NEW YORK (AP) – After unexpected video appearances by Madonna and Johnny Depp, everything that appears to be missing from former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial someone trying out a new dance routine.
Trump’s lawyers fully adopted the TikTok defense on Friday, using manipulated video to complain about manipulated video and relying on repetitive, quick-fire images. The approach seemed to be the ultimate end of a procedure in which the use of the media by both sides to present their arguments – sometimes chaotically, sometimes effectively – took center stage.
It was very 2021.
Or, perhaps, 2011. The Trump team’s performances owe an obvious debt to the creative use of the “The Daily Show” heyday video and other nightly comedies. They were apparently created by someone who searched for phrases like “fight like hell” and “punch me” and put together all the examples you could find, especially from Democratic politicians.
The intention was to reduce the impact of Trump’s words that led to the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, suggesting that they were little more than regular political rhetoric and that Democrats were hypocrites because they use the same language.
The risk, however, is that taking words out of context and apparently putting them together for a comical effect, distracts from the points they were trying to make.
“This drew attention to the fact that their entire discussion was a sleight of hand in the first place,” said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.
Madonna and Depp made brief appearances in clips in which they attacked Trump.
“It’s a sort of ‘Papa Don’t Impeach’ defense,” quipped CNN’s Jim Acosta.
“It was a mixed tape by Sean Hannity,” said Jake Tapper of CNN.
“I thought it was ridiculous,” said Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel. Brian Williams of MSNBC did not resist references to the “fight club”.
Still, it was an approach designed to attract consumers of modern media, those who quickly abandon monotonous speeches and legislative points of order.
The video presented by House managers earlier in the week was a vital part of the case, starting with a moderate 13-minute clip with violence and explicit language that made the actions of the crowd of Trump supporters frighteningly personal.
On Wednesday, a newly discovered video from inside the Capitol showed then Vice President Mike Pence and Sens. Mitt Romney and Chuck Schumer struggling to protect themselves and gave a more dramatic view of the danger of the day than before. Images from police body cameras of attacked police have left many viewers shaken.
“The prosecution, from the beginning, was very effective,” said Thompson. “The only question that can be asked is whether they have repeated this effectiveness too much.”
They also left room for a line of attack for Trump’s lawyers. On Friday, the Trump team showed extensive clips of the former president speaking at a pre-riot rally and at a news conference after a racial clash in Charlottesville, Virginia, suggesting that shorter versions presented by House administrators were deceptively edited .
This line of defense illustrated that the way House managers edited some of their videos was “a colossal mistake,” said Jonathan Turley, an analyst at Fox News Channel.
“They got some hay today,” said Turley.
The Trump team found a video of participants in the impeachment trial questioning previous elections, even searching to find a 2005 speech by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Using arguments frequently featured on cable television, complete with their own vivid images taken during the civic unrest last summer, lawyers tried to portray Democrats as being more sympathetic to violence when it supported causes they were sympathetic to.
In a trial without witnesses, the House’s administrators relied heavily on media reports and interviews. Trump’s supporters, in turn, suggested that relying on journalists was unreliable and, again, used the video to make that point, displaying clips of House managers referring to “reports”.
Each side was able to enter an editing room with the same speech and emerge with clips that reinforced their points. This also descended directly from the way that Jon Stewart’s team at Comedy Central used video files and specialized editing to tell stories they wanted to tell.
In the end, it was a totally modern impeachment trial, with hours spent in video editing rooms probably rivaling the time spent with lawyers.