Monday’s impeachment hearing opened with Barry Berke, the counsel for the Judiciary Committee Democrats, laying out the case for impeachment of Donald Trump over his efforts to extort Ukraine into election interference. At the end of Berke’s testimony, which was—it cannot be emphasized enough—a description of Donald Trump’s impeachable offenses, Republicans staged a giant hissy fit over Berke having criticized Trump.
Specifically, they said that part of Berke’s testimony “impugns the motives of the president and suggests he’s disloyal to his country, and those words should be stricken from the record and taken down.”
Committee Chair Jerry Nadler was not having it, because “Witnesses are not subject to the rules of decorum in the same way members are. The topic of the hearing is the president’s misconduct, so none of us should find it surprising that we are hearing testimony that is critical of the president. I do not find that the witness’s comments are disorderly. I find they are pertinent to the subject of this hearing.”
Seriously. “We demand an impeachment hearing without any criticism of the person being impeached” is a great new standard.
Republicans were not letting it go and continued their temper tantrum, ultimately forcing a roll call vote they knew they would lose—because all of this outrage is staged, insincere nonsense.