November 15, 2019

Sheesh, what a day! The stories themselves were expected, but there were surprises in them that will end up in the history books.

Today was the second day of public testimony in Trump’s impeachment hearing and it had, one might say, pizzazz. Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch testified, clearly articulating that Trump undercut American policy to fight corruption in Ukraine, seeking instead to use backchannel leverage for his own benefit, quite like the oligarchs with whom he was working. Her testimony was clear and compelling, showing that Trump and his people were working with corrupt oligarchs to overturn the rules of law in Ukraine and, by extension, in America.

This was the gist of the testimony even before it offered a real-time example of Trump’s tactics. While Yovanovitch was speaking, the president tweeted “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”

Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff read the tweet to Yovanovitch in real time, and we saw, live, the reaction of a woman who has worked for the State Department with distinction for 33 years, to such commentary from the president. Pressed by Schiff, she said it was “intimidating.” This was exactly the word Schiff wanted her to say, of course, because intimidating a witness is a crime. Immediately after Yovanovich’s testimony, the hearings stopped briefly so House members could attend a vote. In the break, news anchors discussed the exchange over the tweet. Democrats were adamant that they had a new article for impeachment, and even Republicans shook their heads. Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace noted “the really dramatic moment is that this wasn’t just testimony about the past, this played out in real time with the president attacking her… and she said ‘I feel this is quite intimidating.’ That does raise the possibility of witness intimidation as a new charge here.” For his part, Trump later told reporters he was just exercising his right to “free speech.”

This moment, the moment that Americans watched their president attack a public servant testifying before Congress, will make the history books.

For their part, the Republicans are still playing to the Fox News Channel to try to keep their base. It particularly pissed me off that, at one point during today’s testimony, Ranking Member of the Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes (CA) set up a storming-the-SCIF type moment. No one can speak to the record in the House without being recognized by whoever is the Chair at that moment (for obvious reasons). Going into these hearings, the committee members agreed that the Chair and the ranking member could only yield their time to their own respective counsels.  Nonetheless, Nunes tried repeatedly to yield his time to another House member, Elise Stephanik (R-NY). When Schiff denied her the floor, she repeatedly accused him of silencing her. And that, of course, has played on the Fox News Channel: Schiff is “GAGGING THE GENTLEWOMAN.” It was another manufactured outrage. These drive me nuts because they are straight up lies, and seem to me to be profoundly disrespectful of both voters and the rules by which our democracy operates.  

While Yovanovitch was testifying in public, a staffer at the US Embassy in Kyiv, David Holmes, testified behind closed doors about the telephone call he witnessed between Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Trump the day after the infamous July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. The one he heard was quite a call. According to Holmes, Trump asked Sondland if Zelensky was going to “do the investigation” and Sondland assured the president that “He loves your ass…. He’s gonna do it….” Holmes claims to have asked Sondland “if it was true that the President did not give a s--- about Ukraine,” and that Sondland answered that Trump cared only about “Big stuff…. That benefits the President, like the Biden investigation that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, a federal jury convicted Trump’s campaign advisor Roger Stone on seven counts of lying to Congress about his relationship with Wikileaks and its dump of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and of tampering with a witness. The jury took less than two days to reach a verdict. Trump immediately called the verdict a “double standard like never seen before in the history of our Country,” and asked why “Crooked Hillary, Comey, Strozok, Page, McCabe, Brennan, Clapper, Shifty Schiff, Ohr & Nellie, Steele & all of the others, including even Mueller himself” weren’t in similar trouble.

Later today, against the advice of the Pentagon, the president pardoned three soldiers convicted of war crimes. He appears to be testing how far he can go with pardons, and there is speculation that this was a test drive for a pardon of Stone, who has been one of his team for a long time. Tonight, on Tucker Carlson’s show on the Fox News Channel, Stone’s daughter asked Trump to pardon her father. I would add that it is not a good thing for a president who has clearly exhibited authoritarian impulses to advertise that he is willing to pardon people who commit war crimes.

I don’t really have a strong closing for tonight. I’m just sort of gobsmacked that we have a president, a man who holds the same office that Abraham Lincoln did, who has pardoned war criminals, been shown to have extorted a foreign leader for help in his own reelection, and threatened an American patriot while she testified before Congress. All in one day.

An early night for me, and I need it. G’night, all.