RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/18/lets-stop-pretending-every-impeachment-witness-is-a-selfless-hero/

It’s become clear that some witnesses in the impeachment probe have their own agenda, and not all of them are courageous martyrs for the truth.

Throughout this impeachment charade we’ve been told by the media and House Democrats that a cadre of unelected career bureaucrats in the State Department and the National Security Council who are cooperating with the impeachment inquiry are heroes, patriots, and paragons of virtue and self-sacrifice for defying President Trump and proclaiming the truth about Trump corruption and self-dealing in Ukraine.

Last week, the media portrayed former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch as a courageous martyr recalled from her post by Trump for no reason and then viciously attacked by him on Twitter while she was testifying before the House Intelligence Committee. Trump’s attack was immediately characterized as “witness intimidation” by House Democrats and the media, who played up the notion that Yovanovitch was a victim being punished for nothing more than her commitment to the truth.

We heard the same sort of praise for William Taylor and George Kent, the State Department officials who also testified last week, just as we’ve heard praise for all the career bureaucrats who have testified in closed-door sessions so far. Democrats and the media gave special praise to Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the NSC Ukraine expert who told impeachment investigators he was alarmed by what he heard on the July 25 phone call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. As one of the only officials to have heard the call first-hand, Vindman was immediately hailed as a “star” witness in the impeachment probe, treated to glowing profiles in the New York Timesand the Washington Post, which said the Soviet émigré escaped to America with his family as a small child and grew up “determined to be as American as can be.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-11-16-the-trump-impeachment-what-is-the-crime-2

It was right around the time that I was writing my last post (“The Trump Impeachment: What Is The Crime?”) that House Democrats started using the word “bribery” to describe what they are looking into. OK, that’s a start. Shall we consider it further?

Bribery is a real crime, and it’s even mentioned in the Constitution as a basis for impeachment. But there are two major problems with trying to fit the square peg of the Trump/Ukraine fact pattern into the round hole of the impeachable crime of “bribery.” The first is that if providing to a politician some intangible political advantage can be characterized as a “bribe,” then most of what politicians do all day would become “bribery.” The second is that calling President Trump’s conduct as to Ukraine “bribery” invites comparison with the conduct of Joe and Hunter Biden in the same country, and calls for testing the conduct of each against the words of the applicable statute to see which is the better fit.

As discussed in the previous post, it’s only a “crime” if you can fit within the exact words of some criminal statute passed by Congress. In the case of the crime of bribery of a federal official, the main statute is 18 U.S.C. Section 201(b). Here are the words of the relevant portion:

(b) Whoever . . . (2) being a public official or person selected to be a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for: (A) being influenced in the performance of any official act . . . shall be fined under this title . . . or imprisoned for not more than fifteen years, or both.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/obama-granted-clemency-to-terrorists-and-traitors-but-were-supposed-to-be-angry-at-trumps/

Last week, President Trump granted full pardons for Army First Lt. Clint Lorance and Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who’d been accused of war crimes. Lorance had served six years of a 19-year sentence, and Golsteyn was facing trial for killing an alleged Taliban bombmaker. Navy SEAL Edward R. Gallagher, who was found not guilty of war crimes, but still had his rank reduced, was granted clemency and restoration of rank.

Lawmakers had been pushing for pardons for Lorance and Golsteyn because they’d taken actions to defend themselves on the battlefield and were charged with war crimes for it.  Yet, when President Trump pardoned them, it immediately sparked controversy and outrage. Pete Buttigieg joined in the outrage chorus, claiming Trump “dishonored our armed services.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/11/18/drive by_media_cash_in_on_impeachment_hysteria_141751.html

An unhappy coincidence Thursday morning was, for me, the perfect metaphor for the mass (media) hysteria engendered by the televised impeachment hearings the nation was burdened with last week.

Although Chairman Adam Schiff had only scheduled hearings before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday and Friday, the programming department at CNN apparently decided to maximize their ratings by touting “Special Coverage” of the impeachment on Thursday as well. At least, that was the message that had been sent to YouTube TV, whose channel guide promoted “Impeachment Inquiry: Special Coverage” on CNN from early morning till mid-afternoon on Thursday.

No doubt, the hosts at CNN (under the tutelage of Never Trump boss Jeff Zucker) were prepared to give their last full measure of devotion to a cause that was conceived in hatred, and dedicated to the proposition that Donald Trump is unworthy of the presidency and must be impeached, so help us God.

But on that Thursday morning, a true tragedy intervened in the form of a mass shooting at a high school in Santa Clarita, Calif. Therefore, for YouTube TV viewers at least, we were treated to the spectacle of CNN circling the shooting scene like carrion-hunting vultures under the banner of “Impeachment Inquiry: Special Coverage.”

The shooting, and more particularly CNN’s fascination with it, reminded us (if we needed reminding) that cable news is built on a business plan of sensationalism, shock and outrage. It also resulted in a palimpsest of comments by CNN host Anderson Cooper and others that were equally applicable to the shooting and to the impeachment coverage that it had replaced.

“There is a numbness to this, I think, in some orders” — quarters? — “as well,” Cooper intoned solemnly. “It’s a horrific numbness of people looking up at a TV screen, seeing this yet again, and it just seems like it goes on and on and on.”

He was talking about the school shooting, and yet his words could just as easily have been about the reaction that many voters have to the latest incarnation of a Democratic impeachment push that has been underway literally since the day after the 2016 election.

Now, we must be careful not to compare the actual tragedy of an act of violence such as a school shooting with the potential destruction of the civil order through an act of political sabotage. They have nothing in common except that both are fodder for our rubber-necking news media, and that is the warning I want to impart.

We already know from the Project Veritas undercover investigation of CNN that the news channel’s president, Jeff Zucker, has a blatant anti-Trump bias, which he has passed on to his employees.

In recordings of daily phone calls captured by the Project Veritas whistleblower, Zucker directed staffers to push the impeachment narrative above all else.