Yesterday, Roger Stone, who has engaged anyone and everyone in verbal political sparring for decades, who has pontificated ad nauseum about more conspiracy theories than an Area 51 fanatic, refused to testify in his trial for lying to Congress and threatening witnesses.
Yesterday, GOP MAGA-ites on the House Intelligence Committee spent a lot of their time basically saying “These witnesses never talked to Donald Trump first hand, so their account of what they did see and hear and read is hearsay.” First, it is NOT hearsay to say what you saw and heard and read first-hand. More importantly, these folks like Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes, make this claim while knowing full well the people who DID hear Trump push for political investigations in exchange for aid, are all fighting like hell to NOT testify.
Yesterday and many times before, the MAGA-ites in the GOP have pushed for the whistleblower to have to testify before Congress IN PERSON (presumably so they can tarnish this person’s intent and character in an effort to damage their credibility). First, this is against whistleblower laws the GOP helped write. More importantly, they say the whistleblower’s offer of replying to written questions with written answers is not sufficient and shows the whistleblower has something to hide, when just months ago, their Dear Leader did exactly the same thing to Mueller, refusing to testify.
Look, we all know GOP now stands for Gaslighting Opponents for Power, and that this sort of blatant hypocritical farce is repeated over and over because the conservative media plays it on a loop and 40% of voters buy it and vote GOP/Trump. That’s why Rep. Peter Welch’s clever line of “President Trump is welcome to take a seat right here.” is perfect.
Call them on it every time. Not with anger, not with long, well-thought out, meandering statements that address all the vaguery and will NEVER make the nightly news. But with simple, direct, clever statements that show their avarice.
If Dems want to win the battle of Independents and fend off some of the gas-lighting, at every opportunity, they should remind people that All The President’s Men are refusing to testify (as are they refusing to release the actual call, etc.). “Get them to testify rather than hide the truth” should be a common refrain. They won’t testify. They can’t testify. Because they are liars. Chronic, avarice-driven, compulsive liars, and when forced to repeat their oft-stated lies under penalty of perjury, they suddenly have nothing to say.
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Patrick On Politics 