Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. The first rule of Fight Club is to keep attacking your audience with the same word until you get sick.
A video in which Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and other Democratic politicians pronounce the word “fight” 238 times, according to a count by MSNBC, was the most bizarre twist so far in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
The montage was staged by Trump’s attorney David Schoen on Friday in an attempt to demonstrate that such language is common in today’s political speech, and protected by the first amendment to the constitution, then Trump’s call for his supporters “to fight like the hell “shouldn’t be blamed for the US Capitol insurrection.
“You did nothing wrong,” Schoen told the senators, many of whom found themselves on TV screens inside the chamber. “It’s a word that people use, but please stop hypocrisy.”
He was not wrong for being a word that people use. Hillary Clinton, who was seen in the video, made Fight Song the subject of her ill-fated 2016 campaign against Trump. The world champion “fighter” is certainly Senator Elizabeth Warren, who spread the word liberally in interviews and wrote a book called This Fight is Our Fight.
But what Schoen was also doing was exhibiting what about rotism in its purest form – a wonder to behold, like a perfect diamond or pristine snow.
Whataboutism is a dodgy often seen in the right-wing media. If allegations are made against Trump’s connections in Russia, respond: what about Clinton’s emails? If Trump’s family is accused of exploiting his position, answer: what about Joe Biden’s son Hunter? If white supremacists are rebelling, answer: what about antifa? It does not matter if the equivalence is false, because it is about attacking the opponent to muddy the waters.
The relentless “fight” video from Trump’s legal team was a good example. Some of the Democrats were cited out of context due to selective editing. We heard Biden, for example, say “never, never, never give up on this fight”, but we did not hear the complete quote: “I looked into the eyes of people who survived school shootings and made a promise to each of them: never, never, will never give up on this fight. “
(Speaking of hypocrisy, Schoen accused the impeachment administrators of “manipulating video” during his presentation.)
In addition, these Democrats urged their supporters to fight for a political cause. Trump was urging his supporters to fight against democracy: his cause was based on the lying allegation of a stolen election. And as the impeachment administrators declared on Thursday, he spent years employing incendiary rhetoric and demonizing opponents.
Still, Trump’s defense crossed the very low barrier set by his Laurel-e-Hardy opening strategy on Tuesday. On Friday, they provided talking points for the right-wing media, straws for Republican consciences to cling to and a boost to Trump’s spirits after some very dark days.
It was not hard to imagine the former president of Mar-a-Lago, his luxurious Florida property, nodding in approval when attorney Michael van der Veen kicked off the Trumpian style: “The impeachment article now before the Senate is unjust and blatantly unconstitutional act of political revenge. This terrible abuse of the constitution only divides our nation even further when we should be trying to come together. “
Van der Veen even described it as a “politically motivated witch hunt”, a phrase the former president used even more often than Warren said “fight”.
In a first volley of what is about rotism, Van der Veen played video clips of Jamie Raskin, the main impeachment manager, and other Democrats who opposed Trump’s victory at the electoral college in 2016. “Litigate issues of electoral integrity within of the system is not an incitement to insurrection ”, he argued. “It is the democratic system that works as the founders and legislators designed it.”
The lawyer then falsely claimed that one of the first people arrested after the insurrection was an antifa leader, when that individual denies any affiliation and, in fact, antifa is a broad spectrum of anti-fascist far-left groups, not an organization with a leader.
He said Democrats encouraged “mob violence” during Trump’s presidency and played clips accompanied by sinister music.
The impeachment is “about Democrats trying to disqualify their political opposition,” he said, accusing them of favoring the “culture of constitutional cancellation” – another phrase that will certainly play well on Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network.
Later, attorney Bruce Castor argued that the attack on the Capitol was pre-planned – tubular bombs were planted the day before, for example – and therefore Trump’s fiery speech on January 6 could not have been the cause. However, the president tweeted in December that the demonstration “will be wild”, and prosecutors showed that Trump spent months preparing the ground.
Castor also wrongly named Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, referring to NFL star Ben Roethlisberger, and questioned the definition of “insurrection”. After two and a half hours, the defense case was closed. They had fought, or something, but it was unlikely that he would be remembered alongside Winston Churchill “fight them on the beaches”.
Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, tweeted dryly: “Of all the impeachment speeches in American history, Castor’s was the most recent.”