Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast.

Today is Friday, February 12th, 2021, Abraham Lincoln's birthday. I'm John Puth-Hortz,

the editor of commentary with me as always, senior writer Christine Rosen-Heikristeen.

Hi John. Executive editor Abe Greenwald-Heyeb.

Hi John. An associate editor, Noah Rothman-Heyejah.

Hi John. Okay, we don't have that much to say about yesterday's impeachment proceedings because they were

largely a recapitulation of what we found out on the first two days with the Democrats trying to make an effort to sort of complete the picture by trying to describe where Trump was and what Trump was doing while the riot was going on.

But of course, only really being able to do so suggestively because we don't know what Trump was doing.

And we only know that he should have known or could have known everything that was going on.

But we don't know that he did because there were a focus on messages from the Capitol to the president publicly by Republicans saying do something particularly Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, representative, Republican representative.

But we don't know that he did. And so there was that. And then the other thing I thought was weak was the whole world is watching.

And it's bad what we've done because that is not how the world reacts to our internal political difficulties and circumstances is not grounds for someone being run out of office.

So I thought that was an odd detour. But anyway, that bothered me when they started bringing in like the statements from Russia and Iran, I think, and places that were sort of condemning the US for what happened on January 6th.

It bothered me in part because these anti-democratic figures around the world always get their messaging from the anti-American left. That's not new. That happens in the absence of any wrong deal.

I had two thoughts on yesterday's proceedings, both of which make me very mad.

The first is that there was an interesting shift in tone, which suggested to me that what we all understand to be the case that a quid is inevitable.

What had been internalized by the managers and they began to make a case, which I think you cannot avoid, which is that the psychological foundations in Trump supporters for violence were laid in 2016 and had been reinforced for four years.

Now, Republicans aren't going to respond to that message because they are in one way or another in various degrees complicit with that condition.

It is nevertheless impossible to state the case as to how this happened without going back into the psychological foundations that Donald Trump laid for political violence.

It ended with Jamie Raskin as answering questions that he had asking questions of the jury that he had not himself answered. The most important of them is what was the president doing on January 6th between 226 PM and 540 PM, 226 PM,

and Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund made an urgent request for National Guard troops for assistance. In the interim, a lot of people were hurt, some died, and Capitol Police, Capitol National Guard arrived to relief Capitol Police at 540 PM.

He can't answer that question, nobody can answer that question, until we have a definitive affirmation under oath by a witness to his conduct and Democrats don't want to call witnesses because they have to legislate.

...