What was THAT?

Yesterday, Donald Trump decided that putting on a convincing impeachment trial defense was no longer his priority, and that instead he simply wanted the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. He gave this away when he whined on Twitter about having to present his defense on Saturday, but he made no effort to get it delayed to Monday. It was easy to see that Trump was trying to hurry up and get the trial over with before Republican Senators got any more nervous about calling witnesses.

So we weren’t expecting much when Trump’s impeachment defense team took to the Senate trial floor today. But even we weren’t expecting whatever that mess was. Trump’s lawyers only used a little more than two hours of their allotted eight hours today. Then they called it quits and went home for the day. Yes, they have two more days coming up. But what was that?

It’s one thing for Trump’s lawyers to use their time to spew nothing but lies and lazy conspiracy theories. We were expecting their defense to mirror Trump’s own deranged fantasyland tweets about his Ukraine scandal. But to quit after using barely one-fourth of their allotted time? Even if Trump is working under the premise that he doesn’t need to say much to get these complicit Republican Senators to acquit him, he needs to be using this time to try to convince the nonpartisan people watching at home that they should vote for him in 2020.

The real trouble for Donald Trump is that the prevailing media narrative will be that he and his team didn’t even try to mount a defense, and that they mailed it in instead. Trump is in such a panicked hurry to get this trial over with before the GOP Senators change their minds about calling witnesses, he appears to have sent his attorneys out there with no gameplan today – and it showed.