"Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?"

WASHINGTON—Portent hung from the chandeliers in the elegant chambers of the House Ways and Means Committee. The first days of public hearings into the impeachment of El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago made the air in the room heavy and thick. Gravitas has been in short supply since 2016, when the country decided to lose its mind and, out of a strain of inexplicable dark humor, to be governed by a vulgar talking yam. Sooner or later, the laughter stops and the freaks run wild and hijack the whole show, and turn a show with freaks into a freak show.

Make no mistake. If the hearings on Tuesday were a criminal trial, the jury wouldn’t have been out long enough to order lunch. The President* of the United States ran a cheap-assed, third-rate shakedown of the new president of an embattled ally for the purpose of enlisting the new president of the embattled ally in the ratfcking of the 2020 election. Both of those are crimes. Putting them together is a third crime.

The Republican defense was aimed at defending Fox News talking points, or giving your drunk uncle arguments to raise over the cranberry salad in a couple of weeks, or defending the right of the president* to make policy based on whatever conspiracy theory most recently got snagged on the stalagmites of his mind. It certainly wasn’t based on defending the president*’s actions as regards the transaction he tried to force on poor Volodymyr Zelensky. Because, as was obvious from every second of the minority’s participation in Tuesday’s hearings, there simply is no defense for what the president* did.

Stefanik went with a pointless parliamentary inquiry. SAUL LOEB Getty Images

George Kent and Bill Taylor were exemplary witnesses. (Taylor, in particular, could develop a lucrative side gig consulting for law firms as to how prepare people to testify.) They never strayed beyond their obvious mandates, which was to tell the story of the shakedown from the point of view of career diplomats who suddenly found themselves submarined by a cabal led by the president*’s half-mad personal lawyer. And Taylor dropped the morning’s only real bombshell: an account from his staff about how some of them had overheard the president* refer to “the investigations” in a phone call to Ambassador Gordon Sondland on the day after the now-infamous July 25 shakedown phone call. And Kent was firm in his testimony that neither Joe Biden nor his son, Hunter, had done anything untoward as regards the removal of a corrupt state prosecutor. But the real show was the Republicans, who had nothing, but who delivered it with a kind of frantic verve that occasionally brushed up against semi-coherence.

There was Minority Counsel Robert Castor, who sounded as though he’d taken the gig three minutes before the hearing began, and who did a very impressive imitation of Rick Moranis’s courtroom performance in the second Ghostbusters film. At one point, Castor asked Kent and Taylor if they could “guess” how many times Giuliani met with various figures in the scandal. But, to be fair to Castor, Clarence Darrow couldn’t have created a case out of that with which Castor had to work.

The real performance art came from the Republicans on the committee, who also had nothing, but who dressed up their nothing in neon and perfume, and took it for a walk on the television, and at top volume. I’m not entirely sure, but I think I may have bought some fresh fish from Jim Jordan, purely by accident. Lord, what a fishmonger that guy is. If he’d yelled that loudly when that doctor at Ohio State was molesting athletes, he could’ve saved people a lot of trouble and woe.

Taylor was a fine witness. OLIVIER DOULIERY Getty Images

In the main, the Republicans declined to ask questions, choosing instead to spool out their fathomless catechism of delay tactics, half-truths and utter bullshit. The hearing wasn’t two minutes old before Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, piped up with a useless point of parliamentary inquiry. A few seconds later, committee chairman Adam Schiff found it necessary to slap Jordan down for lying about the committee’s closed sessions. The pattern of speechifying over examination began unsurprisingly with ranking Republican Devin Nunes, the famous White House lawn ornament. Here’s how Nunes kicked off, because this pretty much sums up the entire Republican case.

The call summary for which the Democrats want to impeach President Trump is dramatically different from their nefarious depiction of it. What it actually shows is a pleasant exchange between two leaders who discuss mutual cooperation over a range of issues. The Democrats claim this call demonstrates extortion, bribery and a host of other monstrous crimes being committed against President Zelensky. Yet President Zelensky himself insists there was nothing improper whatsoever about the conversation.

