Bruce Castor’s impeachment trial speech spawns memes and confusion

Former President Donald Trump may be banned from Twitter, but his impeachment attorney Bruce Castor is dominating the site.

Castor’s rambling opening statement at Trump’s second impeachment trial Tuesday afternoon confused the public and spawned memes all over Twitter, landing Castor in a media spotlight the former prosecutor and Montgomery County commissioner has enjoyed often over his career.

To begin his statement, Castor jumped from anecdote to anecdote, referencing the Federalist papers; founding fathers James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin; and ancient Senates in Greece and Rome. He only mentioned his client five minutes into the speech.

Castor attempted to argue that Trump’s second impeachment was an unfair partisan response to the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6.

“The political pendulum will shift one day,” he said. “This chamber and the chamber across the way will change one day and partisan impeachments will become commonplace.”

» READ MORE: Bruce Castor had a big spotlight to open Trump’s impeachment defense. It didn’t go well.

Castor’s nearly 50-minute speech also included non sequiturs such as, “Nebraska, you’re going to hear, is quite a judicial thinking place.“

Other remarks that drew attention from observers included, “If we’re really going to use pre-Revolutionary history in Great Britain, then the precedent is we have a parliament and we have a king. Is that the precedent that we are headed for?” and “This trial is not about trading liberty for security. It’s about suggesting that it is a good idea that we give up those liberties that we have so long fought for.”

Some popular Castor memes featured a GIF from The Weeknd’s Sunday Super Bowl performance where the frantic singer finds himself lost in a maze of funhouse mirrors: “Me, trying to understand what Bruce Castor is talking about,” the caption read.

Another meme referenced an incident this week in which a Texas attorney was unable to turn off a kitten face filter function during a Zoom court hearing. “Checking in on Bruce Castor,” the tweet read, above an image of the Texas attorney-turned-virtual-kitten with a worried expression.

Before his latest gig as Trump’s lead counsel, Castor served as district attorney in Montgomery County for eight years, ran unsuccessfully for Pennsylvania attorney general, and worked at his own private legal practice.

» READ MORE: Searing images of a Capitol under siege and arguments over the Constitution open Trump’s impeachment trial

Although Trump lauded Castor, who became infamous for declining to prosecute Bill Cosby, as a “highly respected trial lawyer,” many of the former president’s allies and GOP officials in his home state of Pennsylvania were surprised at the choice.

Castor ended his speech by contradicting his client, who has maintained baselessly that the election was fraudulent, by stating that “the object of the Constitution has been achieved” because Americans chose to vote Trump out of office.

“The American people just spoke and they just changed administrations,” he said. “They’re smart enough to pick a new administration if they don’t like the old one and they just did.”