How The Impeachment Hearings Became Must-See TV

It wasn’t meant to be this way. The impeachment inquiry was going to be “boring,” a “snoozefest,” and “lacking in pizzazz.” Trump, we were told, was going to ignore it and go about his job as president. After all, we already knew the gist of everything that would be said. What could we learn from an ambassador who had been dismissed long before the alleged bribery had even taken place? The public would surely tire of the complex issues under discussion, just as they had tired of the Russia investigation. The impeachment hearings would wend their obscure way to a predictable failure to convict.

Trump Pierces The Fourth Wall

But it was not to be. Like Wednesday’s hearings, Friday’s had surprises. Trump did his bit in making them interesting. In real time on national TV, we saw being enacted before our very eyes the meme of a powerful man smearing a blameless woman, thus enabling us to watch her react in real time and experience her pathos. Suddenly, impeachment had a human face.

Like a wanton toddler, Trump had burst into the impeachment hearing room via Twitter, trying to intimidate Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch even as she was giving testimony about being intimidated by the president. Even the No. 3 Republican in the House, Rep. Liz Cheney, said the tweet was “wrong.”

Later in the day, Trump defended himself, claiming that he had the right to freedom of speech. Even if Trump is not technically guilty of the crime of witness intimidation, his outburst is one more item in the slew of presidential actions which will make up the inevitable impeachment article on Obstruction of Congress.

Trump’s intervention disrupted the apparent Republican game plan of showing that the ambassador was a charming lady but essentially irrelevant. After Trump had attacked her competence and character, even absurdly suggesting that she was somehow responsible for the failed state of Somalia, Trump’s intervention changed the equation. Thereafter, Republicans felt obliged to be respectful and complimentary to the ambassador and treat her almost as a heroine. When she left, she received an (almost) standing ovation.

The Reverse Whodunnit

In tweeting about the hearing, Trump unwittingly raised the profile not just of this particular hearing but of all future impeachment hearings. The ratings were already high. Now the audience will be on the edge of their seats every day, waiting to find out whether Trump will once again burst on to the scene.

In effect, what we have now is a reverse whodunnit. In a regular “whodunit,” the interest is in who committed the crime. In a reverse whodunnit, the crime and the criminal are known at the outset: the interest is learning the details of how the crime was committed and how those details will be revealed. History shows that if the tale is well-told, a reverse whodunnit can be equally gripping. Trump is helping to make it so.

Direct Testimony Of Trump’s Involvement: David Holmes

Republicans have dismissed testimony to date as hearsay, because none of the witnesses have direct knowledge of Trump’s own conversation and actions. On Friday, their wish was granted with the private testimony of David Holmes, the State Department aide who added surprising depth and texture about the call that E.U Ambassador Sondland made to President Trump on July 26—the day after his famous phone call with President Zelensky.

It turns out that Sondland called Trump from the terrace of a restaurant in Kyiv. In a party of four, Holmes was seated across the table from Ambassador Sonderland, with two companions seated on either side between them. Even so, Holmes could overhear the call as Sondland was holding the phone away from his face because Trump was speaking so loudly. Holmes, along with the waiters and any Russian intelligence services in the vicinity, could hear Trump inquiring specifically about “the investigations”.

Holmes heard Ambassador tell Trump, President Zelensky ‘loves your a-s.” He heard President Trump ask, "So, he's gonna do the investigation?" and Ambassador Sondland reply, "He's gonna do it," adding that President Zelensky will do "anything you ask him to."

When the call was finished, Sondland told the table that President Trump didn’t care about Ukraine. He only cared about “the big stuff” by which he meant "big stuff that benefits the President, like the ‘Biden investigation’ that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.”

This conversation, if confirmed, taking place the day after the conversation between Trump and Zelensky, shows that Trump was knowledgeable about, and orchestrating, the effort to get Zelensky to do investigations on his political opponent Joe Biden, in effect, direct evidence of impeachable bribery.

As Sondland had inexplicably failed to include any mention of the phone call, which was viewed by three witnesses, television viewer interest as to how he will explain the situation in his testimony, scheduled for Wednesday, is high.

