Shortly after William Taylor, the acting Ambassador to Ukraine, began giving his opening statement at Wednesday’s impeachment hearing, two side-by-side images of him began circulating on Twitter.

One was a screen grab of Fox News’s live coverage of the hearing. Taylor, wearing a dark suit and wire glasses, his salt-and-pepper hair gently parted, is glancing down at his notes. Beside him, three text boxes contain what Fox News wanted its viewers to know about the congressional witness. “OCT 23: PRESIDENT TRUMP DISMISSED TAYLOR AS A ‘NEVER TRUMPER,’ ” the first box reads. “WH CALLED TAYLOR’S CLOSED-DOOR TESTIMONY ‘TRIPLE HEARSAY,’ ” the second box reads. “GOP SAYS TAYLOR HAD NO FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE ABOUT UKRAINE AID,” the final box reads. The other image was a corresponding screen grab of Taylor from MSNBC. Instead of three text boxes, the MSNBC graphics producers placed a single box with three bullet points: “Top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine since June”; “Testified he had ‘clear understanding’ aid tied to probes”; and “Texted it would be ‘crazy’ to withhold Ukraine military aid.”

Inevitably, in the days to come, Republicans will rely on their supporters in the media to present the impeachment hearings as a matter of interpretation. In the moment, though, Taylor, a West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, and longtime diplomat, was sober and deliberate. Like his co-testifier today, George Kent, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Taylor took pains during his opening remarks to describe himself as nonpartisan. “I am not here to take one side or the other,” he said. “My sole purpose is to provide facts as I know them.” He carefully described the situation he stepped into when he became the acting Ambassador this summer. There were, he discovered, two channels of American policy toward Ukraine. There was the “regular” channel, in which he interacted with Kent and officials at the National Security Council, and there was the “irregular” channel, which included Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s lawyer; Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff; and others. It was through this “irregular” channel, Taylor said, that hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance and a White House visit were used to pressure Ukraine to provide Trump with political ammunition against the campaign of Joe Biden.

Taylor made clear the very real stakes of the political and security situation in Ukraine, noting that lives were lost in the current conflict while Giuliani and others allegedly used security assistance as a bargaining chip. He also offered a bit of news: recently, Taylor told the committee, he became aware that a member of his staff was at a restaurant with Gordon Sondland, the Ambassador to the European Union and occasional member of the “irregular” channel, on July 26th. At that restaurant, Sondland had a phone call with Trump that was loud enough for the table to overhear. According to Taylor’s staffer, Trump pressed Sondland about “the investigations.” And Sondland, after the call, told the staffer that Trump cared more about the investigation that he wanted into Biden and his son than about Ukraine.

In his opening, Taylor described how, when he was first offered the opportunity to return to government service and serve as acting Ambassador this summer, he consulted with two people: his wife and an old mentor. His wife opposed his taking the job. But his mentor told him that, if his government asked him to do something, and if he could “be effective” in its execution, then he should do it. So far today, it looks like he’s taking that advice again.