Your reaction to the first public hearing in the congressional impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump likely depends on whether you speak traditional, fact-based English or are more versed in Fox-News-fever-swamp speak.
Wednesday’s televised hearing featured Bill Taylor, acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. State Department. Both men are lifelong public servants who have served under Republican and Democratic presidents. Taylor is a veteran and a West Point graduate.
Their expertise and sober, cautious testimony fit the moment and stood in stark contrast to the sweaty and conspiratorial glarble-flarble that made up Republican Rep. Devin Nunes’ opening statement. The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee — who, it’s worth noting, is suing a Twitter parody account that pretends to be a Nunes-hating cow — offered no real defense of the president. He just decried the proceedings as “a carefully orchestrated media smear campaign” and tossed out some right-wing conspiracy red meat that was one Benghazi reference shy of a Sean Hannity opening monologue.
Democrats stuck to evidence from previous closed-door testimony and to the transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which the president appears to leverage congressionally-approved military aid to get Zelenskiy to dig up dirt on a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. They largely avoided any cutesy moments or dramatic oversteps.
Republicans relied on Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan talking loud and fast while pushing a “NOTHING EVER HAPPENED!” narrative and on an array of questions intended to push conspiracy theories, deflect to other people, such as former President Barack Obama or the dreaded “whistleblower,” and generally muddy the waters.
How effective that was depends, again, on what language you speak.
Native fact-based-English speakers likely heard Kent and Taylor discuss their deep concerns about U.S. foreign policy being conducted on the sly by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s unhinged personal attorney, and Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union who earned his title by donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee.
And they saw moments like this, when Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell described military aid to a country under attack from Russia being held up for political purposes and asked Taylor: “Can we also agree that it’s just wrong?”
Taylor paused a few tense moments and then responded, simply: “Yes.”
If you spend your days sweating out common sense in the Trump-is-never-wrong steam rooms of Fox News and Breitbart, all those pesky details were part of a Deep State coup meant to override the 2016 election and bring down your hero-god president.
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From Nunes’ opening statement, and sprinkled throughout Republican questioning, we heard: Russia hoax; corrupt media; “nude pictures of Trump”; secret depositions; “a cultlike atmosphere in the basement of the Capitol”; the Democrats’ Star Chamber; and the name Alexandra Chalupa.
Rational Americans who have better things to do than buy testosterone supplements on InfoWars (Google it) won’t know what half those references mean. Take Chalupa, for example, a person Republicans are calling to testify in the impeachment hearings.
She’s a Democratic consultant and Ukrainian-American activist who right-wing polymaths believe was at the center of alleged Democratic collusion with Ukrainian officials aimed at damaging Trump’s presidential campaign. The problem with that theory is that facts don’t support it and Chalupa is champing at the bit to testify in the impeachment inquiry so she can show that Republicans are full of bunk.
Chalupa told Politico on Tuesday: “It’s clear Republicans are gaslighting the public by putting me on their list of witnesses. It’s a bluff meant to smear and distract from Donald Trump’s impeachable offenses. I’m the last person Republicans want to testify publicly. My testimony would be especially damaging to Donald Trump, Paul Manafort and Vladimir Putin. The GOP knows this.”
So why would they want to call her? Because the facts don’t matter to people who don’t speak fact-based English.
What matters is that Fox News viewers hear the appropriate conspiracy buzzwords they’ve been programmed to respond to with a snarl. If she testifies and the swath of American viewers who aren’t steeped in right-wing mythology roll their eyes and ask, “How the heck did that help the Republicans’ case?” it doesn’t matter. They aren’t the intended audience.
For the GOP, it’s all about pleasuring the base.
As far as an actual defense of the president’s actions, the best Republicans did Wednesday was effectively say, “Hey, he did wind up releasing the money, and there was no investigation. So, you know, big whup!” (Make sure you mention this to anyone presently convicted of attempted robbery.)
That clever-if-you-listen-only-to-Rush-Limbaugh defense overlooks the fact that the military aid was only released AFTER a whistleblower report had been filed and it was clear the whole scheme was going to become public.
But hey, facts are for liberal America-haters.
The best hope Democrats have for convincing whatever sliver of the populace hasn’t already made up its mind between “HE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED!” and “HE COULDN’T BE MORE INNOCENT!” is to get out of the way while studied patriots such as Taylor and Kent calmly testify.
Hopefully some will see the difference between love of country and love of getting retweeted by the president.
