ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Washington, this is why America hates you.

Every day in America, a young child takes a witness stand to point a small finger at some monster a few feet away who has committed some of the most heinous crimes known to man. Through tears, the child struggles to give unspeakable testimony.

But gives it nonetheless.

Every day in America, brave women step into witness boxes in courtrooms full of complete strangers and describe the most intimate and horrific violations that have ever been committed against a human.

Each one of them is a pillar of justice.

Every day in America, true victims of crime face blood-sworn and violent enemies and accuse them — face-to-face — of terrible crimes.

Each of these good citizens faces actual intimidation and real retribution in a very real world.

Long after they have stood up for justice in a courtroom and confronted the violent criminal, they are tormented by fear of reprisal. From inside jails, drug lords order hits against good citizens who dared to stand up to make their neighborhood a safer place.

Even decades later, ordinary citizens who testify against murderers and rapists are reminded again and again that the person condemned for destroying their life will soon be let out of prison. And do they have an opinion about this?

But that is not how things work in Washington. If you are a “witness” willing to smear President Trump from inside the federal bureaucracy, then you are treated like some kind of precious, swaddled savior, one who must be protected at all costs from any whiff of fairness or justice or due process.

It does not matter how many times removed the testimony of the “witness” is from actual firsthand information. And it does not matter how jaundiced or opinionated the testimony is.

So long as it smears President Trump, then it can be tossed like a wet log onto the bonfire to burn President Trump at the stake.

Take the precious “whistleblower” who sparked the impeachment furor. This partisan bureaucrat has no actual firsthand information to offer. His testimony would, literally, not be allowed in court. A judge would punish a prosecutor for even mentioning the existence of such a witness and admonish the jury to erase any hint of his testimony from their minds.

Yet this “witness” is protected and coddled. Democrats on the House intelligence committee raise all sorts of crazy alarms about how people are somehow threatening the life of this revered bureaucrat if his name is uttered — never mind that virtually everybody in Washington thinks they already know exactly who it is and have gotten in on the game of not uttering his name.

You mean to tell me we are going to impeach a president and remove him from office based entirely on the whistle blown by a partisan bureaucrat who can never be named?

That is seriously the state of “journalism” in America today? What will the history books say?

Then along comes former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, publicly testifying on national television about all of her opinions of President Trump and his policies in Ukraine. OK, we get it. State Department loyalists don’t like Mr. Trump or his foreign policy.

Great. Go run for office. Until then, shut up.

And then the whole place goes nuts because President Trump — denied the right to have his own attorney cross-examine these fake witnesses in this fake trial about fake crimes — takes to Twitter to defend himself.

The tweets take on those precious witnesses who are serenaded all over town for the “bravery” of taking the stand to declare their hatred for Donald Trump.

These people don’t have a shred of the integrity, honesty and bravery that exists in just one small finger of a truly brave child who stands before a real criminal in a real trial and accuses him of a real crime.

• Charles Hurt can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter on @charleshurt.

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