Reasonable Minds
I watched every minute of the Intelligence Committee open hearings. While I can’t say I read every word of the thousands of pages of transcripts from the closed hearings, I did read a lot of them. At the end of the day (that was Thursday) the evidence was overwhelming, clear and convincing: the President of the United States tried to use US aid money and a White House meeting to force a Ukrainian investigation of Joe Biden and the 2016 Election.
The Republican side of the Committee refused to participate in honest fact finding. They spent most of their time in obfuscation, throwing out de-bunked conspiracy theories, and attacking honorable witnesses like Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, Foreign Service Officer David Holmes, and former NSC executive Fiona Hill. And they spent hours and hours trying to convince Americans to “not believe your lying eyes.”
They were successful. They maintained that segment of American society dedicated to supporting the President. That was their goal: hold onto the base. The last Real Clear Politics average showed the nation almost evenly divided, with 48% in favor of impeachment/removal, and 46% against. This mirrors the Presidential approval poll, that shows 53% of Americans disapprove of Trump, and 44% approve (RCP).
The “reasonable minds” test failed. A reasonable mind would recognize that the President is guilty. A reasonable mind would move to the next question: is what the President did worthy of removal from office. But we are not in an era of “reasonable minds”. Ask Republican Congressman Will Hurd of Texas, who spent most of the hearings straddling the fence. Even he was finally forced to “stand with the President” in the last couple days.
Post-Truth
In 2004 author Ralph Keyes coined the term “post-truth era.” The impeachment inquiry is just the latest example of a segment of Americans simply ignoring facts; somehow thinking that it’s “OK” to choose their reality, as if ordering a Big Mac rather than McNuggets.
Perhaps some day we will be in a “post Fox News” era. Rupert Murdock found that there were huge profits in taking “tabloid journalism” and cloaking it in respectability. He wasn’t the first to do it: “Yellow Journalism” led the United States into the Spanish American War in the 1890’s. But Fox’s “Fair and Balanced News” projected what a segment of Americans wanted to hear. It was their Big Mac. Facts had little to do with it. Fox sowed the seeds for a Trump-like TV candidate to grow and flourish.
“Fake News” has been the battle cry of the Trump Campaign since the tragic moment he came down the golden escalator. But like much of what the President does and says, it is just another example of “projection”. Mr. Trump takes his own illegal or unacceptable actions, and “projects” them onto others. The most recent example: Trump tried to bribe and extort Ukraine for help in the 2020 election: he claims that what Biden did was the same thing.
Super Powers
The true Trump “super power” is his ability to convince others that his projections are real. It helps him that others in authority “double down” on those projections. Attorney General Bill Barr is on his quixotic international quest to disprove Russian interference in the 2016 election, while this week his Inspector General again reaffirms that truth. And Senator Lindsey Graham is now using his Senate Committee to look for “Counter Strike” and investigate his close friend, Biden. They both have lent their “good name” (what little they have left) to legitimize these fables.
Advertisers will tell you that it takes five repetitions to sell a concept. Even as I write this essay, the President is on “Fox and Friends” repeating more false charges: from President Obama spying on him to Ukrainian election interference to a “new” Apple Mac computer factory in Texas (that opened six years ago). The Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee ignored witnesses to chant their “fake news” litanies. It’s all to hold onto the minds of the base. And it works.
On Fifth Avenue
I can’t see any “fact” that will change the true “Trumper” mind. It is easy to wish for a “silver bullet,” maybe John Bolton’s testimony in a Senate Trial, which might alter the equation. But should John Bolton testify, the Trump/Fox machine will simply send him “under the bus”. Even if it convinces Republican Senators, it won’t change the political equation they face: stand with the President, or end their political careers. It seems no one in this post-truth era is a Profile in Courage.
Donald J. Trump, forty-fifth President of the United States, will be the third President to face an impeachment trial in the Senate. My cloudy “crystal ball” shows him surviving a Senate trial. And then the election of 2020 will really be on.
Democrats will need to find their own “super power”. It should be easy: the majority of Americans will vote for the Democrat, just like in 2016. Get out the vote, continue the Democratization of the suburbs, and it should result in a win. But that’s what we thought last time too.
Democrats do have a weapon to capture the middle, those suburbs and “soccer moms”. They have the facts: a President committing bribery. And they have the law: bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors. Now Democrats need to beat on the table loud enough to make sure Americans know it.