Indeed the routine nature of the call helps to explain why in this committee's last public hearing, Democrats recited a fictitious version of the call instead of reading the actual transcript. The Democrats depicted the president saying, quote, I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of it. On this and on that, unquote. The transcript did not show President Trump saying anything remotely like that. The president did not ask Ukraine to make up dirt on anyone. But the Democrats are not trying to discover facts. They're trying to invent a narrative. And the facts they need do not exist, then they'll just make it up. Not only does President Zelensky deny the Democrats' characterization of the call, but as Ambassador Taylor testified to this committee, the Ukrainians did not even know at the time of the call that a temporary delay was put on the security assistance for them. Furthermore, as the ambassador testified, these holds occur from time to time. Both he and Ambassador Volker were confident the delay would be lifted.

In fact, military aid to Ukraine has actually substantially improved since President Trump took office. Ambassador Taylor testified that President Trump was the first president to see that Ukraine was afforded Javelin anti-tank weapons. This was a very strong message that Americans are willing to provide more than blankets. This was the Obama administration's approach. Note this important fact, the security assistance was provided to Ukraine without the Ukrainians having done any of the things they were [supposedly] blackmailed to do. So we're supposed to believe President Trump committed a terrible crime that never actually occurred and which the supposed victim denies ever happened. I'd like to briefly speak to the core mistruth at the core of the Democrats' impeachment drive. They claim the president tried to yet the Ukrainians to, quote, manufacture dirt against his political rivals. This is supported by precisely zero evidence.

Once again, the Democrats simply made it up. But let's consider the broader question about why President Trump may have wanted answers to questions about Ukraine meddling in 2016. The Democrats downplay, ignore, outright deny the many indications that Ukrainians actually did meddle in the election. A shocking about-face for people who for three years argued that foreign election meddling was an intolerable climb that threatened the heart of our democracy. While the brazen suddenness of this u-turn is jarring, this denial is a necessary part of their argument.

After all, if there actually were indications of Ukraine election meddling and if foreign election meddling is a dire threat, then President Trump would have a perfectly good reason for wanting to find out what happened. And since the meddling was aimed against his campaign, he'd have good reason for sending his personal attorney to make inquiries about it. What's strange is some of the witnesses at these hearings and previous depositions, who express alarm about these inquiries, were remarkably uninformed about these indications of Ukrainian election meddling and why the president may have been concerned. By them.

For example, I noted previously, Alexandra Chalupa admitted to Politico she worked with officials at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, D.C., to dig up dirt on the trump campaign, which she passed onto the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. She revealed Ukrainian officials themselves were also working directly with reporters to trade information and leads about the Trump campaign. Ambassador Kent, you didn't seem to be too concerned about it in the last round of questioning, so I'll just skip you because we know that wasn't a concern.

And, finally, the question:

Ambassador Taylor, you testified to this committee that you only recently became aware of reports of this cooperation between Ukrainian embassy officials and Chalupa to undermine the Trump campaign. From your last deposition. Is that correct?

There is killing the clock, and there is killing the clock, taking it apart, and scattering the pieces in the Sargasso Sea. But, again, this wasn’t aimed at most of the country. It was aimed at those folks who already know that Alexandra Chalupa is a Deep State Ukrainian who has been working to undermine the president* for decades. (I think she personally sabotaged Trump Air.) They know this because their favorite TV stars and radio hosts have told them so. Nunes, because he is no different than your drunk uncle, except that your drunk uncle probably isn’t suing an Internet cow, believes all of this stuff, too.

The bowtie plays. OLIVIER DOULIERY Getty Images

But, as for the actual case for the defense, nothing Nunes says changes the facts of the matter. This case is absurdly simple. Compared to Iran-Contra, it’s a game of ColorForms. As has been his wont for his entire life, the president* found a vulnerable victim to fleece. In this case, the victim happened to be an ally being bullied and attacked by a regime for which the president* still maintains a mysterious sweet tooth. In pursuit of this latest scam, the president* abused the powers of the office for which he otherwise doesn’t have any more respect than a dog has for a fire hydrant.

As George Kent said at one point on Wednesday:

As I mentioned in my testimony, you can't promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people.

A truth universal, that.

All of this filibustering was aimed at the 33 percent of the American public that recent history has shown will believe anything.



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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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