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Good morning, I'm Anna Palmer and I'm Jake Sherman.

And welcome to The Daily Punch, brought to you by Punchbull News. It's Friday, February 12, 2021.

Let's get into the mix. Here are your Washington headlines of the day. Number one, Trump's defense lawyers take the wheel at the impeachment trial.

Number two, how the Biden administration is trying to ignore it. And number three, the latest on Senate Democrats' strategy on COVID relief.

All right, Jake, let's get into the mix here. Trump's defense lawyers are taking the wheel from Democrats. Obviously they closed strong last night.

Pretty powerful and convincing argument. I think a lot of people would say even if Republicans aren't going to vote to convict Trump, a lot of people, I think, believe that the Democrats did a good job.

It's a pretty high hurdle that this Trump defense team has to climb here.

And a hurdle they're not going to reach Anna because the defense team has really no good arguments compared to the prosecution, Bruce Castor and David Chone have largely and widely been seen as subpar compared to the House Democratic impeachment managers.

They're still complaining that this is not a trial, but well, it's not a trial. No, it's an impeachment.

And it's a political process and it's not like a courtroom. And the House Democratic impeachment managers has put together a very, very compelling case.

And Castor and Chone have to argue that yes, everything you saw happened happened. Right. And it's just not Donald Trump's fault. And and that's a tough argument to make.

I don't I don't really understand how they're going to make that. I mean, the House Democratic impeachment managers were super strong. Castor and Chone are going to argue that the trial was unconstitutional.

And that Trump wasn't directly responsible for things that he was clearly at least in part responsible for.

Yeah, I think the thing that is really interesting to me just to break it down for folks, right? If you've been watching these hearings, you know, you look at what Bruce Castor and David Chone are going to do today.

There's only the expectation that they're going to present for three or four hours. And then they're going to rest their case. I think the real questions are what the opportunities are for team Trump.

I mean, they just want to wrap this up as quickly as possible. We continually, you know, you're seeing this agitation among senators. They're tired of this, particularly on the Republican side. They don't feel like their minds have been made.

There certainly are the handful plus. So five or six Senate Republicans. And if we can name them right now, Pat Tumey from Pennsylvania Mitt Romney from Utah Susan Collins from Maine, Lee Simmerkowski from Alaska and Bill Cassidy, the surprise from Louisiana, who are all expected to be in play to potentially vote to convict Trump.

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