The Trump lawyers were familiar only with normal courtroom practices, as opposed to the procedures for an impeachment, where the jury effectively sets the rules. Trump’s team assumed that jurisdiction would be the limited first-day agenda, enforced by … well, they had not gone so far as to think that through. In fact, there was no enforcer here except a majority vote. They had been briefed by McConnell’s chief counsel, Andrew Ferguson, about what to expect. Ferguson, the Trumpers understood, very clearly hated the president and would have gladly pushed the Trump team in front of an oncoming bus. Still, though, the McConnell people were as anxious to get this wrapped up as anybody. Ferguson’s message could not have been clearer. The Democrats were going to heavily rely on video to make their case, and their opening presentation was going to be an emotional barn burner. Plan accordingly.

Indeed, the Dems largely dispensed with the jurisdictional matter—that was beside the point. The Senate would either hold Donald Trump responsible for being Donald Trump or not. Therefore, the job at hand was to show Donald Trump in full: chaos, mayhem, death, and destruction at the president’s hands.

Digital tools have made video storage and editing an easy process, turning documentary filmmaking—that is, the repurposing and quoting of archival and news footage—into the journalism form of our time. Or, as it were, the propaganda form. It may not be possible to customize any message by the selection and cutting of video footage, but close. What’s more, as an emotional lever, it is far more powerful than any other evidence. Indeed, it pretends to be reality itself: better than real.

It was therefore not just the certain facts—Donald Trump exhorting a crowd and then parts of that crowd marching on, breaching the barricades, and invading the Capitol, killing several people and threatening many more—but the bloody pictures of it all.

It was Donald Trump in black coat, all grim visage, strutting affect, and extreme language, seemingly wholly unconcerned with what actions he might inspire and provoke. And then it was the day of the locust: people directly connected to the president but unrecognizable in any normal civil context, a self-styled militia or vanguard, unleashed against the U.S. government.

That was the presentation. That was the message. Those were the pictures.

The garrulous and voluble president, liking nothing so much as to memorialize or immortalize himself on television, had left an indelible video record—and not just on January 6, but through countless inciting exhortations in the months leading up to the sixth. The Democrats in their cinematic opening laid all this out with narrative rhythm, clarity, and force.

The president, said a stunned Bruce Castor, coming back into the LBJ conference room after watching the Democrats’ presentation before the Senate, the large portrait of LBJ looking down on the Trump defense team, was “smoked.”