ROM Loses Another Whole Day of His Life Watching Impeachment Hearings So You Don't Have To

 

Where did the day go, and can I have a do over?  Starting at 9:00 this morning, the ROM watched over 11 hours of congressional impeachment hearings featuring Lt. Col. ("Don't Call Me Mr.") Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council's top Ukraine expert, Jennifer Williams, a national security aide to Mike Pence, Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine, Tim Morrison, a former official at the NSC, Adam Schiff's bulging eyeballs, and Jim Jordan's shirtsleeve rants. It wasn't all finally over until after 8:00 at night.

Lt. Col. Vindman, an Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient, wore his Army dress uniform. During his opening statement, he explained how his father had fled Ukraine with the family when Vindman was a toddler. “You made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union," he told his father, "and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth.” Later, he got a round of applause during his testimony.

Vindman testified that Trump’s request for Ukraine to open investigations into his political rivals should be viewed as demands, not "requests" or "suggestions."  He added that they were also inappropriate and “likely to have significant implications” for national security. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” he said of the July 25 call. “My worst fear of how our Ukraine policy could play out was playing out.”

I ate my lunch, a store-bought Cuban sandwich and a bag of chips, sitting on the sofa while Ms. Williams testified.  Like Vindman before her, Williams said that the hold on nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine was damaging to Ukraine’s ability to fight Russian aggression. “Any signal or sign that U.S. support was wavering would be construed by Russia as potentially an opportunity for them to strengthen their own hand in Ukraine,” she testified, repeating what the president of Ukraine had said during a meeting with her boss, Mike Pence.

Volker and Morrison testified in the afternoon.  Both were from the Republican's witness list and the two together in one session represented the GOP's best opportunity to oppose the emerging Democratic narrative of White House wrong-doing.  But Mr. Volker disappointed by portraying himself as an out-of-touch bureaucrat, saying he didn’t know of “any linkage between the hold on security assistance and Ukraine pursuing investigations.” He later said that he considered concerns about the Bidens and the 2016 election to be “conspiracy theories,” and “not things that we should be pursuing as part of our national security strategy,” not exactly what the Republicans had wanted to hear when they invited him.

I had a Caesar's salad for dinner while Mr. Morrison explained how the normal NSC leadership structure had been subverted by Gordon Sondland, a Trump donor appointed ambassador to the European Union.  Morrison said it was referred to internally as “the Gordon problem.” He said he kept track of what Sondland was doing, but "I didn’t necessarily always act on things Gordon suggested he believed were important.”

Read the press - there are far better accounts of what happened today elsewhere.  But as these are the times and this is my record of the times, I'm recording it here for posterity to largely be ignored in years hence, likely even by myself.