The late breaking Devin Nunes-Lev Parnav connection has not been digested yet by pundits nor has the State Department documents linking Pompeo to Giuliani. Stay tuned.
NY Times:
‘Tuesday Afternoon Impeachment’ Is as Big as ‘Monday Night Football’
TV’s impeachment drama is drawing big ratings, but a Democratic debate on MSNBC sank to a viewership low.
On the third day that impeachment hearings blanketed American televisions, from morning talk shows to late-night monologues, Representative Devin Nunes came out with a public service announcement.
“TV ratings are way down, way down,” Mr. Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, declared — on live television — to a pair of witnesses seated before him in Congress. “Whatever drug deal the Democrats are cooking up from the dais, the American people aren’t buying it.”
Mr. Nunes was wrong.
In fact, America’s impeachment drama, titled “Days of Our Impeachment” on a recent “Saturday Night Live,” is drawing “Monday Night Football”-level viewership. On some days, its ratings have topped popular procedurals like “NCIS.”
After five full days of hearings across two weeks, the average live TV viewership for impeachment has been roughly 12 million people, according to Nielsen. Ratings have dipped slightly from a peak on Day 1, Nov. 13, which drew an audience of 13.1 million, but the drop-off is less than what many sitcoms see after a season premiere.
[Added: Over five days, the hearings have averaged 12 million viewers, Hollywood Reporter.]
Politico:
Impeachment is about to get a Robert Mueller reprise
Now that the Ukraine hearings are over, Democrats want to hold at least one Mueller-related impeachment hearing on Trump's possible obstruction and perjury.
Right now, impeachment is all about Ukraine. But after Thanksgiving, prepare for a Robert Mueller reprise.
Now that House Democrats have wrapped up public hearings on President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign to get Ukraine to launch politically advantageous investigations, there are plans to hold at least one public impeachment hearing on Trump’s misdeeds as alleged in the special counsel’s report.
It’s a gathering that could fuel articles of impeachment beyond those tied to the Ukraine controversy. Democrats say they have new Mueller-related fodder after Roger Stone’s recent trial raised questions about whether Trump provided false statements to the special counsel’s team. And the hearing could even feature a star witness — former White House counsel Don McGahn. A judge is set to rule in the coming days on whether McGahn must comply with a House subpoena.
House leadership signaled the plans in court filings and oral arguments this week, as the Democrats’ attorneys fought to get McGahn’s testimony, as well as access to more of the evidence Mueller used to write his final report.
“This is something that’s unbelievably serious and it’s happening right now, very fast,” House counsel Doug Letter, who consults closely with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told a federal appeals court during a hearing in the Mueller evidence case.
Tom Nichols/USA Today:
Hill, Holmes impeachment hearing: Experts beat crackpots on Trump, Russia and Ukraine
[Fiona] Hill, in particular, made it clear once and for all that dedicated American public servants were trying to carry out what they believed to be the president’s foreign policy. What those appointees, military officers and government employees soon found, however, was that the president had two policies, which were in direct opposition to each other. One was meant to be busywork, a public waste of time; the other reflected what the president really wanted done.
In a remarkable moment, Hill was even mildly regretful for blowing up at Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union; she thought he was running loose but soon realized he was in fact working on the president’s instructions. Hill thought they were working on the same thing: U.S. security assistance to Ukraine. In fact, Sondland had been secretly tasked by the president with engaging in illegal and impeachable attempts to extort political favors from Ukraine in exchange for official U.S. acts, ranging from military aid to an Oval Office meeting.
Ryan Broderick/BuzzFeed:
There Are Two Separate Impeachment Hearings Happening Right Now — And Republicans Are Winning Theirs
Nothing Republican Rep. Devin Nunes does during the hearings makes sense if you watch it in the moment. When it’s posted on Facebook later, though, it works perfectly.
These exchanges may seem irrelevant, but they create content for the pro-Trump information machine, which is running parallel to the hearings. Nunes’ probes of Vindman were the perfect hook for right-wing outlets like Gateway Pundit to publish stories connecting the lieutenant colonel to the CIA officer and former National Security Council staffer whom pro-Trump media has accused of being the whistleblower. (BuzzFeed News does not know the identity of the whistleblower.) Those stories have gone viral, despite Facebook telling BuzzFeed News earlier this month that it would be blocking the CIA officer’s name. Since it was published on Monday, Gateway Pundit’s article had been shared a thousand times on the platform.
