An ancient parchment resurfaced on social media within the last couple days. It is grainy and grey and the lettering looks like smudged cuneiform, or hieroglyphics, but is actually old fashioned newsprint like came from a typewriter. In the corner of the parchment is a photo, a headshot, of a funny looking man in thick, black-framed eyeglasses. His name is Art Buchwald and the parchment is his rendition of the talking points he put together for his Republican friends as they tried to defend President Nixon against the tide of his impeachment.

Clearly, after this week’s troublesome public hearings in the House of Representatives investigating the accusations against the current president, my Republican friends can use a summary of their defensive talking points for the embattled Trump. Let’s list a few and see if it helps. In President Trump’s defense:

• The ambassador to Ukraine, Yovanovitch, never hung the President’s portrait in the embassy! Certain grounds for termination!
• The phone call was perfect. It was a perfect phone call. None other like it!
• Crimea and most of Ukraine are actually the tribal lands of Russians.

• Obama never sold Javelins!
• Joe Biden equals Joe Biden Junior, equals ride on Air Force One, equals job with energy company, and ergo, no quid pro quo.
• Foreign aid is bad.
• Hillary equals Pizzagate, equals pedophilia, equals Epstein, and equals the Tooth Fairy.
• Get over it. Everybody does it.
• Just because 12 Russians were indicted by Mueller doesn’t mean the Ukrainians didn’t do it.
• Trump was duly elected with a vast majority of votes. You can’t overturn an election.
• Fake news, look at them out there.
• Trump can’t be responsible for Giuliani. Nor anybody else on his staff, or not on his staff, paid or unpaid, intelligent or scatterbrained.
• Trump is being Trump.
• The whistleblower did it all and we know who he is and so should you.
• It is hearsay and second hand and don’t listen to the firsthand accounts and anyone with firsthand knowledge is covered by executive privilege and no-one should be testifying. Testifying is bad, bad, bad.
• The Ukrainians have the Server.
• You impeach Trump, you get Pence!
• The Ukrainians did not support Trump during the primaries so what do you expect?
• Trump made a mistake. He’s only human.
• It’s about corruption. You know how the President feels about corruption if it not his own.
• Obama whispered to the Russians. Hillary pushed restart button!
• The aid was released. No speech was given on CNN by the Ukraine President Volod Zelensky, just like if you rob a bank and forget to take the money with you out to the getaway car, there has been no robbery.
• The Dow Industrials hit a new high.
• The Steele Dossier and the Moscow sex tapes.
• Impeachment is bad for black employment rates.
• Look at the size of his motorcade.
• The Senate is Republican, therefore impeachment charges cannot be true.
• Andrew Johnson was acquitted.
• The Democrats are not passing any legislation.
• Pompeo was fifth in his class.
• CloudStrike has all the answers and it’s all in Ukraine.
• The only thing wrong with Trump is he got caught.
• But he’s a businessman. They make deals.
• What’s wrong with getting dirt on your opponents no matter where it comes from?
• Are you going to believe these homeless, lifetime state department officials feeding from the public trough, or the President of the United States?
• (And one irrefutably effective Republican talking-point straight from Buchwald and still applicable today) “What about Chappaquiddick?”

Special thanks to Art Buchwald whose column appeared in the Washington Post in 1973. I remember reading it.