11/17/19
It was foolish to hope that Donald Trump would be cowed into better behavior by the start of impeachment hearings last Wednesday. His type never admits wrongdoing, never apologizes, never changes for the better. Instead, they smear their accusers, attack the witnesses, and cause as much chaos as possible to distract from the growing pile of evidence against them. Along the way, they drag their supporters down to their level, obliging them to twist the truth and contort their morals to defend the indefensible. Thanks to the live feed of the hearings from the Longworth House Office Building, those with strong stomachs can watch this performative debasement in real-time. Just listen to the Republican congressmen during the hearings as they reel off denials, fabrications and distractions while never attempting to refute the core of the allegations against their master. And how could they, since Trump’s lawyers, officials and Trump himself have already admitted to it all? There is no limit to the possible number of lies and only one truth, so it’s easy for the facts to be lost in the rising tide of falsehoods. Instead of falling into the trap of refuting every conspiracy theory and slander, the best remedy is to keep repeating the truth, as often as necessary, like taking a medicine. So, once more for the record: Trump withheld U.S. aid to Ukraine in order to extort Ukraine’s president into helping smear Joe Biden, Trump’s political rival. That’s it. Game over. Everything else — how it served Vladimir Putin’s interests in undermining Ukraine and deflecting Russian guilt for hacking the 2016 U.S. election — no matter how damning it may be, is just treasonous icing on the impeachable cake.
But even if you can fool some of the people all of the time, the relentless moving of the goalposts has to be wearing thin. First Trump didn’t do it. Then, even if he did it, nobody can prove it. Well, you can prove it, but it’s not so bad. Okay, it’s bad, but the proof is second-hand. The goalposts shift by the hour, a moving target that cannot be hit. Now there’s plenty of first-hand evidence even with the White House trying to stop key figures from testifying. All the Republicans have left is blind loyalty and slandering the messengers of so much bad news for the Dear Leader. That nearly everyone around Trump turns out to be a criminal is a coincidence nearly on the scale of how many of their crimes come back to Russian connections. It’s good to know that when you follow a false prophet, Jesus’s dictum “the truth will set you free” does not apply. Instead, the truth gets you sent to jail. Trump’s ability to drag people down to his level of the swamp is mirrored on the international front. He attacks traditional allies while befriending thugs and autocrats. He spreads corruption, keen to make other leaders as complicit as he is in order to gain leverage over them. These are the practices Putin uses to spin his web in the free world and it’s a sad day when these same habits are preferred by the president of the United States. “Facts are stubborn things,” wrote John Adams. And we must be no less stubborn in defending those facts. If Trump is so infallible, he and his defenders should have no qualms about having him deliver the truth not on Twitter, not at a rally, but under oath.