Trump made the case for his own conviction with his 'eruption of lies' at Davos: columnist

In his column for the Washington Post this Wednesday, Greg Sargent writes that President Trump used the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as a platform to praise what Senate Republicans "have already done to protect him" during the first day of debates over the rules to his impeachment trial.

Sargent points out the contrast between Chief Justice John Roberts admonishment of the Senate to conduct itself as “the world’s greatest deliberative body," to the Republicans' "aggressively advancing the coverup that Trump is demanding" during Tuesday's debate --  a contrast that "captures a truth about our current moment."

"Neutral calls for both sides to adhere to a mutual set of reasonable standards seem hopelessly out of sync with the wildly lopsided imbalance we’re now seeing between the two parties’ approaches to a lawless, out-of-control president — one who just happens to head one of those two parties," Sargent writes.

Sargent then rattled off a list of lies Trump told at the Davos summit, which included his claim that the impeachment is a "hoax" and that the Democrats had "no case," along with his claim that his infamous phone call with Ukraine's president was "totally appropriate" and his claim that his release of the White House summary of the call exonerated him -- "Which returns us to what’s happening in the Senate right now. On party lines, Republicans defeated around 10 Democratic amendments that would have opened the trial to new witnesses and evidence."

According to Sargent, this is all part of Mitch McConnell's plot to "run the trial in absolute conformity with Trump’s legal and political needs — because he told us so." Additionally, Sargent argues that Roberts' calls for "equivalent decorum and norm-adherence seem completely detached from reality in the face of the gales of bad faith coming from Trump and his defenders."

"Trump’s eruption of lies in Davos added the exclamation mark to this wild imbalance."

Read Sargent's full piece over at The Washington Post.