In impeachment hearings into Donald Trump on Friday, Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama followed up on what the dismissal of former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s from her post in Ukraine meant to her personally and professionally, and to our operations as a nation around the world.
REP. TERRI SEWELL: But does the president have the right to actually malign people's character? I mean, it may not be against any law, but I would think it would be against decorum and decency.
FMR. AMBASSADOR MARIE YOVANOVITCH: There is a question to see why the campaign to get me out of Ukraine happened. All the president has to do is say he wants a different ambassador. In my line of work, perhaps in your line of work as well, all we have is our reputation. So this has been a very painful period.
REP. SEWELL: How has it affected your family?
Yovanovitch became visibly emotional, thinking about the pressures this shitty president and his corruptions put on her family. It was a short and moving moment for a woman who has clearly been under a tremendous amount of pressure to not stand up and slap the stupid off the faces of Republican officials who continue to play treasonously stupid during these impeachment proceedings.
YOVANOVITCH: I really don't want to get into that. Thank you for asking.
REP. SEWELL: Because I do care. I also want to know how you think it affected your fellow colleagues in the Foreign Service. My Republican colleagues have said that since you received such adulation and embracing from your own fellow colleagues that what occurred, the incident that occurred with the president and his cronies, you know, maligning your reputation, has that had a chilling effect on the ability and the morale within the Foreign Service? Can you speak to that?
YOVANOVITCH: Yeah. I think it has had exactly that, a chilling effect. Not only in Embassy Kyiv, but throughout the State Department. Because people don't know, kind of, whether their efforts to pursue our stated policy are going to be supported. And that is a dangerous place to be.
It’s important to understand that Donald Trump, whether out of sheer incompetence or straight cruelty, is hurting millions of people. Whether he’s attacking them individually or not, his narcissism affects their families, and by extension millions of others, in policy uncertainty. He does this all while putting our country’s diplomats and State Department officials into a chaos that only creates more danger for our country and around the world.