February 9, 2021

Will Someone Please Explain What the Heck Trump’s Opening Defense Was About?

America is not following.

US Senate TV/CNP/Zuma

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Bruce Castor, former President Trump’s impeachment attorney—and the former Pennsylvania attorney general who is best known for declining to prosecute Bill Cosby—opened his defense with a befuddling, 28-minute, non sequitur-filled rant.

He began with a childhood recollection of listening to a record—remember vinyl?—of Sen. Everett Dirksen, who served as Senate Minority Leader from 1959 to 1969. What this has to do with Trump’s impeachment is beyond us—sorry.

Castor proceeded to expound upon the virtues of pride in one’s state.

He seemed to admit that Americans were “fed up” with his client, and that his loss of the presidential election negates the need for impeachment—a point that House impeachment managers repeatedly refuted earlier in the day.

He doesn’t even seem to deny that Trump incited an insurrection, instead suggesting that “after he’s out of office, you go and arrest him.” He continued, “The Department of Justice does know what to do with such people, and so far, I haven’t seen any activity in that direction.”

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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