George Kent

Tuesday

November 19, 2019

Donald Trump 💓 impeachment

Democrats like to make out that Donald Trump is terrified of the impeachment juggernaut they are driving at his head. The president is dissembling on Twitter, they say, because he’s in deep trouble. He knows he’s cornered. He’s flailing. He’s spooked. Resistance to the resistance is futile. The problem is, Trump — and, even more so, his online persona @realDonaldTrump — seems to be relishing the impeachment saga. He does his phony melancholy routine, in which he says how sad it is because we should all be focusing on his many achievements. Don’t believe it. He is simultaneously courting the whole Ukraine brouhaha, dragging it out himself. Why else would he have live-tweeted it last week?

Wednesday

November 13, 2019

Roger Kimball

A tale of two quids

Today marks the official beginning of the Schiff Show Impeachment Follies. It is therefore fitting that I take as my text for today’s meditation Matthew 7:5: 'Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.' What do I mean? I’ll tell you. The ostensible predicate of this spectacle is President Trump’s alleged effort to influence the 2020 election. Specifically, the allegation is that Trump made aid to Ukraine (the quid) conditional on Ukraine’s investigation of Joe Biden’s demand (the quo) that the prosecutor investigating a company on which his son, Hunter, sat be fired. Biden’s demand is not controverted.

Freddy Gray

Resistance reality TV has jumped the shark

Comey. Cohen. Strzok. Page. Blasey Ford. Kavanaugh. Mueller. Taylor and Kent. Are you fed up yet? It sometimes feels as if the last three years in politics have consisted of a series of show testimonies or hearings. All have been furiously hyped by the media. All have proved tedious, the possible exceptions being Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh. Those became fascinating in a disturbing way. The rest have just been dull. Governmental enquiries and hearings generally are. Idiots on Twitter LOL and snark at the silly ‘popcorn’ moments. But nobody really cares. We all move on and look ahead the next ‘blockbuster’ moment, which never materializes. It’s odd. We are told, disapprovingly, by anti-Trump voices that this is the reality TV presidency.

Digby Dent

George Kent’s impeachment dress code

Ahoy, friends. I’m violating the first rule my father instilled in me to bring to you an assessment of George Kent’s sartorial choices in the midst of this impeachment imbroglio. I’m putting something in writing. Here goes. By now you’ve all watched the testimony or seen the pictures. George Kent, hair coiffed and combed, sits resplendent in gray suit and lavish bowtie. Bill Taylor, in dark suit and monochrome tie sits to his left, slouching to speak into his microphone and pressing his oversized glasses up the bridge of his nose. Each man is, in his way, an archetype of the disciplined, public-spirited civil servant.