Well, that was a blur, and a bore. After two weeks of public impeachment hearings, I’m left wondering what Democrats were thinking. I still don’t know.
When they announced they would be holding public hearings I assumed Democrats thought they had something on President Trump, something tangible and obvious they wanted the public to see. Something that would shock the system and change at least some minds. But they had nothing.
I was shocked at just how weak their attempt to weave together a story of corruption about the phone call with the Ukrainian president was. Bathrooms in truck stops are filled with more convincing graffiti about where to find a good time than the witnesses Democrats called and their third-hand gossip about what someone told them they heard from another person. Judge Judy would laugh this “evidence” out of court.
I’m willing to believe the Spidey-sense of Spiderman, everyone else is going to have to produce a little more than what they “figured.” And none of them offered anything. I was left wondering why they bothered to call them.
When you go public you put your best witnesses out there, hit the ground running and make the strongest case possible. All we got was supposition from career bureaucrats who didn’t like policy changes the elected president was making and don’t like him personally.
The careerists all believe they know better than the president, which is irrelevant. They haven’t run for a bus, let alone the presidency. Their job is to advise, then implement the decisions of the administration, even if those decisions go against their advice. If they can’t or won’t do that, they should resign. It’s really that simple.
The whole show wasn’t a complete wash, however. We did learn a couple of important, if not interesting, things.
First, Ukraine is the most important country on the face of the Earth. It must’ve come as a surprise to everyone, but witness after witness talked about just how vital the security of Ukraine is to the national security of the United States. Exactly how remains a mystery, but one of the witnesses testified about the importance of the Ukrainians fighting Russia “over there” so we don’t have to fight them over here. So apparently, if Ukraine falls, the next step is an invasion of Florida, or something.
Nothing against the security of Ukraine, I wish them freedom and prosperity and have no problem helping them out with weapons, but I don’t think our fate is tied to theirs. I think there are few more dominoes to fall before we all have to develop a taste for borscht.
But no bureaucrat specializing in any policy or area of the world will ever admit their life’s work is only marginally relevant, they all believe it’s all that matters. Most don’t. The entire conga line of witnesses thought the key to everything lies in Ukraine because it’s what they do.
And second, liberals suddenly love the military. When Alexander Vindman came under tough questioning – questions he handled horribly – Democrats uniformly clutched their pearls that anyone would dare challenge an arrogant bureaucrat who thinks he’s the smartest person in whatever time zone he currently inhabits.
Outrage was the order of the day over not bowing to Vindman’s every whim and fantasy. How dare, Democrats exclaimed, Republicans say anything short of glowing about a man in uniform? Oliver North, Dan Crenshaw, David Petraeus, every soldier serving in the War on Terror compared to Nazis, Soviets, and the Khmer Rouge by the second-in-command Democrat in the Senate, and everyone who served in Vietnam who watched Democrats nominate a man who accused them of war crimes (just to name a few), were shocked to hear of this new rule that disagreeing with anyone who wore the uniform of the United States is not allowed. But then were it not for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all.
Democrats may have thought they had something, though I can’t imagine how. If that’s all they have, I’m almost embarrassed for them. Almost.
Witness after witness, all of their choosing or approval, and a weaker position than before the started. Five days of testimony and they come out the other end worse off than they went in. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving group of people.
Derek is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses