digby: Looks Like GOP Might Run With the "Moron Defense" for Trump

[babylonsister]

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/08/looks-gop-might-run-moron-defense-trump?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3cHCauq6QowpeA4PRrjW9_6Wb7i-cYhNJbNgt5fDQ9A9FU9kVNaHdPj4c

Friday, November 08, 2019
by Salon
Looks Like GOP Might Run With the "Moron Defense" for Trump
Exhausted Republicans have given up on the claim that Trump did nothing wrong. All they've got left is "he's dumb."
by Heather Digby Parton

snip//

More than half a dozen witnesses have now testified that the quid pro quo was discussed constantly and caused a full-blown uproar among the Foreign Service professionals. Graham remained the good soldier, parroting Trump's language but not sounding terribly convincing. On Oct. 25, he said: "He's telling me that the phone call was perfect. I'm saying the phone call was OK with me."

On Tuesday of this week, Graham finally threw up his hands, saying, "I've written the whole process off. I think this is a bunch of BS," telling reporters he won't even read any of the transcripts — the same ones he had previously clamored for Democrats to release. But by Wednesday, he was taking yet another tack:

This has become known as the "moron defense," which holds that the president is too dumb to commit all the crimes it appears he has committed. So far, Graham's the only one I've heard articulate that defense in this case and I would guess that's because it's bound to make Trump livid. You may have noticed that he sees himself as a "very stable genius" and he'd probably rather be impeached than hear Republicans say that he was too stupid to have committed a crime. Which really is stupid, but there we are.

snip//

Finally, we have the working White House impeachment war room that will almost certainly handle Trump's defense on an official basis. Its two arms would be Fox News and the Twitter feed of Donald Trump Jr. The New York Times did a deep dive into the swift-boat campaign against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified in the impeachment inquiry last week. Trump Jr and Fox News host Pete Hegseth played a big part in spreading an easily rebutted smear that bubbled up through the right-wing fever swamp. Don Jr. has also tweeted out the name of the purported CIA whistleblower, whom Trump and his henchmen have been trashing nonstop. Whatever happens going forward, we can be sure that Trump family Twitter feeds will play a big part in defending the president throughout the impeachment process.

Lindsey Graham says Trump's Ukraine policy was incoherent. It wasn't. He knew what he wanted. But the strategy to defend the president in this impeachment proceeding is certainly incoherent at this point. He will probably survive a trial in the Senate, but none of his defenders are going to come out looking any better than he does. The central fact they can't accept is that his behavior was indefensible.

[Yavin4]

1. At some point, they're going to use the Chewbacca defense

[gratuitous]

2. But for all his too-stupid-to-crime defenders

Nobody explains how Trump somehow breaks the law in a manner designed to benefit himself. If you're going to try to paint Trump as too stupid to know right from wrong, shouldn't some of his law-breaking directly harm him?

[doc03]

3. Well he is a moron