What A Day - The Four Horsemen Of The Impeachment

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

In an epic 12 hour impeach-a-thon, four witnesses took the stand, including Lt. Colonel Vindman, Pence aid Jennifer Williams, former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, and Europe and Russia special expert slash spokesman for drinking milk Tim Morrison. We talk through the biggest takeaways. And in headlines: Epstein guards on trial, Madea’s big debate, and the new Cats trailer is not safe for human or animal consumption

It's Wednesday, November 20th. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, the Paddington 2 of daily news podcasts. Hugh Grant, you are a damn bastard for what you tried to do to that sweet bear. On today's show, it's the second installment of our series, What to Impeach When You're Impeaching. Yesterday, the impeachment hearings lasted almost 12 hours and included two sets of witnesses, multiple conspiracy theories, and one spectator who was trying her hardest to keg stand a coffee cup. In the morning, we heard testimony from Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the White House National Security Council, and Jennifer Williams,

an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom were on the so-called perfect phone call that we can't stop hearing about between Trump and Ukraine President Zelensky in July. That's right. And the afternoon brought testimonies from two witnesses that the Republicans requested, Tim Morrison, a Europe and Russia special expert on the National Security Council, and Kurt Volker, former US special envoy to Ukraine. The hearings were televised to the public, which I can't reiterate enough was what Republicans wanted. And now it's the top news story everywhere, including here. So we're going to go through the major takeaways. We got more testimony that backed up what's been

a pretty consistent account of Trump pressuring Ukraine's president to investigate Hunter Biden in exchange for U.S. military aid. Vindman, as you said, was on the Trump-Zelensky phone call and said yesterday that he, quote, couldn't believe what he was hearing and that it was his, quote, worst fear for how Ukraine policy could play out. Akilah, what were the other moments from the morning that stood out to you in Vindman's hearing? So Lieutenant Colonel Vindman's opening statement was incredibly powerful. His hands were shaking, but his voice never wavered. And he spoke about his military service and his family's military service and why he's dedicated his entire professional life to the United States.

He talked about how it'll be 40 years since he and his family immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine. Back then, it was part of the Soviet Union for a better life. And he said, quote, I also recognize that my simple act of appearing here today, just like the courage of my colleagues who also truthfully testified before this committee, would not be tolerated in many places around the world. Later, he said that it was his duty to tell the truth and that he reassured his father that everything's going to be okay. Here's that clip. You realize when you came forward out of sense of duty that you were putting yourself in direct opposition to the most powerful person in the world. Do you realize that, sir? I knew I was assuming a lot of risk. And I'm struck by that word, don't worry, that phrase, do not worry, you addressed to your dad. Was your dad a warrior? He did serve. It was a different military though.

And he would have worried if you were putting yourself up against the president of the United States. Is that right? He deeply worried about it because in his context, there was, there was the ultimate risk. And why do you have confidence that you can do that and tell your dad not to worry? Congressman, because this is America. This is the country I've served and defended, that all of my brothers have served, and here, right matters. Thank you, sir. Yield back.

So Democrats seem like largely focused on asking the witnesses about the facts. But Akilah, how would you describe what the Republicans did throughout the day? Yeah, it definitely felt like Republicans were choosing to try to defame and mischaracterize the backstories and histories of the people who are actually testifying to sort of discredit anything they were bringing to the table. So obviously, here at Crooked, we were watching the testimonies all day. There was obviously the group thread, but there was, you know, just lots of chat about it. And I spoke with Jon Favreau briefly about Vindman's testimony, and he agreed with me that it seems like the Republican strategy, especially in the morning with Colonel Vindman, was to smear a war hero. You know, this guy has a purple heart because he was injured by an IED when he was in Fallujah fighting for America. And so it didn't necessarily track when Republicans are questioning his loyalty to the country. You know, the Republicans were

repeatedly insinuating that he had dual loyalty to the U.S. and Ukraine because his family's from there, which I'm not really sure makes sense. It's also incredibly offensive. But yeah, it just doesn't really make a lot of sense in terms of how Ukraine could be benefiting from his testimony right now. The money is obviously in the interest of U.S. national security. Congress approved the fund. So regardless of his personal feelings about it, to question his service seems, you know, a little a little sad. Right. And they're just doing that to suggest that he's not a good character witness or, you know, is not telling, I guess, the whole truth or something like that.

