Six on Impeachment: Democrats bungled the first day of public impeachment hearings; The Made-for-TV Impeachment; Impeachment Hearings Open With Revelation on Trump’s Ukraine Pressure; "Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of firing Atkinson t
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Thanks John and Gary
"Was Trump unfair to our ambassador to Ukraine in relieving her from her duties? It certainly appears he was — but his right to do so under the Constitution is unquestionable. Did he use people outside the ordinary chain of authority to give him advice on Ukraine and help him make policy? He did — as is his right under the Constitution.
Kent and Taylor both expressed deep concern about how Ukrainian policy was somehow being undermined by a crew of shadow diplomats. This would be indeed a powerful concern if they believed that the policy being undermined was the president’s policy.
But that doesn’t appear to be the case. Rather, it appears Trump didn’t trust conventional diplomats to carry out the policy he wanted and turned to unconventional means to have it implemented.
This is important: The foreign policy of the US government doesn’t exist apart from the president. It doesn’t have its own independent track.
Therefore, the idea that Trump was using Rudy Giuliani and two confirmed US ambassadors to conduct a “shadow diplomacy,” as Rep. Val Demings charged Wednesday, is absurd on its face. The president’s diplomacy is American diplomacy."
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"With a deep, resonant voice that summoned memories of the most authoritative newscasters—his name and Walter Cronkite’s were trending together on Twitter shortly after his testimony began, though Edward R. Murrow’s smoky baritone also came to mind—Taylor methodically detailed his view of how “the official foreign policy of the United States” and vital aid to a struggling young democracy were undercut by the “irregular efforts” of a shadow diplomacy led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. In response to the first round of questioning from the committee’s Democratic chairman, Adam Schiff, Taylor eloquently summarized the high stakes of Ukraine’s resistance to Russian territorial aggression—and its need for American support—casting the case as a cause far above petty partisan squabbling.
“It affects the world we live in,” Taylor testified. “That our children and grandchildren will grow up in. This affects the kind of world we want to see. That affects our national interests very directly. Ukraine is on the front line of that conflict.”
And when the committee’s Democratic counsel, Daniel Goldman, asked Taylor, “in your decades of military service and diplomatic service representing the United States around the world, have you ever seen another example of foreign aid conditioned on the personal or political interests of the president of the United States?” Taylor answered flatly, “No, Mr. Goldman, I have not.”
Whether Taylor’s testimony moves the needle of public opinion any more than Mueller’s did remains an open question. As Taylor spoke, the Drudge Report featured ominous headlines: “Trump Nears Defining Hour,” “State Department Faces Biggest Crisis Since McCarthy,” and “Plan to Sacrifice Rudy,” but Breitbart News’s swift verdict on the hearing was dismissive: “BORING: 90 MINUTES BEFORE QUESTIONS BEGIN.” On Fox News, former Whitewater Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr was unmoved. “This is all hearsay,” he judged."
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WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives opened historic impeachment hearings on Wednesday and took startling new testimony from a senior American diplomat that further implicated President Trump in a campaign to pressure Ukraine to publicly commit to investigating former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
In a nationally televised hearing from a stately committee room across from the Capitol, William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, brought to life Democrats’ allegations that Mr. Trump had abused his office by trying to enlist a foreign power to help him in an election.
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Mr. Taylor testified to the House Intelligence Committee that he learned only recently of a July telephone call overheard by one of his aides in which the president was preoccupied with Ukraine’s willingness to say it would look into Mr. Biden and work by his son Hunter Biden for a Ukrainian energy firm. Immediately afterward, Mr. Taylor said, the aide had been informed that Mr. Trump cared more about “investigations of Biden” than he did about Ukraine."
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"Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) adores the colorful turn of phrase. In just one interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning, he threw in sayings like “any fair-minded person in the Milky Way,” “any lawyer, in my judgment, who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog” and “lap it up like a puppy.” He even referenced The Post’s motto, saying “I read somewhere that democracy dies in darkness.” Yet when it comes to impeachment proceedings, the threat to democracy isn’t darkness, but Kennedy and his fellow GOP senators’ ironclad determination to find President Trump innocent — by making it impossible for him to be guilty.
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The first step in this shell game is to eliminate the importance of the “quid pro quo.” Asked by host Margaret Brennan whether a quid pro quo for the president’s political benefit would be appropriate, Kennedy sidestepped: “Here are the two possible scenarios. Number one, the president asked for an investigation of a political rival. Number two, the president asked for an investigation of possible corruption by someone who happens to be a political rival. The latter would be in the national interest. The former would be in the president’s parochial interests and would be over the line.”
You may have noticed that Kennedy’s two distinct scenarios are, in fact, one scenario. It is literally impossible for the second scenario not to also be the first scenario and vice versa. But by pretending there is a distinction, the investigation of a political rival can be cast by Kennedy or another Trump defender as the investigation of someone “who happens to be a political rival” — a far less sinister action."
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"What a difference a few years can make. On Sunday, Haley gave an interview to CBS News to promote her new book, in which she recounts the nearly two years she spent working for the Trump Administration, as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. When the interviewer, Norah O’Donnell, asked whether Trump would ultimately be impeached and removed from office, Haley’s reply was entirely dismissive. “No. On what?” she said. “You’re gonna impeach a President for asking for a favor that didn’t happen and—and giving money, and it wasn’t withheld. I don’t know what you would impeach him on.”
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