America sees rise of the anti-Trumps
YOU could get the impression they’re doing this crazy experiment in Washington these days, whereby they’re trying to find people who are most unlike Donald Trump in every imaginable way — and then they put them on the stand to talk about all the impeachable stuff that Trump and his “amigos” were doing in Ukraine.
Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine who was “recalled” from her post because she was good, is hardly even a member of the same species as the Trumper — she is a person of the utmost integrity, she routinely put herself into dangerous situations out of a sense of duty, she has a highly developed sense of justice, of right and wrong, and unlike the president, in any such conflict she will favour the right. And she isn’t in it for the money.
She gets paid a decent enough wage no doubt, but Trump wouldn’t even regard that as “money”, it is just too small and it is honestly earned.
If it had only been Yovanovitch giving evidence, it might indeed have seemed like some sort of experiment, but one after the other they came to take the oath — Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, Fiona Hill, David Holmes, men and women who, like Yovanovitch, exude those qualities of accomplishment and judgment and all-round American excellence.
And against all this there is basically a hoodlum, whose responses to their evidence consists of vulgar abuse and the loud repetition of inane falsehoods.
There were about 25,000 ways for the Democrats to impeach Trump, but doing it this way was inspired. This way, not only do you see the kind of things he was doing, and the kind of people he was doing it with, you see what it might be like if it was being done by serious people acting in good faith.
It was inspired, and it was even inspiring.