Right. And I also would say Republicans continuously underestimated the witnesses. Vindman literally had receipts on hand for Republican Congressman Jim Jordan's scripted attack on his judgment and how he is perceived by his peers. Your boss had concerns about your judgment. Your former boss, Dr. Hill, had concerns about your judgment. Your colleagues had concerns about your judgment. And your colleagues felt that there were times when you leaked information. Any idea why they have those impressions, Colonel Vindman? Yes, Representative Jordan, I guess I'll

start by reading Dr. Hill's own words, as she attested to in my last evaluation that was dated middle of July, right before she left. Alex is a top 1% military officer and the best army officer I've worked with in my 15 years of government service. He is brilliant, unflappable, and exercises excellent judgment. Yeah, you know, we love a performance review burn. And also he had another 20 seconds of praise for Fiona Hill. We just cut

it for time. But yeah, he basically swerved Jim Jordan's attack and his criticism about his judgment. But Gideon, do you think Republicans have a winning strategy when it comes to just defaming witnesses they perceive to be against the president? I don't think they defamed. I don't think that they succeeded in defaming. But I think that, you know, a couple of times in the direct questioning throughout the day, Republicans got these clips that they were seeking that were sort of from these yes or no types of answers where basically, like we've said earlier in the show, they're not necessarily contesting the facts in their questioning. They're saying, like, do you consider this bribery? Do you consider this a quid pro quo? Language like that.

And these types of witnesses are sort of more nuanced in their answers. So some of them are describing things that are fairly negative to the president of the United States, in some cases, very, very, very negative. But I think that what they were able to do is sort of, in some cases, finagle those sort of short clips that they can put on Fox News and pretend that the context around it didn't happen. And we'll see. He said it wasn't bribery. So, you know, we don't think about this anymore. So that brings us to the afternoon witnesses in an interview with Axios, Republican officials working on impeachment described Tim Morrison and Kurt Volker as their star witnesses. Gideon, tell me about the afternoon testimonies. Did these two people, did they hold the Republicans down and, you know, make Trump

look good? I don't think on the whole it helped. I mean, I think that, you know, we can look at a couple of examples from the afternoon to sort of illustrate this, beginning with a comment that Kurt Volker, the former envoy to Ukraine, made about a realization that he had. He said that he should have realized what Trump's motives were in seeking to investigate Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden. Here is that moment from the testimony. I now understand that others saw the idea of investigating possible corruption involving the Ukrainian company Burisma as equivalent to investigating former Vice President Biden. I saw them

as very different, the former being appropriate and unremarkable, the latter being unacceptable. In retrospect, I should have seen that connection differently. And had I done so I would have raised my own objections. So yeah, that's, you know, shooting down the notion that this is just totally normal stuff that anybody would do. Also, in respect to the idea that Volker was going to be this sort of good witness for the Republicans, he also said that Trump and Rudy Giuliani's assertion that Joe Biden's actions in Ukraine were improper was, quote, not credible. So again, another kind of shot across the bow there in terms of this person is supposed to be helping overall. For our second witness of the afternoon,

Tim Economy Plus with Extra Legroom Morrison. Yeah, because he's a giant. He's like seven feet tall. He is a massive giant. You should look at pictures of what he looks like. It's quite shocking. He was a little bit more of a mixed bag in some senses. So let's talk for a second about a few things that he said. He said that he didn't hear anything that would constitute a crime during the phone call between Trump and Zelensky or that it seemed like bribery. Again, these are value judgments from them on those terms. But Morrison also agreed in principle that it was inappropriate for a president to ask a foreign country to investigate a U.S. citizen. Yeah. And Morrison also foreshadowed another testimony on the way today from Gordon Sondland. That's the U.S. ambassador to the EU. And his hearing is incredibly highly

anticipated because he's been at the center of this whole scandal and was reportedly working with Trump to execute the quid pro quo. He's the loves your ass guy. Have you seen that on Twitter? But basically, he told President Trump that the president of Ukraine loves Trump's ass, because it was written, who's to say where the emphasis was? Interpret accordingly. Loves ass? We don't know. We just read words here at WOD. Yeah, so that brings us to the second takeaway of this part of the afternoon, right? Volker and Morrison were casting Sondland,

the ambassador to the EU, like we said, in a pretty negative light. That involved Volker changing parts of his prior testimony. So in his closed door deposition last month, he denied that the issue of, quote, investigations had come up in this July 10th meeting with Sondland at the White House. But in his new statement, he said that there was, quote, a generic comment that Sondland made that he found to be inappropriate. So now he's saying, you know, hey, oopsies, like Sondland actually did do, you know, this thing that I thought was odd. And Morrison went a little bit further

on the anti-Sondland sauce, referring to something called the, quote, Gordon problem. Among the discussions I had with Dr. Hill were about Ambassador Sondland. I think she might have coined it the Gordon problem. And I decided to keep track of what Ambassador Sondland was doing. I didn't necessarily always act on things Gordon suggested he believed were important. So he wanted to get a meeting.

