John Roberts finally woke up

| 10:15 pm EST January 29, 2020
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Before Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial began, it was easy to predict what role Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts would end up playing in it. Roberts was going to base his approach on the appearance of propriety. Not actual propriety, mind you. Roberts has shown with his votes over the years that he doesn’t care about that. But he’s always worried very much about the appearance that he’s being fair to both sides. It’s a narcissism thing, we suppose.

Going into the impeachment trial, John Roberts was surely going to try to assert himself as little as possible, in the hope that history wouldn’t even remember he was involved. But if anyone involved in the trial pushed him to the point where he feared that he’d be seen as complicit with one side or the other, he would push back just enough to feel satisfied that he’d distanced himself from that particular side.

Throughout the first week of the trial, Roberts might as well have not been there. The only time he spoke up, to generically stress decorum to both sides, was absurd. He didn’t ask Trump’s side to stop lying, or anything like that. He simply asked both sides to be nice to each other. But tonight, Trump’s goons finally pushed Roberts to the point where he woke up and took something of a stand.

Today was the day that Senators got to submit questions for the prosecution and/or defense to answer. John Roberts had the job of reading the questions aloud. Senator Rand Paul, the former Trump detractor who has since become a suspiciously cartoonish Trump cheerleader, tried to get Roberts to read aloud a question that included the name of the alleged whistleblower. Roberts refused to do it. It’s about one-tenth of what Roberts should be doing to make this a fair trial. But at least he’s awake now.