President Trump’s farcical impeachment trial is turning into a win for the Republicans

The launch of Donald Trump’s trial before the US Senate was the stuff of surrealist comedy. This was a spectacle as ridiculous as Monty Python’s “All-England Summarize Proust Competition” in which competitors attempted to sum up À la recherche du temps perdu in fifteen seconds. The punchline of Python’s sketch is that the prize doesn’t go to any of the valiant efforts to recite Proust at breakneck speed. The winner is the glamorous model the judge pulls out from behind the curtain at the last second.

In Senate terms, the winner from behind the curtain was the gaudy Republican victory which emerged in a series of party-line votes later in the day. It was entirely predictable but, in the context of what had come before, still something of a shock.

The session had begun just after 1pm on Tuesday and would continue beyond midnight, during which time the Democratic floor managers attempted the impossible: to recite the case against Donald Trump not in 15 seconds, but in the brief time the Republican-controlled Senate has made available to them.

This they did this convincingly. They have a strong – perhaps even watertight case – and don’t need to play politics. Republicans, meanwhile, have only politics to play. Their defence is so meagre they repeatedly struggled to fill their allotted time. Instead, they resorted to the same conspiratorial talking points we’d heard during the House’s impeachment sessions, including quite a few of the old Trumpish “untruths” around supposed “corruption” of the process.

When Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler later called them out on this (“the president’s counsel has no standing to talk about lying”), it led to a tense exchange between the two sides, earning them both a rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. “I do think those addressing the Senate should remember where they are”, he said.

It’s why the news headlines don’t really convey what happened on Day One or why this trial is sure to have a bigger significance in the year ahead. Democrats won the moral and legal case, yet Republicans can rightly claim the early victory. If that continues, the sense of this being a show trial is sure to enflame the Democratic base. Trump wants a quick acquittal so he can start his victory tour, but he should be careful what he wishes for. The sense of complacency victory might lend Republicans could pale compared to the grievances felt on the other side.

Indeed, “fairness” was really the subtext of the first day, which began with perhaps the most important developments happening outside the chamber. Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, had confidently staked out his territory earlier in the week, claiming he had the votes to impose whatever trial rules he decided. Those rules, he would now claim, were fair, and followed the precedents established by the trial of Bill Clinton in 1999.

In truth, they were nothing of the sort. If his plan were followed, this could be a trial without witnesses, without evidence, and crammed into as short a period as possible to avoid the President enduring the indignity of delivering the State of the Union address while the trial is still ongoing. McConnell’s plan was to force senators to sit through twelve hours sessions, meaning portions of the trail would be buried in the middle of the night. Moscow Mitch, noted some wags, would now be Midnight Mitch. Or that was his plan…

McConnell’s problem is that the Republican caucus is diverse, ranging from Trump cultists like Lindsey Graham to those senators facing re-election in Democratic-leaning states, such as Cory Gardener in Colorado and Susan Collins in Maine. Then there are senators like Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney, who are altogether more moderate, as well as nominally independent and therefore less predictable. The question from the start has been how much these moderates will insist on a “fair” trial and impede McConnell’s rush to acquit the president.

The answer came in the form of a slight delay to the session. News emerged that McConnell had agreed to two concessions: each side would be allowed three days to argue their case rather than two. He also agreed that the House’s evidence would be accepted into the record.

A cynic might argue that it was all clever politics; to demand too much initially in order to have some ground to yield to troubled Republicans, thereby making them appear like they really do seek a proper trial. The problem with that argument is that it’s not entirely clear that the Republicans have the luxury of subtlety around this impeachment. McConnell’s best and only strategy is to prevent this “trial” from developing into a proper examination of the facts, where new evidence might offer moderate Republicans less room to acquit the President.

Democrats will take every minute available to them, use every constitutional lever to extend the trial (Chuck Schumer pointedly refusing McConnell’s request to speed through votes on his amendments). They will strive to bring daylight into the chamber. Republicans will do everything to keep it in the dark. It results in a strange twilight, in which it’s not entirely clear what “winning” will eventually look like.