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comment by am_Unition
am_Unition  ·  1592 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Open Thread: Impeachment Hearings

My counterargument is that the meat of all this (Trump's extortion/bribing of Zelensky for political dirt by withholding $390 of military aid designed to help Ukraine fight Russia) was clearly laid out in the late-September WSJ report on the whistleblower and phone call. The following week, Trump released the transcript, Pelosi announced a formalized impeachment, and public opinion on impeachment shifted by ~8% points. Since then, despite all of the corroborating evidence gathered in closed door depositions from ~20 witnesses, public opinion has only shifted by about the amount of uncertainty, i.e. it really hasn't. The public hearings mostly just confirm news reports about the closed door testimony, although of course I understand how necessary they are in the impeachment process. I'm worried that without more bombshells* unveiled during the public hearings, the lack of "new" information will undermine the significance of what the public already knows, when it should have already been utterly devastating to Trump's base.

I'm very suspicious of the quoted "21% changed their minds after the hearings" figure in the ABC news poll. I haven't seen that reflected in other polls.

*Bombshells like, oh, by the way, Sondland spoke with Trump on an unsecured personal cellphone inside a Ukrainian restaurant, allowing multiple other people around to hear Trump's fixation on having Zelensky open an investigation, and Sondland's assurance that Zelensky would comply. There's so much to unpackage here. Let's start by pointing out the simple fact that a recording of this call gives its owner leverage over POTUS. Then we can talk about how Sondland already lied for Trump in his closed deposition, and later revised his testimony after the fact. I dare Sondland to perjure himself again this Wednesday, on TV, but he'll probably plead the fifth, or obstruct the questioning somehow.