There Are Two Separate Impeachment Hearings Happening Right Now -- And Republicans Are Winning Theirs
I think the jury is out as to who is winning. But RW hate radio is all over WI blaring out 24/7 that is for sure.
There Are Two Separate Impeachment Hearings Happening Right Now — And Republicans Are Winning Theirs
Nothing Republican Rep. Devin Nunes does during the hearings makes sense if you watch it in the moment. When it’s posted on Facebook later, though, it works perfectly.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/republican-conspiracy-theory-counterprogramming?origin=thum
Posted on November 20, 2019, at 6:32 p.m. ET
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But there are two impeachment hearings unfolding in the nation's capital. One, carried out by the Democrats, is designed to ascertain the truth as to whether Trump sought a "quid pro quo" deal with Ukraine to get the country to investigate Joe Biden and the 2016 presidential election in exchange for aid money. The other, being carried out simultaneously by the Republicans, is quite different. Instead of trying to learn the truth, it seeks to create not just a counternarrative but a completely separate reality.
Each round of GOP questioning is not meant to interrogate the witnesses, which today included Sondland, but instead to create moments that can be flipped into Fox News segments, shared as bite-size Facebook posts, or dropped into 4chan threads. Their alternate universe — built from baseless online conspiracy theories and reading the tea leaves of Trump’s Twitter feed — dominates Fox News and Facebook. And the Republicans’ strategy, as confusing and bizarre as it may seem to those on the outside, is working.
Here’s TrumpWorld’s version of the impeachment narrative: Claims of Russian meddling in the 2016 election were part of a hoax orchestrated by the Democrats to cover up their own collusion with Ukraine to block Trump’s presidential campaign. A 2017 Politico story written by Kenneth Vogel and Ukraine-based reporter David Stern and a series of articles by John Solomon in the Hill earlier this year prove this, Trump’s defenders say. The depositions for the impeachment inquiry were conducted in a basement of the Capitol building “like some kind of strange cult,” in the words of Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, to continue that cover-up. Every witness who testifies to the contrary, like Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman or Marie Yovanovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine, is spreading unreliable hearsay. Democrats are playing dirty by hiding the whistleblower.
At every hearing, Nunes ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and Steve Castor, a lawyer for House Republicans, put witnesses through the same process. They ask the witnesses if it was reasonable for Trump to think that Ukrainians were “out to get him.” They ask about former DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa, whom right-wing conspiracy theorists have long connected to claims about Democratic election-meddling. They ask about a black ledger from Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort — a document that reportedly contains evidence of off-the-books payments from former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions to Manafort. The witnesses typically stammer back, confused and unable to understand the point of the questions.
Nunes opened his questioning of Sondland on Wednesday this week with a complaint he’s issued at all five hearings so far. "That's why we've subpoenaed the DNC operatives we've subpoenaed," Nunes said on Wednesday. "Who were the DNC operatives that dirtied up the Trump campaign in 2016?"
During Tuesday’s hearing this week, Nunes and Castor repeatedly tried to probe Vindman about the identity of the whistleblower. Vindman refused to answer questions that might identify that person.
“You can plead the Fifth, but you’re here to answer questions and you’re here under subpoena,” Nunes said. “So you can either answer the question or you can plead the Fifth.” Vindman did not plead the Fifth, since Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the Intelligence Committee, affirmed that he did not have to. He continued to explain why he could not answer Nunes’ questions — because he does not know the whistleblower’s identity..........................
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