Forget quid pro quo, when there’s a drag queen in town you’ll get quip pro quo. And there was no doubt in Washington on Wednesday – there was a drag queen in town.



Performer Pissi Myles, of New Jersey, sashayed into the congressional building where the first public impeachment hearings in the Trump-Ukraine scandal were taking place.

In her scarlet dress and stilettos, flawless blond hair to the heavens, Myles cut a fierce figure on Capitol Hill. She was there to cover the hearing for Happs, a live news startup, and could be seen broadcasting live from a pink smartphone.

Getting through security was touch and go, but Myles made it to the heart of the action, alongside the hundreds favoring somber suits and conservative coiffure.

“Tensions are high, and the bar for who’s allowed in the Longworth House is very, very low,” she told NBC News.

Just arrived for #ImpeachmentHearings



Someone did ask me last night if there’s anything in DC that surprises me anymore.



⁦@JohnBrabender⁩ pic.twitter.com/l1NriPOMNy — Heidi Przybyla (@HeidiNBC) November 13, 2019

In a broadcast posted to Twitter she described the effect she’d had: “It’s pretty crazy. I’m apparently being referred to as the lady in red, I’ve been called Ruby Giuliani. It’s a little offensive to me that they would assume I took a side in this conversation.”

Of the significance of the day’s testimony, she said: “We’ve heard people saying it was all about quid-pro-quo but today we actually got to hear the testimony and hear what the actual elements of that were … Everyone is so divided. It’s really the most polarizing political activity I’ve seen in a very long time.”

Myles performs in New York and across the north-east. Her online bio states that: “Pissi Myles was born kicking and screaming and hasn’t stopped since.”

It adds that she has been a winner of the Philly Drag Wars and Miss Fish NYC contests and performs regularly at the Pines on Fire Island, a popular beach town destination for LGBTQ New Yorkers in summer.

A drag queen going through security at the impeachment hearings is seriously relatable content. pic.twitter.com/D8MGbHiROj — Alexander Kacala (@TheFaymeReport) November 13, 2019

She also told NBC News that “It’s a crazy day in Washington!” Funny, that’s just what the acting ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, said (more or less) when he heard that the Trump administration was holding up military aid to the country in order to pressure it to investigate Donald Trump’s American political rivals.

The Illinois Democratic representative Jan Schakowsky, who happened to be a sartorial congressional standout in her brilliant red suit when she bumped into Myles, quickly tucked herself under the towering and ecstatic queen’s wing and shared the resulting picture on Facebook.

“So glad Pissi Myles and I were matching!” she wrote.

Whether the hearing matched up to expectations is a whole other question. It was certainly a Pissi contest and the only sure winner was Myles.