I understood that the president wanted to do and had agreed to a meeting. And so I was working, I was tracking that we needed to schedule a meeting. Now I feel like in a workplace, another person is naming a specific issue after your name, tracking what you're doing. doing doesn't seem like a super good sign that you're doing your job well. So what Morrison is saying here is that his predecessor, Fiona Hill, had coined this term for Sondland and was referring to Sondland's efforts

to influence Ukraine policy and his desire to promote this whole Burisma investigation. So in essence, you know, to answer the first question about were these witnesses good for Trump? Could be better. Yeah, the tape will show the result. But I think the interesting thing here is that these last two guys specifically seem to be kind of nuking Sondland right before he's set to testify. So Sondland is going to testify today, which is the one that Republicans, rightfully seemingly so,

are reportedly nervous about. And Hill is supposed to testify on Thursday. Yeah, and we'll be watching and slacking throughout the hearings and the Democratic debate in the evening. Slacks on slacks on slacks. To slacks. Yeah, so join us today live on Slack. It's a little thing that we call group thread. We'll be getting started at 9 a.m. Eastern for the impeachment hearings and then join us again at 9 p.m. Eastern for the debate.

Follow along at YouTube.com slash Crooked Media. And now to some ads. Nordstrom Rack is going all out for Black Friday, or as I like to call it, Friday. Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes and I'm black. So anyway, take an extra 50% off clearance items on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, plus free shipping with no minimum spend. This is at Nordstrom Rack. After Friday, it's going to be 30% off clearance through Cyber Monday. And the free shipping also goes to Cyber Monday.

Big weekend. Spend your money, but not too much of it because it's Nordstrom Rack. Keep some for WOD. Yeah. What are you going to do after Thanksgiving, Gideon? What's your Black Friday plan? I'm probably going to learn how to hack and code for Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday for me is a day where...

Cyber Crimes Monday? Everyone gets together and shows off their coding skills. Weird. That's not how I do it. Nor is Jarek. It is where it's at. And now back to the show. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. It is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. This year, 22 transgender and gender nonconforming people in the U.S. were killed in acts of violence. All but two were black trans women who are the most vulnerable group in the trans community.

We'll have more on our show later this week when we speak to black queer transgender activist Raquel Willis, the executive editor of Out Magazine, about the trans obituary project that she just launched today. Two employees at a Manhattan jail have been charged for failing to check on Jeffrey Epstein the night he died in his prison cell. A grand jury in New York accused the two men of falsifying paperwork that said they regularly checked on Epstein. In reality, surveillance camera footage showed the men asleep at their desks during the time of his death.

Now, there's still a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding the convicted sex offender's death. But hey, who among us hasn't fallen asleep next to our only coworker while guarding a man connected to the most powerful people in the world? I haven't. The second-to-last presidential debate of 2020 is happening tonight on MSNBC. It's taking place at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta,

and it'll be hosted by an all-women panel. This is the first debate since the public impeachment hearings dropped, so we'll see hosted by an all-women panel. This is the first debate since the public impeachment hearings dropped, so we'll see what the candidates have to say about that. Expect Elizabeth Warren to bring up her new plan to fund Medicare for All. Also, watch out for Mayor Pete, who will be glowing from the booty bump he got in Iowa. If things go well, he might have the whole audience following along in an insane choreographed arm dance by the end of the night. It's not safe for children to use the internet again because there's a new trailer for the Cats movie. This one features all your favorite horny anamorphs like Taylor Swift as Bomblarina and Idris Elba as Macavity. I want to die. The movie hits theaters on December 20th and will quickly

be followed by the total dissolution of society as the world falls victim to devastating round cat ass induced psychosis. It's also probably going to win Best Picture. And now we're going to do a quick installment of my favorite segment, Akilah Recommends. So, you know, I had to watch all that impeachment stuff because I'm trying to stay informed. But if I got to watch all of that, I also want to talk a little bit about my favorite TV show right now. Mr. Robot. I mean, I'm glad you have. So Mr. Robot is an incredibly slept on show.

And I think it's because of the name. Kind of name is Mr. Robot anyway. It's Nickelodeon bullshit. So that's Young Ma. She's a character on this season, the final season, season four of Mr. Robot. So the long story short is that the first season was very highly rated.

The second season got snubbed. The third season I thought was excellent. Now we're in the fourth season and the news about it that I think we need to just revel in is that the episode that aired this past Sunday is episode seven of season four, and it is widely regarded as one of the best episodes of a television show in history. It is listed on IMDb currently as the number two show of all time, like episode of a television show of

all time. It's beating Ozymandias. So if you watch Breaking Bad, you know that that is the episode in the final season that won, you know, the Emmy for writing. It's the anti-penultimate episode. So two behind the finale. And yeah, it was a huge deal. A woman wrote it. It's killer. Right. But this episode is beating it on IMDb. It's amazing. And I just want to let you know, you should get back into Mr. Robot because lots of people are going to be talking about it come Emmy season and you're going to feel left out. And that was my favorite segment. Akilah recommends. Well, if we're going to do that one day, I'll get to talk about my favorite show.

Ken Burns presents the Taft Hartley Act. Riveting stuff. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. We are new, so if you like the show, make sure you subscribe, give us a rating, leave a review, donate to our autobiographical short film on Kickstarter, and tell your friends to listen.

By the way, if you're into reading and not just Wikipedia summaries of horror movies that you're too scared to watch, like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash newsletters. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And RIP society, it died from cat ass. What A Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tunn is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long.

Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.