Trump-hating celebrities led by George Takei and Alyssa Milano crow about his impeachment

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Celebrity detractors of Donald Trump are taking to Twitter to cheer the start of the former president’s Senate impeachment trial on a charge of inciting insurrection, with many calling for a swift conviction.

Actress Alyssa Milano was among those who ridiculed Trump’s lead defense attorney Bruce Castor, who argued on Tuesday that it was unconstitutional to hold a trial after Trump left office.

‘What the f*** is this Bruce guy talking about? He’s making zero sense and is really bad at this,’ tweeted Milano.

‘Seems like Trumps defense team is just making words to waste time,’ wrote actress Patricia Arquette.

‘I can’t believe they assigned Trump such a s****y Public Defender,’ joked comedian Jon Stewart.

The Senate voted voted 56-44 to proceed with its trial, rejecting the argument of Trump’s attorneys against its constitutionality, but the vote total suggested that the chamber will not come up with the 67 votes needed for a conviction.

The trial opened with a video of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which Star Trek star George Takei tweeted was ‘truly is enough, just watching this, to convict the ex-president.’

Singer Barbra Streisand, a prominent Democratic donor, praised the lead House impeachment manager, Maryland Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin, who became emotional while presenting the case against Trump.

‘Congressman Raskin moved me to tears describing his personal story of the seditionist January 6th insurrection,’ Streisand tweeted.

Comedian Rosie O’Donnell, a longtime Trump antagonist, pleaded with the Senate to convict, tweeting that Trump ‘designed and directed his supporters to storm the capital – he is guilty AF – country over trump – come on GOP – convict him.’

Actor Colin Hanks concurred, writing: ‘We cannot sit idly by and let the man, and his cronies, who incited this mob not face any repercussions.’ 

Director Rob Reiner weighed in, tweeting: ‘If this were a secret ballot, Trump’s conviction would be close to unanimous. For the sake of the preservation of Democracy, I urge Republican Senators to vote your conscience.’

Comedian Kathy Griffin also celebrated the start of the trial, tweeting: ‘Impeachment day! I’m making my husband call me ‘Miss Griffin, Esquire’ today. I also told him if he wants to get some, he has to ask to approach the bench.’ 

Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House on Jan. 13 on a charge of inciting an insurrection, although his conviction remains unlikely.

Finding him guilty would require a two-thirds majority, meaning that at least 17 Republicans would need to join the Senate’s 48 Democrats and two independents in voting against Trump, who remains his party’s most powerful figure even out of office.

Trump is the only president to go on trial in the Senate after leaving office and the only one to be impeached twice. He is just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached at all.

The trial was held with extraordinary security around the Capitol following the siege, including armed security forces and a perimeter of fencing and razor wire.

Trump’s defense argued he was exercising his right to free speech under the Constitution’s First Amendment when he addressed supporters before the Capitol attack.

‘We can’t possibly be suggesting that we punish people for political speech in this country,’ Bruce Castor, one of Trump’s lawyers, said.

Castor said the storming of the Capitol ‘should be denounced in the most vigorous terms,’ but argued that ‘a small group of criminals,’ not Trump, were responsible for the violence.

The Senate voted on Tuesday to move forward with Trump’s impeachment trial, rejecting a claim the proceeding was unconstitutional after viewing graphic video of the January attack.

The video presented by the team of nine House of Representatives Democrats interspersed images of the Jan. 6 Capitol violence with clips of Trump’s incendiary speech to a crowd of supporters moments earlier urging them to ‘fight like hell’ to overturn his Nov. 3 election defeat.

Senators, serving as jurors, watched as screens showed Trump’s followers throwing down barriers and hitting police officers at the Capitol. The video also included the moment when police guarding the House chamber fatally shot protester Ashli Babbitt, one of five people including a police officer who died in the rampage.

The mob attacked police, sent lawmakers scrambling for safety and interrupted the formal congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s victory after Trump had spent two months challenging the election results based on false claims of widespread voting fraud.

‘If that’s not an impeachment offense, then there is no such thing,’ Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, who led the prosecution, told the assembled senators after showing the video.

He wept as he recounted how relatives he brought to the Capitol that day to witness the election certification had to shelter in an office near the House floor, saying: ‘They thought they were going to die.’

In contrast to the Democrats’ emotional presentation, Trump’s lawyers attacked the process, arguing that the proceeding was an unconstitutional, partisan effort to close off Trump’s political future even after he had already departed the White House.

‘What they really want to accomplish here in the name of the Constitution is to bar Donald Trump from ever running for political office again, but this is an affront to the Constitution no matter who they target today,’ David Schoen, one of Trump’s lawyers, told senators.

He denounced the ‘insatiable lust for impeachment’ among Democrats before airing his own video, which stitched together clips of various Democratic lawmakers calling for Trump’s impeachment going back to 2017.