How bad was Trump’s impeachment defense? “My Cousin Vinny” was trending on Twitter.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial began with a devastating presentation by House managers showing why the former president’s actions were worthy of condemnation and demonstrating the immediate danger of not condemning Trump and banning him from future position. It was a difficult act to follow.

How did Trump’s legal team – selected from the bottom of the barrel after a fight with his first team and the refusal of large companies and conservative legal advocates to represent him – react?

Bruce Castor, the former Pennsylvania district attorney who is most famous for refusing to sue Bill Cosby for rape, opened up the defense arguments and let’s just say it didn’t go well.

Here is a sample of Twitter responses:

Before the defense presentation was made, “My Cousin Vinny” was on the rise on Twitter.

What was so bad about Castor’s performance? On the one hand, in what should have been the opening of a specific procedural and jurisdictional defense, it was difficult to identify a consistent narrative thread or specific legal argument he was trying to make. Castor basically admitted this in the end, saying that he had produced his inconsistent presentation in response to the way House managers presented their case.

“I will be very frank with you, we changed what we were going to do because we think the presentation by the managers of the House was well done,” said Castor.

He went on to say that the legal team had answers to the case on the merits presented by the Chamber’s administrators at the beginning of the trial, and they would reach them … eventually. But since managers had laid out the essence of the alleged crime early on, instead of simply debating the Senate’s jurisdiction, he said the Trump team was unprepared. “I thought the first part of the case, which was the equivalent of a motion to dismiss, would be just about jurisdiction,” said Castor. “We have counter arguments for everything they raised, and you will hear from them later in the case.”

From the point of view of pleasing his client, the homework routine that ate the dog was not even the worst part. In an effort to convince the Senate that the impeachment trial was unnecessary, Castor repeatedly pointed out that the American people had already fairly voted Trump out of office – the opposite of what Trump said in his months of complaints about electoral theft, that ended up inspiring his supporters to attack the Capitol.

“The American people just spoke and just changed management,” said Castor. So there is no need to impeach Trump and prevent him from a future post because the electoral system – which Trump just spent two months trying to overthrow, and which the crowd on January 6 tried to stop through violence – has worked Final. “People are smart enough … to choose a new government if they don’t like the old one,” said Castor. “And they just did!”

Inexplicably, Castor repeated the Trump lost the election, so you don’t have to punish him for trying to steal it Arguing a few more times before moving the base to the ex-president will certainly appreciate even less: if the Senate has determined it has no jurisdiction to try Trump, then he can always be sued by the Justice Department.

“After he’s out of office, you’re going to arrest him,” said Castor. “Therefore, there is no opportunity for the President of the United States to run wildly in January at the end of his term and simply go away with impunity. The Justice Department knows what to do with these people and so far I haven’t seen any activity in that regard. ”

And again, those were Castor’s most – perhaps only – intelligible points. After he spoke, the defense team passed it on to David Schoen, who presented a more passionate and somewhat more cohesive case that the current impeachment is a “party witch hunt” against the de facto president.

In the end, there might be some strategy for the double act. Schoen’s performance was an aggressive attack on impeachment managers, one of whom had just poured his soul out over the devastating trauma he and his family experienced the day of the Capitol attack. Castor’s bizarre and senseless ramblings may have served as a palate cleanser, so Schoen’s sharp criticisms alongside the Chamber did not directly follow the powerful performance of the impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin. All the defenders of the president need to do, in the end, is to prevent 17 Republican senators from joining the Democrats.

In the end, only six Republicans joined Democrats in voting that a former president’s trial is constitutional and must go on – Sens. Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse – which means that it seems that there are already more than enough votes for Republicans to absolve Trump, regardless of the arguments they hear. Cassidy was the only Republican who initially signaled his desire to end the case to change his vote this time, with minority leader Mitch McConnell – who would have spoken positively about impeachment in the beginning – voting again with the vast majority of the rest of his conference to let Trump off the hook.

Castor and Schoen may have made it more embarrassing for them to be with Trump, but if the past four years have shown anything, it was the limits of shame as a force in politics.