Chrissy Stroop/The Conversationalist:
If we want to save American democracy, we must have a very difficult conversation about evangelical Christianity
Launched with a hashtag, a new movement seeks to raise awareness of how fundamentalist Christianity is polarizing the national discourse.
In addition to providing Trump with his most enthusiastic and immovable base, right-wing, mostly white American evangelicalism has been shown in recent years to have widespread issues with sexual abuse and cover-ups, and even with child marriage. This kind of born-again Protestantism is, like all fundamentalisms, ultimately incompatible with democracy; it must be defeated politically if we are to have a functional democracy in the United States. The first step to achieving that defeat must be the ability to name the problem and discuss it frankly.
My hope for #EmptyThePews and similar hashtag campaigns is that they will help to make those conversations possible in the upper echelons of America’s public sphere, and sooner rather than later. Without that shift in our national conversation, we could well be doomed to at least a generation of authoritarian rule imposed on the majority by the minority of America’s unreconstructed, waving their flags and worshipping at their megachurches.
This is a must read piece on Biden’s stutter issues. You don’t have to vote for him to read it. Read it, then go see the King’s Speech.
Philip Bump/WaPo:
Trump accidentally proves — again — that Republican defenses of his Ukraine/2016 request are empty
But Trump’s defenders, by definition, have to defend him. So over the past two months and, particularly, during the public testimony offered during the past two weeks as part of the impeachment inquiry, Trump’s allies in the media and on Capitol Hill have whipped up a slew of ways to cast Trump’s actions as innocent or acceptable, ranging from disparagement of House Democrats’ motives to picayune disputes over process.
At times, too, they’ve attempted to blunt the available evidence by suggesting explanations for Trump’s demands that aren’t centered on Trump seeking personal benefit. That’s enormously important, of course; if Republicans (and voters) accept that Trump only wanted the investigations to aid himself, then his use of his position to get it becomes deeply problematic. So Trump’s call for an investigation into Biden is transformed into merely one part of Trump’s long-standing crusade against corruption — a crusade that somewhat inconveniently was never manifested in any significant way before his call with Zelensky.
Quin Hillyer/Wash Examiner:
Trump's defenders are making three ineffective arguments
Several of the Republican arguments against impeaching President Trump are astonishingly illogical. Let’s examine them.
"Impeachment shouldn’t occur because an election is less than a year away, and the voters can decide for themselves."
This is a theme pushed incessantly on social media and by Republican officeholders and even by usually sensible conservative columnists. It is poppycock.
In this case, there was a monthslong effort by the president and his attorney, publicly identified as improper 14 months before the election. The phone call that started it all was made 16 months before the election. Those arguing that the election should settle things are in effect offering a “do whatever you want” ticket to a president for at least the final 16 months of his first term, if not longer. Why wouldn't any future president try to rig his own reelection, knowing there would be no legal consequence to getting caught?
The timing shouldn't matter. If we had video of Trump taking a cash bribe or shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue, the calendar would not be an obstacle. Nor should it be in this case.
There can be no offense if the scheme isn’t fully effectuated.
The aid that Trump threatened to withhold was eventually released to Ukraine, was it not? And Ukraine never had to publicly announce a new investigation into the Bidens. Therefore, there was no misconduct at all.
Again, this is a spectacular failure of logic...
And on an ag/rural issue we’ve been following (the corruption via multinationals getting bailout money from Trump, Bloomberg features a Connecticut Congress critter:
Congresswoman Urges USDA to Investigate Payments to JBS USA
Political opposition to Sao Paulo-based JBS SA’s expansion in the U.S. just got a new voice.
In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro requested an investigation “to bring suspension and debarment proceedings against the JBS entities,” including its U.S. poultry unit Pilgrim’s Pride Corp.
DeLauro, the Democratic representative for Connecticut, said JBS got millions of dollars of procurement awards through the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service in addition to $90 million received last year through government aid meant for U.S. farmers.