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Patriots Impeachment Weekly Wrap-Up: The Schiff Show

Senate Begins Pre-Trial Impeachment Proceedings
Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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The Senate officially began the impeachment trial of President Donald John Trump just after lunch on Tuesday.

The rest of the week was filled with Democrats — both on the Senate floor and in front of numerous cameras when the trial was not in session — demanding witnesses and documents and claiming that any move to block them amounted to a cover-up.

Republicans returned fire, arguing that the Democrats had every opportunity to subpoena witnesses and chose not to do so because they did not want the delay — or the potential loss — that might come with fighting the president in court

The House impeachment managers, led by California Democrat Adam Schiff, kicked off the opening statements Wednesday and were still at it on Friday.

As always, the Daily Caller wades through the most recent stories to break down the most important details and new information.

The key players:

  • Schiff was front and center for most of the opening days of the Senate trial, delivering a two-and-a-half hour speech to start things off Wednesday. Whether or not his speech was effective appeared to break down along party lines.

  • Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer chastised Republican Senators and attacked Fox News.

  • The Democrats’ overall presentation led Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel and Fox News political analyst Brit Hume to conclude that they were not actually trying to reach enough Republicans to remove the president from office.

The White House response:

President Trump took to Twitter often, despite making time for a trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, to voice his displeasure with the impeachment and the House Democrats leading the charge.

The White House called it “an act of partisan revenge.”

The hot takes:

  • Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott, while speaking with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, referred to the impeachment trial as “Groundhog Day” and said it was like being a kid who was forced to stay in church for the sermon — repeated on a two hour loop.

  • Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn admitted that she passed some of her time reading while the House impeachment managers were presenting their case. Her book of choice? Kim Strassel’s “Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America.”

  • Former Arkansas Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee mocked House impeachment managers, suggesting they could be marketed as a cure for insomnia.

  • Former South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy told Fox News host Sean Hannity that former President Barack Obama could possibly be relevant as an impeachment witness.

  • Country music legend Charlie Daniels even weighed in on impeachment, saying, “From what I can surmise, they keep whipping the same old dead donkey and asking the Senate to do their job for them. If they didn’t believe in the charges they had they shouldn’t have brought them.”

  • A protester crashed the Senate gallery during a presentation from House impeachment manager Hakeem Jeffries, screaming that Schumer was “the devil.”

Public response:

According to several polls, the majority of Americans would like to hear from witnesses at the Senate trial — however, most of those polls did not clarify whether the preferred witnesses were former Director of National Intelligence John Bolton and acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney or former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

FiveThirtyEight’s impeachment poll tracker indicates that while the ongoing impeachment proceedings have not moved the needle among Republicans and Democrats, independents are continuing to show less interest over time in removing Trump from office.

Check back next week for the latest up-to-the-minute information, commentary and related content.

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