The President repeatedly complains his side isn’t being fairly represented…Never mind that’s because he isn’t allowing the people who represent him to testify.
He wants you to focus on the word “unfair”, pin it on the Democrats, and forget about the part where it’s actually him blocking attempts for the the process to be fair. So there’s a subtle (actually not so subtle) and devious difference in strategy here than just calling the whole thing a cooked-up hoax, which has been his main thrust until now. That was how he handled the Mueller investigation, and it worked (especially when Attorney General Bill Barr summed up the Mueller Report in an inaccurately favorable way to Trump, and that summary became the sum total of the report in the eyes of Trump supporters, and frankly many others).
And in some ways that may indicate the President feels he’s more up against it than he ever was during Mueller, so he needs to come up with a different feint to sway public opinion and hopefully make it go away.
So his repeated line that Democrats get 3 witnesses and his side gets only 1 is a bunch of bunk. The President could have; was invited to participate in this latest phase of impeachment in the Judiciary Committee, and he refused. Not even sending a single soul in an official capacity (unless you consider his reliable attack dogs in Congress who sit on the Committee itself). But they’re not witnesses (at least not yet—see our story from yesterday), and still officially at least represent the Legislative Branch, not the President.
So let’s get this straight: the President won’t send anyone to the hearing, and then not being represented at the hearing is his main complaint.
But it gets more nefarious from there: the one legal scholar who defended Trump, Jonathan Turley, didn’t even exactly say the impeachment process is wrong, just that Democrats are moving too fast, because they haven’t heard enough testimony from pretty much any first-hand sources. That is, the people who were really at the center of everything, who really did (or didn’t do) what other witnesses reported they did or didn’t do. And since cases regarding whether those witnesses can be compelled to testify are in the courts right now, Congress should just slow things down and wait for judges to do their jobs and determine whether they must be compelled to speak to Congress.
The problem again is the reason these cases are in the federal courts in the first place is Trump is refusing to let those people testify. So the fact that they aren’t, is his doing, not Democrats. So Democrats are not to blame for this either, except in the messaging of Trump and the White House.
But should Democrats play along and wait anyway? Hopefully giving them access to and public hearings with key figures down the road?
No. Because a Congressional subpoena means you’re compelled to testify before Congress, not throw it in the trash or ignore it and then, when you have time, run to a court asking if it’s OK for you to not testify. (Even Hillary Clinton complied multiple times with subpoenas to appear before such and such a committee, when the shoe was on the other foot.)
Interesting too, because it’s Trump always lambasting Democrats for crying to the courts to fix things with which federal judges should not even be involved. Now it’s his people doing exactly the same thing.
Here’s a complete list from the House Intelligence Committee of who they subpoenaed to testify and ignored it or refused:
It’s a “who’s who” of Trump’s closest cadres (and this list doesn’t include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who’s also said he won’t testify).
Trump had his chance. If he won’t allow his people to supply their side of the story, he shouldn’t really be able to complain the process is flawed because it didn’t hear/consider his side of the story. Yet that’s just what he’s doing. In fact, it kind of represents the sum total of Trump’s defense right now.
Anyway, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today responded resoundingly, ordering articles of impeachment against the President to be formally drawn up. And now.
Trump, getting an advance whiff of this Tweeted, in effect, “bring it on”. But he doesn’t really want that… Because at the end of the day, all he’s got are conspiracy theories. Then again, it’s worked for him before. After Pelosi’s announcement, he promptly Tweeted:
“Nancy Pelosi just had a nervous fit.”
Also, in terms of the hearings themselves, Trump has been Tweeting and Retweeting a one-sided play-by-play as never before.
As to Republicans’ “horror and repulsion” at the mention of Trump’s son Barron’s name by a legal scholar from Stanford, Pamela Karlan, who “inconveniently” testified Trump can be held accountable, it’s a completely ridiculous, manufactured issue designed to make it look like an elitist attack on Trump, and by extension, his supporters, and by extension, America. But the witness didn’t reference Barron at all beyond his name, making a point about Presidential powers vs. monarchy stating that:
“While the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.”
That’s all she said. That’s all. Perhaps it was “too clever by half”, as an old boss used to say, but hardly an affront to the President’s family. The fact that it became such a big deal does kind of show Republicans have nothing.
But the reason it bothers us, and we’re bringing it up, is that we thought Democrats were supposed to be the snowflakes who only cared about political correctness with ridiculously acute sensitivity, and Republicans were always the ones urging people to “get over it”. So what’s up with that?