RINGSIDE POLITICS – FEBRUARY 10, 2021

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Welcome to another edition of Ringside Politics with Jeff Crouere

Today’s Hot Topics:

1) Former President Donald Trump’s legal defense team claims the House of Representatives moved to impeach him because the Democrats are afraid of facing Trump in 2024.

“Let’s understand why we are really here,” attorney Bruce Cantor said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “We are really here because the majority in the House of Representatives does not want to face Donald Trump as a political rival in the future.”

Trump’s legal team also argued that his historic second impeachment trial in the Senate should not move forward because their client is no longer president. Castor accused Democrats of ignoring jurisdictional and due process “in order to get to the part of the Constitution that allows removal.”

2) The coronavirus has been responsible for a series of video-call stumbles and mishaps, and the phenomenon seemingly reached its zenith this week, when a Texas lawyer appeared before a judge as a cat, after being unable to change a video filter.

“I’m not a cat,” Rod Ponton was forced to clarify during a hearing in Presidio county, south-west Texas, as he and his assistant scrambled to remove the filter.

The filter, which displayed a kitten instead of Ponton’s face, was able to capture the lawyer’s horror and confusion, its eyes flitting across the screen as Ponton scrambled to remove it.

3) Biden got up to some of his “creepy” old antics when he responded to the nursing supervisor’s detailed description of giving COVID-19 shots by asking her about her age.

“Are you a freshman at the university?” Biden asked Brittney Hayes at the end of a conversation in which she had laid out the process for getting shots to people at the State Farm Stadium vaccination site in Glendale.

“Noo. No,” said Hayes, who had described herself as being from the Arizona State University at the start of the talk — but who made clear she was the “head charge nurse” at the vaccination site.

4) Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was one of six GOP senators who voted Tuesday to uphold the Senate’s authority to hold an impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, taking Republicans aback by reversing the position he took in a vote last month.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday evening, Cassidy also contrasted the “focused, organized” House Democrats arguing for conviction against Trump’s legal team, who he said did a “terrible” job.

The Democratic impeachment managers “relied both upon precedent, the Constitution, and legal scholars. They made a compelling argument,” Cassidy said, according to a pool feed. “President Trump’s team was disorganized. They did everything they could but to talk about the question at hand. And when they talked about it, they kind of glided over it, almost as if they were embarrassed of their arguments.”

Cassidy continued: “Now if I’m an impartial juror, and one side is doing a great job, and the other side is doing a terrible job on the issue at hand, as an impartial juror, I’m going to vote for the side that did the good job.”

Today’s Guests:

1) Jim LeBlanc, Contingency Planning Consultants, Chair of Louisiana Grid Coalition – joins the show to talk about his organization

2) Basil Seal; Robert E. Lee Monument Association – talks about his efforts to preserve the history of the confederacy