Forget that everything he said (that’s everything, mind you) is a lie. Forget that he’s a WATB who sued an imaginary cow for mocking him on Twitter.
Devin Nunes’s opening statement was mercifully short, and essentially as-expected: A bizarre, infantile, paranoid rant about how “the Democrats” and “the corrupt media” are all in cahoots with each other, the whistleblower, Russia, Ukraine, everyone it seems except the Rosenbergs and Mark Felt, in an elaborate conspiracy to make Grand Nagus Drumpf appear to be the corrupt, demented racist gangster that he is.
The speech just ended and I’m sure there will be plenty of quoting and commentary down the line, but I think what I saw is what everyone else saw: The Republicans have no intention of actually trying to defend the Drumpfenführer. They want to put “the Democrats” and “the corrupt media” on trial before Congress and the public, not the GNOTUS.
Of course they know that they can’t honestly or reasonably defend what everyone already knows Trump did, and everyone else knows that they can’t condemn it because their owners won’t allow them to condemn it (at least not yet, as they’re still getting what they paid for). But I’d like to think that anyone not already steeped in the toxic brew of Republican fan fiction would have been very put-off by Nunes’s conspiratorial gobbledygook — which Republicans nonetheless expect, or hope, will carry the day.
It’s not unusual for defendants in litigation to throw out wild, baseless allegations about the plaintiff and the plaintiff’s motives for bringing the case, nor is it unusual for a plaintiff to react to that by saying “See? Their attack shows that they have no defense.” And who knows, maybe Nunes, the Republicans, and the inhabitants of the paracosm, are right about this; maybe we’re the ones living in an alternate reality. Somehow I doubt that that’s the case. But that seems to be the strategy going forward: Make this impeachment inquiry into the President’s conduct about everyone, and everything, but that.