Van der Veen gave the exact performance he needed to get the maximum likelihood of full payment from Trump. As they said, he was performing for an audience of one.
And to his credit, he, unlike the Republican senators who voted to acquit, he doesn’t have blood on his hands from the GOP’s deadly response to the pandemic. Well, at least magnitudes less; all Republican voters have some blood on their hands.
Preceding in no way a defense. He’s indefensible. Just putting his performances into context.
2 Likes
Christ, what an asshole
4 Likes
His “Isn’t that enough” rant really served to highlight, much more than her question, that, no, it wasn’t much.
2 Likes
Can’t really watch it after previewing a part where he’s trying to foment the same hostility and violence against the house managers, sitting members of congress by accusing them of fabricating everything that had actually occurred in plain view of the entire world.
6 Likes
I watched it, but it was hard. And it was only ten minutes. I’d like to say I can’t imagine what kind of headspace one gets in by watching this kind of stuff hours a day, but I don’t have to imagine. They’re in my family.
5 Likes
Also when you say it out-loud, it takes a lot of sting out of “fabricating evidence”.
1 Like
Is he auditioning for a show on Fox?
Does the world need an angrier, dumber Bill O’Reilly?
3 Likes
Just some more of Trump and his “only the best people”… QUESTION: Do they send these “people” to some sort of charm school or like that My Very Own Shredded Recycled Flammable Foam Pillow character, Mike what’s his face, just find them in a rehab facility and dry them out a bit and then fill them with some good old rage pills, give them a bit of background narrative of Trump’s latest legal problem and prop them up in front of a news camera or worse, maybe as a shill law maven in a Senate Impeachment Trial ? … Both? … thought so. See, that’s not hard to figure out after the last five years, is it?
Is this what happened: the House Managers were re-creating Tweets made by Trump and others, and they recreated those Tweets, because they needed to add graphics like highlighting? They weren’t screenshots, so there couldn’t be “doctored”. That said, it might have been smart to be explicit that the Tweet graphics were not screenshots.
[He’s claiming, in his rant, House Democrats used a year-old 2020 tweet and represented it as a 2021 tweet— which would be doctoring, if it were true. Except the Democrats weren’t using a 2020 tweet. An early version of the graphic happened to be on the computer screen of a House manager when the NYT photographer snapped a photo. He’s complaining about a typo in a graphic that the Democrats never presented at trial!]
The CBS reporter should have pointed out that Van Der Ween’s “fight-fight-fight” video montage was certainly “doctored” also.
The entire argument about “evidence” and “due process” is ridiculous, because there are no rules for an impeachment, but what the Senate says they are— just like there is no impartial jury and there is no standard for guilt (preponderance/50% vs no reasonable doubt/99%), and no real judge (a majority of the Senate can overrule any ruling by Leahy/Roberts).
4 Likes
What he’s referring to is a single NYT photo showing one of the impeachment managers sitting in front of a computer screen with an image of a Trump tweet with the wrong date noted. A simple mistake that was corrected well before any images of tweets were presented during the trial. But the Trump team wanted everyone to see this as proof that they were “fabricating evidence” despite the fact that the text of the tweets is a matter of public record and was never in dispute.
5 Likes
This is an insult to Saul Goodman - who was actually a really smart lawyer. Besides, he’d never take Trump on as a client, he’s more of a “cash up front” kinda guy.
5 Likes
On the other hand 74 million Americans feel Herr van der Veen did an excellent job of defending Trump and tearing down the reporter from CBSN as the 1.2million comments on this youtube channel reflect. Very sad.
3 Likes
the managers had to reconstruct the tweets because some of them had been removed from twitter proper.
one, like you say, before it was presented had the wrong date. another had a verified flag on an account that trump retweeted but they claimed that account didn’t in fact have a verified flag.
this was apparently evidence that the managers were sent by extraterrestrials to subvert the will of the voters and feed babies to tigers. or something.
meanwhile, the defense said it was antifa who were responsible for the violence, and black lives matter protestors were the ones who made it possible by normalizing riots. sigh
3 Likes
See?!? Both sides doctor evidence. /s
3 Likes
Sorry. I’m told family members I don’t talk to much are now drawn into the Q-Anon cult. Starting to understand why my late father didn’t give much credence to anything they had to say.
2 Likes
Thanks.
Mine aren’t Qanon (yet, as far as I know). I just meant that they watch fox news’ version of “shouting as discourse” as their only news source, and the effect over the past decade is noticeable. Sad. And disappointing.
Luckily they’re all lazy enough not to have stormed the Capitol! 
3 Likes
All of Trump’s tweets are gone. They basically had to reconstruct every single one. I feel sorry for the poor intern that had to work on that project.
3 Likes
If Trump decides “This guy’s my boy” and uses him in one of his other cases, so, a more normal court of law, will his fraudulence get him disbarred? That was my understanding of why even the deranged Giuliani knew enough to stick closer to the truth than he normally does when he was in a court case. Also the origin of the phrase referencing a non-zero number of observers.
1 Like
Grade-A douche
1 Like
So, is it not possible now for it to be sunny in one place and raining in another? Is that evidence of trickery?
2 Likes
