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Donald Trump and his Republican defenders are already trying to attack Bill Taylor as a partisan hack after his damning testimony on Tuesday, but Rachel Maddow explained how that strategy is doomed to fail.

During her program, the MSNBC host said the president’s inevitable smear campaign stands no chance against Taylor’s extensive background combined with the seriousness of his sworn testimony on Tuesday.

“We should expect that the president and his supporters will try to not just attack this testimony, but to attack the testifier,” Maddow said. “It is hard to see that working both because of who Bill Taylor is, but also just because of the gravity of what he has now spelled out under oath.”

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Maddow said:

Because this testimony today is so damning and, apparently, so well corroborated with notes and contemporaneous documentation, I think we should expect that the president and his supporters will try not just to attack this testimony, but to attack the testifier. They’ll try to presumably destroy the reputation of Ambassador Bill Taylor. They’ll try to smear him as some sort of Democratic partisan. Because we know that’s how I think they will have to respond to this, if past is any prologue, that’s what they’re going to do to him – because it might be helpful to note how he introduced himself today, which gives a good brief bio of who he is and where he’s been. He says, quote, I’ve dedicated my life to serving U.S. interests at home and abroad in both military and civilian roles. My background and experience are nonpartisan and I’ve been honored to serve under every administration, Republican and Democratic, since 1985. For 50 years I have served this country, starting as a cadet at West Point, then as an infantry officer for six years, including with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam, then at the Department of Energy, then as a member of a Senate staff, then at NATO, then at the State Department here and abroad, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Jerusalem, in Ukraine. And we have seen from the initial response to this testimony from the White House that the president and his supporters are going to go after Bill Taylor nevertheless as if he’s some plant, some Democratic partisan, somebody they can impugn personally. It is hard to see that working both because of who Bill Taylor is, but also just because of the gravity of what he has now spelled out under oath.

Trump’s one-size-fits-all impeachment defense is failing

It’s been clear for a long time that Donald Trump isn’t a very smart man. Under the mounting pressure of impeachment, his ineptitude has become even more obvious.

For every damning revelation that comes out – many of them from his own people – Trump has the same response: The process is rigged and everybody involved is a deep state spy hell-bent on destroying him.

As Rachel Maddow noted on Tuesday night, this desperate, one-size-fits-all impeachment defense will fail in the end because the facts are too damning and the witnesses are too credible.

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