So on the day Ambassador Yovanovich testifies to her integrity and patriotism, Trump tweet attacks a Congressional witness, and Roger Stone is convicted of, among other things, witness tampering on behalf of Donald Trump.
That makes this NBC Wednesday analysis unfortunate at best:
Plenty of substance but little drama on first day of impeachment hearings
Analysis: The first two witnesses called Wednesday testified to Trump's scheme, but lacked the pizazz necessary to capture public attention.
But, you know, we Deep Staters knew the pizazz was coming.
Today will be a bit tweet heavy to capture the moment.
This tweet thread from Greg Sargent captures the new David Holmes [who overheard the Trump-Sondland phone call] testimony:
Vanity Fair:
“THIS IS THE WAY GANGSTERS OPERATE”: A HERO IS BORN AS YOVANOVITCH GIVES VOICE TO WIDESPREAD RAGE AT STATE
More in sadness than in anger, she laid the failure to insulate her against the Trump administration’s politicization of diplomacy in Ukraine at the feet of her bosses at the State Department, starting with Mike Pompeo. “I remain disappointed that the department’s leadership and others have declined to acknowledge that the attacks against me and others are dangerously wrong. This is about far more than me or a couple of individuals. As Foreign Service professionals are being denigrated and undermined, the institution is also being degraded. This will soon cause real harm, if it hasn’t already,” she said in her opening statement. “The attacks are leading to a crisis in the State Department…This is not a time to undercut our diplomats. It is the responsibility of the department’s leaders to stand up for the institution and the individuals who make that institution the most effective diplomatic force in the world.”
As for how it went, let’s just say there was pizazz:
That’s because there is not really a defense.
13 million people watched day 1. That’s twice the usual daytime audience. And an anecdote:
Aaron Rupar/Vox:
Trump attacked Marie Yovanovitch on Twitter during her testimony. She responded in real time.
Even Fox News thought Trump’s tweets strayed dangerously close to witness intimidation.
Shortly after Trump posted his tweets, the Democrat leading the impeachment inquiry, Rep. Adam Schiff, asked Yovanovitch to respond to them.
“Well, I don’t think I have such powers — not in Mogadishu, Somalia, not in other places,” she began. “I actually think that where I served over the years, I and others have demonstrably made things better for the US as well as for the countries that I’ve served in.”
Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg:
Is the Media Blowing the Impeachment Hearings?
“Theater criticism” has its place when it comes to big public spectacles. But the press needs to get it right.
Sometimes it’s just a misreading of the situation. Did Wednesday’s hearing have plenty of “fireworks and explosive moments”? Did it have “pizazz”? It doesn’t matter. What Democrats needed to do was convey to viewers the seriousness of President Donald Trump’s misconduct and their intention to treat it as a threat to the Constitution rather than to conduct a partisan exercise. To complain about a lack of fireworks is like judging a symphony by the standards of a monster-truck rally.
It also gets the audience wrong. Democrats of course know that most people won’t watch hours of congressional hearings. What they can do is lay out the story clearly, so that the media can melt it down into broadcast segments and front-page articles that less-attentive citizens will see. Those media decisions will be driven as much by the perceived importance of these events as by the ratings they get. And pizazz isn’t always the way to convey that.
Jamelle Bouie/NY Times:
Stephen Miller’s Sinister Syllabus
Leaked emails from 2015 and 2016 show one of Trump’s top advisers trying to teach Breitbart editors a thing or two about white nationalism.
An analysis of more than 900 emails from Miller to editors at Breitbart News, the report shows Miller’s single-minded focus on nonwhite immigration and his immersion in an online ecosystem of virulent, unapologetic racism. The Miller of these emails isn’t just an immigration restrictionist, he’s an ideological white nationalist.
It’s tempting to dismiss this as old news. Miller is, after all, the architect behind the Trump administration’s most draconian border and immigration policies, as well as some of its harshest anti-immigrant rhetoric.
The first travel ban, rolled out within days of President Trump’s inauguration? That was Miller. Family separation at the border? That was Miller too. The relentless effort to limit asylum, deport protected migrants and block refugees from entering the country? Also Miller. The president’s January address from the Oval Office, in which he spun gruesome tales of immigrant crime and violence (“In California, an Air Force veteran was raped, murdered and beaten to death with a hammer by an illegal alien with a long criminal history”)? Stephen Miller.
But suspecting Miller’s ideological allegiances is quite different than knowing them. In the absence of proof, there was room for plausible deniability. That’s how a conservative magazine editor could praise Miller as a “wunderkind” for his command of the “details” of immigration policy while dismissing evidence that Miller was once close to Richard Spencer, a prominent neo-Nazi.
With the emails — supplied by Katie McHugh, a former editor at Breitbart — we now know what Miller was reading and thinking about in the year before he joined the Trump campaign. And there’s no denying the nature of the material.
Nicholas Bagley/NY Times:
Some of Trump’s Most Devious Lies Are About Health Care
What the administration says it’s doing and what it’s actually doing on health care are worlds apart.
n the meantime, the Trump administration is trying to sabotage the exchanges. A new rule that took effect last month will exploit a loophole in the law allowing for the sale of “short term” health plans.
Originally meant to serve as a stopgap for those with temporary breaks in coverage, short-term plans discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions and usually exclude vital protections, including prescription drugs and maternity care. They’re cheap — but you get what you pay for.
Michelle Goldberg/NY Times:
Shame on Us for Getting Used to Trump
If the impeachment hearing wasn’t shocking, it’s a sign of how far we’ve fallen.
Withholding security assistance from Ukraine “for no good reason other than help with a political campaign made no sense,” said Taylor, America’s top diplomat in that country. “It was counterproductive to all of what we had been trying to do. It was illogical. It could not be explained. It was crazy.” The hearing made it clear that Trump subverted foreign policy in order to cheat in the 2020 campaign.
Wednesday was also the day of closing arguments in the trial of Roger Stone, the longtime Trump associate charged with making false statements to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice in Congress’s investigation into Russian election interference.
During the trial, the former Trump campaign chief executive Steve Bannon testified that he regarded Stone as the campaign’s “access point” to WikiLeaks, which published thousands of Democratic National Committee emails that were hacked by Russia. The Former Trump campaign staffer Rick Gates testified that Trump spoke directly to Stone about WikiLeaks’ plans. Trump, in written testimony to the special counsel Robert Mueller, said he remembered no such conversation. Stone seems to have exaggerated his WikiLeaks’ connections, but the trial made it clear that the Trump campaign tried hard to take advantage of Russian cybercrimes in the 2016 election, and that Trump lied about it.