones, to say goodbye,” he said. (Indeed, later in the afternoon, the Senate voted 56-44 to proceed with the trial-only one Republican having been swayed by the day’s argument to reverse his vote from an earlier procedural motion.)īut Raskin’s speech framed the attack on the Capitol fomented by Trump not just as a technical matter or a violation of law, but as a violation of something the nation holds sacred. The speech was poignant for personal reasons-as members of Congress know, and as my colleague John Hendrickson wrote last month, Raskin’s son, Tommy, had died by suicide just days before the insurrection-and because, no matter how heartfelt it was, it is unlikely to have much effect on Trump’s expected acquittal. The emotional high point of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial probably came in its first hours.Ĭlosing out the opening presentation from the Democratic House managers, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland offered a powerful speech in which he choked back tears as he recalled the attempted coup of January 6.
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