And hopefully those folks will remember, and long for, a better version of America than what we have now.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/colu...0191113-4j37wip2hraq3kzqiwf7didt6m-story.html
Wednesday’s televised hearing featured Bill Taylor, acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. State Department. Both men are lifelong public servants who have served under Republican and Democratic presidents. Taylor is a veteran and a West Point graduate.
Their expertise and sober, cautious testimony fit the moment and stood in stark contrast to the sweaty and conspiratorial glarble-flarble that made up Republican Rep. Devin Nunes’ opening statement. The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee — who, it’s worth noting, is suing a Twitter parody account that pretends to be a Nunes-hating cow — offered no real defense of the president. He just decried the proceedings as “a carefully orchestrated media smear campaign” and tossed out some right-wing conspiracy red meat that was one Benghazi reference shy of a Sean Hannity opening monologue.
Democrats stuck to evidence from previous closed-door testimony and to the transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which the president appears to leverage congressionally-approved military aid to get Zelenskiy to dig up dirt on a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. They largely avoided any cutesy moments or dramatic oversteps.
Republicans relied on Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan talking loud and fast while pushing a “NOTHING EVER HAPPENED!” narrative and on an array of questions intended to push conspiracy theories, deflect to other people, such as former President Barack Obama or the dreaded “whistleblower,” and generally muddy the waters.
How effective that was depends, again, on what language you speak.
Native fact-based-English speakers likely heard Kent and Taylor discuss their deep concerns about U.S. foreign policy being conducted on the sly by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s unhinged personal attorney, and Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union who earned his title by donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee.
And they saw moments like this, when Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell described military aid to a country under attack from Russia being held up for political purposes and asked Taylor: “Can we also agree that it’s just wrong?”
Taylor paused a few tense moments and then responded, simply: “Yes.”
If you spend your days sweating out common sense in the Trump-is-never-wrong steam rooms of Fox News and Breitbart, all those pesky details were part of a Deep State coup meant to override the 2016 election and bring down your hero-god president.
inRead invented by Teads
ADVERTISEMENT
From Nunes’ opening statement, and sprinkled throughout Republican questioning, we heard: Russia hoax; corrupt media; “nude pictures of Trump”; secret depositions; “a cultlike atmosphere in the basement of the Capitol”; the Democrats’ Star Chamber; and the name Alexandra Chalupa.
Rational Americans who have better things to do than buy testosterone supplements on InfoWars (Google it) won’t know what half those references mean. Take Chalupa, for example, a person Republicans are calling to testify in the impeachment hearings.
She’s a Democratic consultant and Ukrainian-American activist who right-wing polymaths believe was at the center of alleged Democratic collusion with Ukrainian officials aimed at damaging Trump’s presidential campaign. The problem with that theory is that facts don’t support it and Chalupa is champing at the bit to testify in the impeachment inquiry so she can show that Republicans are full of bunk.
Chalupa told Politico on Tuesday: “It’s clear Republicans are gaslighting the public by putting me on their list of witnesses. It’s a bluff meant to smear and distract from Donald Trump’s impeachable offenses. I’m the last person Republicans want to testify publicly. My testimony would be especially damaging to Donald Trump, Paul Manafort and Vladimir Putin. The GOP knows this.”
So why would they want to call her? Because the facts don’t matter to people who don’t speak fact-based English.
What matters is that Fox News viewers hear the appropriate conspiracy buzzwords they’ve been programmed to respond to with a snarl. If she testifies and the swath of American viewers who aren’t steeped in right-wing mythology roll their eyes and ask, “How the heck did that help the Republicans’ case?” it doesn’t matter. They aren’t the intended audience.
For the GOP, it’s all about pleasuring the base.
As far as an actual defense of the president’s actions, the best Republicans did Wednesday was effectively say, “Hey, he did wind up releasing the money, and there was no investigation. So, you know, big whup!” (Make sure you mention this to anyone presently convicted of attempted robbery.)
That clever-if-you-listen-only-to-Rush-Limbaugh defense overlooks the fact that the military aid was only released AFTER a whistleblower report had been filed and it was clear the whole scheme was going to become public.
But hey, facts are for liberal America-haters.
The best hope Democrats have for convincing whatever sliver of the populace hasn’t already made up its mind between “HE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED!” and “HE COULDN’T BE MORE INNOCENT!” is to get out of the way while studied patriots such as Taylor and Kent calmly testify.
Hopefully some will see the difference between love of country and love of getting retweeted by the president.
And hopefully those folks will remember, and long for, a better version of America than what we have now.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/colu...0191113-4j37wip2hraq3kzqiwf7didt6m-story.html