Trump’s Disinterest in Corruption Confirmed

Friday also shed light on another strand of the Republican defense of President Trump, namely, the argument that Trump’s efforts to get an investigation of the Bidens in Ukraine are part of his interest in corruption generally. This is a hard argument to make, given Trump’s lack of interest in corruption in any other country. It was also noted that the term “corruption” was not mentioned in the partial transcript of Trump’s conversation with President Zelensky on July 25.

On Friday, the White House released the transcript of Trump’s congratulatory call with President-elect Zelensky on April 21. Although the call was admittedly brief, Trump had time to tell Zelensky that he “owned Miss Universe, they always had great people. Ukraine was always very well represented.” Here too, the subject of corruption in Ukraine was not mentioned.

The Conviction of Roger Stone

As if to underline the subject of corruption at home, a federal jury on Friday convicted longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone of tampering with a witness and lying to Congress.

Stone joins other Trump advisers and confidants who have either been convicted or pleaded guilty in connection with the Mueller’s probe, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. The convictions serve as a warning to any future witness who might be thinking of being less than truthful in the impeachment hearings.

The Calculus Of The Impact

Despite the steadily increasing body of evidence that Trump committed impeachable bribery, Trump’s position still looks impregnable. His strength contains three main groups.

One group are Republicans who love what Trump does in terms of the traditional Republican money agenda—tax cuts, deregulation, a booming stock market, solid economic growth, judicial appointments—even though this group may consider the manner in which he conducts himself and what he says at best regrettable. Even if the impeachment hearings reveal even more regrettable behavior, that won’t change their finance-based calculations. For them, impeachment is a distraction.

The second group is the Red-State, rally-screaming MAGA fans for whom Trump is a folk hero. For them, Trump’s flaws of character and behavior are features, not bugs. For them, Trump is still the only person willing to discuss draining the Washington swamp, border security, trade imbalance, ending the Forever Wars, and resisting the horrors of globalism. Each indignity he inflicts on Washington and the office of the presidency is a reason for more passionate support. The fact that Trump’s actions have advantaged the rich at the expense of these supporters does not seem to enter their awareness, let alone their concern. For them, impeachment is irrelevant.

There is a small group of independents and traditional Republicans, particularly suburban women, who might be swayed. This group isn’t large enough to affect the calculations of the Senate Republicans.

Republican senators hold the balance of power when it comes to the impeachment trial in the Senate, which requires 67 votes. Even if all Democratic senators and a few moderates, like Mitt Romney and Susan Collins, vote for conviction, that gets the tally to 52 at most. From there, 15 more Republican senators would be needed to vote to convict.

To date, there is no indication that Republican senators are thinking about what is the right position to take. Questions of conscience dropped off their map long ago. It's about how to hold on to their job. Given that Trump’s base will not desert him, voting against Trump means hat Trump will campaign against them in the primary. They are unlikely to desert Trump so long as supporting him doesn’t cost them re-election. There would need to be a mass defection for Republican concern to matter.

While it’s hard to imagine the Senate voting for conviction, it’s even harder to imagine that this is going well for Republicans. The “Blue Wave” in the 2018 mid-terms was striking as well as Democratic gains made in Virginia and the governorship last week in Kentucky, and again yesterday with the governorship in Louisiana. Trump’s failure to gain a victory by campaigning for the Republican candidates might be taken as a sign of his waning impact but not enough to make a difference. In any event, off-schedule gubernatorial elections are not good indicators of what will happen in the regularly scheduled senate election.

It is possible that Republicans will lose badly in the 2020 elections. Democrats could even be in control of all three branches of government. But the mere possibility will not be enough to lead to an impeachment conviction.

For Republicans to convict Trump, it would take a strong probability of electoral disaster. That in turn would take inflammatory testimony against Trump by one or more of his inner circle who can provide direct evidence of wrongdoing, such as Sondland, Mulvaney, Giuliani, Pompeo or Bolton. There is no sign yet that it will happen. But impeachment has already taken some unexpected twists and turns in just the first two days of testimony. We don’t know what the future will hold. Stay tuned.

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