How Republicans Won Phase One Of Impeachment
Excerpt: Schiff had run the Democrats’ efforts in the Russia collusion conspiracy they peddled for several years. During that time, his team leaked like sieves to compliant media outlets such as CNN and falsely claimed for years to have secret knowledge of Trump being a traitor who had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. With compliant media outlets, again, he tore down Republican members on his committee and their efforts to get at the bottom of the Russia collusion theory. When it came time for impeachment, he followed the same pattern, leaking to the compliant media selected excerpts of transcripts to paint a false narrative. But this time, it didn’t work nearly so well. For one thing, the complexity that he weaponized so successfully in the Russia hoax didn’t work with the public. The public had been willing to at least consider an elaborate tale of Trump being a traitor who had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. But when it turned out that Schiff, other Democrats, and the media had been completely wrong about their elaborate theory, it had consequences. (...) The lack of daylight between Democrats and many in the media was difficult to ignore. They seemed to march in lockstep with the day’s messaging from Schiff, as well as the overall legitimacy of the proceedings. Here, too, the media seemed to underestimate the significant toll their participation in the Russia hoax had on their credibility. Where the public previously may have been willing to trust them when they claimed they had done their homework before claiming some evidence of wrongdoing by Trump, that trust no longer exists. Each day, Schiff’s team would leak out the messaging for the day along with the prepared testimony of the morning witness. “Wow,” the corporate media would all say in unison as they repeated the message. The problem is that none of their bombshells exploded, as the Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen noted. The supposed “bombshells” rarely made sense, were frequently contradictory, were never based on first-hand information, and mostly just supported the claim that many bureaucrats wish they ran foreign policy instead of the president. [Mollie Hemingway is a great journalist; she’s done a great job with this story. It appears support for impeachment and removal has gone DOWN during the hearings that were both boring and repetitive, and almost entirely 2nd or 3rd hand hearsay or merely the personal opinion of the “witnesses,” none of whom were elected to any office. Few can agree what crime, if any, might have been committed. There may still be a majority in the House who will vote to impeach, but there is little chance of it being sustained in the Senate. Orange Man Bad might be true, but it isn’t an impeachable crime. Ron P.]
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