Right?

As we conclude this historic week in America, I yield the remainder of my time to Adam Schiff and his closing remarks from Thursday’s edition of the Senate impeachment trial. “Colonel Vindman said, ‘Here, right matters.’ … Well, let me tell you something, if right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. Doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. Doesn’t matter how well written the Oath of Impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. The framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter … No constitution can protect us, if right doesn’t matter anymore.”

+ Speaking of being lost, at the moment Schiff was delivering these remarks, Fox News was pushing the very conspiracy theories that led to this mess. While some of us are seeing the House Managers build the case against the president, others are seeing exactly what Trump wanted in the first place: A never-ending drumbeat of news connecting Biden to some invented Ukrainian plot. That might not sound like much. But last time around, all Trump had was a story about an email server. And the Senators who are supposed to defend the truth and protect us from such misinformation? Here’s Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee: “How patriotic is it to badmouth and ridicule our great nation in front of Russia, America’s greatest enemy?” She’s talking about Trump, right? Nope. Her tweet was about Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. And the president retweeted it.

+ Remember how the president says he doesn’t know Lev Parnas and that Parnas is making everything up? Well, lordy, there are tapes.

+ Meanwhile, the president keeps on keepin’ on. “Under cover of the fog of impeachment, in large ways and small, other lawbreaking, other refusals of oversight, and other overt criming keeps on happening. What other bad acts has this president and members of this administration undertaken this month alone?” Let Dahlia Lithwick count the ways: Trump Is Not Shamed. And, for a reality check, neither are his supporters. WaPo: Americans still divided on Trump’s removal from office, but a strong economy is boosting his approval rating.

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