Seth Meyers: A Closer Look at Trump’s changing impeachment defense

Late Night with Seth Meyers took A Closer Look at how impeachment defense has gone from ‘no quid pro quo’ to Trump can do anything he wants.

You didn’t have to follow the news with all that much intensity to see that President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense was facing an uphill battle. Just watching Late Night with Seth Meyers has been a good way of hearing all the evidence and seeing how Seth Meyers connected all the dots. So when the defense changed once again, Meyers was again ready to respond.

The difficulty of proving President Trump did not commit an impeachable offense may be irrelevant at the end of the day. Republican Senators have not provided much hope that they will break with their party or go against President Trump and his base.

Still, the trial must go on and Democrats continue to make their case that President Trump abused his power and obstructed Congress when he withheld military aid to Ukraine and then tried to cover it up.

If you have been watching Late Night or “A Closer Look” segments then you are probably familiar with the Trump defense. Or at least some version of it. That’s because it has changed slightly at times and drastically at others. That was the idea behind Thursday night’s edition of “A Closer Look” as Meyers once again responded.

The argument that President Trump can do whatever he wants finally made its way into the impeachment trial. It was only a matter of time given the number of occasions in which President Trump has cited Article Two of the Constitution. Meyers has reacted to these claims in the past as part of his claim that President Trump viewed himself as above the law. Meyers is now worried that his lawyers share the same opinion.

Meyers goes on to argue that this defense reflects the actual philosophy behind the Republican Party. For Meyers, the GOP is about imposing its will on everyone else in an authoritarian style. No longer is the party about limited government or reverence for the Constitution.

The best example of this that Meyers can point to is the argument offered by Alan Dershowitz. The lawyer is a member of President Trump’s defense team and contended that a president can do whatever necessary to ensure re-election if that re-election is in the public’s best interest. Dershowitz’s position was immediately shot down by a majority of people and here Meyers joins in, too.

The argument is a far cry from the “no quid pro quo,” “no pressure” “perfect phone call” that President Trump and his supporters made when the story first broke. For Meyers, it make it more obvious that something illegal took place and Republicans want to ignore it to keep President Trump in office. That mentality means that no defense is too absurd and no argument can’t change as the GOP sees fit.

However unlikely it is, if witnesses are allowed to be called in President Trump’s impeachment trial then the Republican defense will once again be under pressure. It will surely change and morph as new evidence is revealed and will surely get a reaction from Late Night with Seth Meyers once again.