This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, February 9th, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Today begins the second impeachment trial for now former President Donald Trump

after he spun up and appeared generally supportive of that angry mob that attacked

the capital just as lawmakers began certifying the 2020 presidential election.

The president lost that election.

Cato's Gene Healy previews the trial, including the arguments of Republicans like Rand Paul, who argue the whole exercise itself is unconstitutional.

So for 230 years of the republic, we had had two impeachment trials, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.

And we're now about to start the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

He's being charged with a broad charge of incitement of insurrection.

What does that mean?

Well, it's basically for the January 6th,

stop the steel rally speech. The article of impeachment says that. the

article of impeachment says that Trump willfully made statements that

encouraged and foreseeably resulted in imminent

lawless action at the capital, the capital riot, insurrection, whatever you want to call it.

You know, put more simply, it's the charges that the President of the United States

spun up a violent mob hoping to intimidate Congress

into overturning the results of an election

that he lost, which sounds kind of bad when you put it that way.

When you put it that way, it sounds like a more serious charge than we've seen in recent

impeachment efforts, more serious than perjuring yourself in a

...