Much of the attention in Washington, D.C. this week is on the United States Senate, which is hearing arguments in the impeachment trial of former president Donald J Trump. It’s been quite the spectacle, as Democrats spent the last few days making the argument that Trump needs to be held accountable for his role in stirring up the violent mob that stormed the United States Capitol in an insurrection attempt on January 6 of this year designed to try and prevent Congress from certifying that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, while Republicans, uh, don’t.
The trial served as an introduction for many to Bruce Castor, one of the lawyers Trump hired to try and make the case that he should not be impeached by the Senate. His opening argument went so poorly that Trump was apparently pretty mad about the whole thing, but on Friday, he got the chance to try and make up for it. Instead, Castor stumbled through his collection of arguments, including one moment where he tried to address a phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump is on the record trying to push Raffensperger to illegally flip the election results in his state.
The issue: Castor mixed up “Brad Raffensperger” and “Ben Roethlisberger,” nearly saying that the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback is the Secretary of State of Georgia.
"Georgia Secretary of State Ben Roethlisberger" pic.twitter.com/8CqLqvkB9a
— Jacob Rubashkin (@JacobRubashkin) February 12, 2021
I think we can settle on “Ben Roffinsberger” here, which is, objectively, closer to “Ben Roethlisberger” than “Brad Raffensperger.” The thing with this is that Castor is a native of Pennsylvania — the mythical land known to everyone in the commonwealth as “just outside Philly” — so you’d assume that he’d know not to come close to saying “Ben Roethlisberger” here. Anyway, in his career, Roethlisberger has played against the Atlanta Falcons three times, recording a 2-1 record.