If you need any more proof that the '90s are back and dumber than ever, look no further than today's Senate trial, where Kenneth Starr appeared to defend Donald Trump.

Starr, for those of you who were in the fetal stage the last time around, was the head of the investigation into the Whitewater scandal, which eventually led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying to Congress about his affair with a White House intern. If lying about an extramarital affair seems like a slightly smaller sin than attempting to bribe a foreign leader to interfere in a U.S. election, well, you aren't the author of the Starr Report or a Senate Republican.

Considering his own history, Starr's opening statements were rife with hypocrisy. He actually compared impeachment to war ("like war, impeachment is hell") and argued that we are now living in "the age of impeachment," conveniently ignoring his own role in ushering it in. The irony is delicious, or it would be if it weren't so fucking infuriating. As Max Boot said on Twitter, "Ken Starr would be more convincing if he were to say, 'I apologize for my role in impeaching Bill Clinton. It was all a big mistake. I too fell prey to the passions of the Age of Impeachment.'" But I won't hold my breath.

During his opening statements, Starr, like many Republicans before him, parroted the party line that impeachment should not take place in an election year and lamented the lack of bipartisan support for this impeachment, which, I think, says more about how divided Congress has grown over the past two decades than the charges against Donald Trump.

That's the thing about this whole show: As I wrote during the Democratic testimony, we already know how this show ends—not because Trump's actions weren't impeachable, but because it will come down to numbers, which are in the Republicans' favor. Apologies for mixing metaphors, but Trump doesn't just have homecourt advantage, he's got twice the number of jurors in the box. And Starr knows this too: He said there is "a profound danger" that the process "will be dominated by partisan considerations." You think??

The whole thing is such a foregone conclusion that it makes me think that we'd be better off with 12 citizens as the jury instead of 100 people whose political ambitions determine their votes. Of course, that's not how this works. Instead, we have the red team and the blue team endlessly repeating talking points (or, as Fiona Hill testified, Russian propaganda) while their fellow senators try not to fall asleep. So maybe Starr was right about one thing: Impeachment is hell and we're all living in it.