ANALYSIS –
By Glynn Wilson –

The power of fear and a social media program named after a bird call cowed a majority in the United States Senate on Tuesday to bow down to the wishes of a corrupt dictator who has taken over the once great democratic republic of America, a new kind of country where economic and military power had been nearly perfected to rid the world of both communism and fascism.

The fear of ending up on the wrong side of a Trump tweet played a significant role in allowing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with a new name on Twitter as #MidnightMitch, to whip and keep Republican senators in line to vote down no less than 11 amendments to the impeachment trial rules to actually allow a real, fair trial by calling witnesses and introducing documents as evidence.

We have it on good authority that a number of Senators, including lawyers like Richard Shelby of Alabama, in private sometimes chuckle at the zany words of President Donald Trump on Twitter and TV, and at other times are absolutely appalled at things Trump does, like meeting with dictators in Russia and North Korea and attacking members of the Iranian government in Iraq where the United States has a vested national interest.

But they have witnessed what happened to others who dared to go against Trump’s wishes, mainly former Senator and Attorney General Jeff Sessions of Alabama, whose legally correct decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election turned him into Trump’s top whipping boy there for awhile. While Sessions is trying desperately to get back into Trump’s good graces to get his old senate seat back, every other Republican in Congress is either staying ghostly silent or publicly siding with The Donald.

Meanwhile the honorable Democrats from the House who are trying to work for a fair trial in the Senate are being pilloried on Twitter and TV as wimps who won’t get onboard the winning team of Trump’s reality show presidency.

“If the Senate votes to deprive itself of witnesses and documents, the opening statements will be the end of the trial,” Congressman Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead House manager said on the Senate floor Tuesday night. The rules proposed and passed by McConnell and his fellow Republicans was tantamount to saying, “Let’s have the trial, and maybe we can just sweep this all under the rug.”

“If the House cannot call witnesses or introduce documents and evidence, it’s not a fair trial,” Schiff said. “It’s not really a trial at all.”

Outside the Senate chamber, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York commented on minor changes to the rules based on pressure from a few moderate Republicans to allow more time for opening arguments in a hastily called dinner meeting with McConnell. One rule was changed so evidence compiled by the House would automatically be included in the trial record and not subject to objections by Trump’s legal team and formal approval by a vote of the Senate.

“The public realizes how unfair the McConnell proposal is, and the pressure that we have put on them and on Republican senators has gotten them to change,” he said, but: “There are still many other things that are unfair, particularly in relationship to witnesses, particularly in relationship to documents.”

Most of the opening day of the trial on Tuesday was taken up by debates and votes about issuing subpoenas for specific witnesses and documents. Democrats pushed to summon former National Security Adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. And they pushed to obtain documents from the National Security Council, the State Department, the Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget.

Ten of 11 amendments to the rules were rejected on straight party-line votes, 53-47. Not one Republican broke from Trump and McConnell’s wishes, not even Mitt Romney of Utah who had said earlier he would like to hear testimony from Bolton. The 11th Democratic proposal, to lengthen the timetable for the prosecutors and defense team to file trial motions, gained the support of one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine. But it still failed 52-48.

While the competent and diverse team of House leaders managing the prosecution laid out the case for the need for witnesses and documents and connected the dots on Trump’s wrongdoing, chances are they put to sleep just about any average American who ventured over to one of the TV channels covering the action live, like C-SPAN or CBSN.

While they calmly built the case in a way to pave the way for the 2020 election case against Trump, they showed no outward anger or righteous indignation that the republic is on the verge of collapsing if Trump is allowed to walk away from this impeachment trial unscathed.

While committed and engaged Democrats no doubt watched this diverse team of committed patriots march from the House to the Senate chamber to conduct the trial, none of them has the charisma to make it on a reality television show and capture and hold the attention of the American people, who seem to need nearly constant jolts of adrenaline to keep their short attention spans focused on “the show.”

For example, Congressman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat and a former judge from California, argued that the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon were sitting on hundreds of pages of relevant documents that had been prepared for release just in case a judge or the Senate demanded that they be turned over.

She played video clips of key witnesses who had testified before the House impeachment investigation who said they had submitted notes about discrepancies in the rough transcript of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, who said there were email messages and other documentary evidence relevant to the heart of the case against the president — as well as a core part of his defense.

But the emails that were released were heavily redacted with black lines drawn over most of the relevant content.

“Attorney-client privilege cannot shield information about misconduct,” Lofgren said.

Such redaction by government agencies is normally reserved to protect the names of innocent people or intelligence agents in the field, not relevant facts in an investigation.

Republicans were unpersuaded, of course, fearing retribution from Trump and his army of right-wing trolls and armed followers, some of whom gathered in a show of force in Richmond, Virginia on Monday not to celebrate the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. They were there to celebrate the birthday of Robert E. Lee, the traitorous commander of the Confederate Army who suceded from the Union in 1861.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold of New York, a squared-jawed pol if there ever was one, came the closest to righteous indignation, accusing Republican senators of being complicit in a “cover-up” to benefit Trump.

But just before 2 a.m. Eastern Time, the Senate voted along party lines, 53 to 47, to ratify McConnell’s trial rules and plan. As adopted, the resolution would pave the way for opening arguments against Trump to begin as soon as Wednesday, to be followed by his defense team, which is clearly taking the tack that no factual defense is needed since the government has not and will not prove its case.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone, the conservative lawyer who is leading Trump’s defense, attacked the foundation of the charges against the Republican president and said Democrats had not come close to meeting the U.S. Constitution’s standard for impeachment.

“The only conclusion will be that the president has done absolutely nothing wrong,” Cipollone said, arguing in favor of McConnell’s proposal to wait until later in the trial to decide whether to allow further witnesses or documents.

“There is absolutely no case,” he said.

Half a world away, Trump sought to use the global stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to project confidence about his standing at home.

Without witnesses, Trump’s trial could be wrapped up with a partisan red bow of acquittal by the end of January.

The Democrats will potentially have one more chance to fight for documents and witnesses after the opening arguments are presented by both sides over the next few days. The trial could stretch on into February in that case, but no national pundits are holding their breath.

No cameras are allowed in the Senate chamber during the impeachment trial, so news organizations are forced to rely on artist sketches by Dana Verkouteren