After just one impeachment hearing, Donald Trump’s allies in Congress and on Fox News are claiming the whole effort has fizzled.
As Brian Stelter reported last night, the impeachment hearing was nothing but “a joke” and a “disaster” for Democrats, according to Fox News. Today, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), a stalwart Trump defender on Fox, kept the meme going when he appeared on FNC’s Your World show.
Biggs called yesterday’s proceedings a “dud of a hearing.” He sneered that it was ‘a breach of promise” because “we were promised all kind of fireworks and a great case.”
Never mind that FoxNews.com reported, “Fireworks sparked from the very opening” of the hearing in an article that laid out the “extensive testimony” from the two witnesses in great detail.
But Biggs called the impeachment case “so obtuse” that the “witnesses themselves couldn’t describe what they thought might be impeachable conduct.” In fact, both witnesses, William Taylor and George Kent, stressed that they were testifying only about the facts they knew and were deliberately remaining neutral and non-partisan on the question of impeachment. FoxNews.com noted, “During one combative exchange, Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe asked the diplomats if they believe Trump committed an impeachable offense. Neither would say. “That’s not what either of us are here to do," Taylor said. "This is your job.”
Host Neil Cavuto asked if Trump would have been “interested in corruption in Ukraine if it weren’t for the name Joe Biden.”
“Yeah, I think so,” Biggs replied.
Cavuto did not point out that the Pentagon officially certified in May (two months before Trump’s now-infamous request for “a favor” from the president of Ukraine) that it had seen enough anti-corruption progress to justify releasing the congressionally authorized aid that Trump supposedly withheld out of concern for corruption.
Based on the one hearing, only, Biggs predicted that vulnerable Democrats would vote against impeachment. “If you are in a contested district, and you’re a Democrat, first or second term, that President Trump won in 2016, you might be saying to yourself I will not be here much longer if I vote for impeachment based on what I heard out of Taylor and Kent. … I’m just not sure that right now … they would have enough votes to get an impeachment.”
Let’s see if that tune changes later in the process.
Meanwhile, watch Biggs all but declare a Trump victory below, from the November 14, 2019 Your World.
Yes, America, coincidentally the only case of foreign corruption Trump expressed an interest in coincidentally involved a potential 2020 election rival.