Schiff Attempts Elementary School Psychology Trick During First Day of Impeachment Trial

It’s time to buckle up, America; the Senate’s impeachment trial has begun, and the nation is about to be careening down the track at exorbitant speeds, with a whole lot to take in and not a whole lot of time.

Just today, in the very first session, the rules have already been changed.  Instead of allowing for two days of opening arguments, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already acquiesced to lengthening that period to a third day, signaling a victory for Democrats and those few GOP jurors who have been wavering on their total loyalty to the Trump defense.

Perhaps emboldened by that capitulation, Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intel Committee and thorn in the GOP’s side, is now insinuating that a failure to cave to the Democrats’ demands in the trial will signal a “guilty” verdict for the Commander in Chief in the court of public opinion.

In other words, if the Republican-led Senate does not carry out the impeachment trial the way the Democrats want it to, Trump will be considered guilty even if the upper chamber acquits him. A guilty verdict in the Senate would remove Trump from office.

Schiff told reporters:

If the Senate and the senate leadership … will not allow the calling of witnesses or the presentation of documents, If [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell makes this the first impeachment trial in history without witnesses or documents, it will not prove the president innocent. It will merely prove the Senate guilty of working with the president to obstruct the truth from coming out, so I do think that by structuring the trial this way, it furthers our case that what’s going on here really is a cover-up of evidence to the American people.

This feels an awful lot like the sort of argument that 5th graders use when trying to sound smarter than their elementary school rivals, and it is doubtful that Schiff’s assertions will ring true in the long run.