They're hoping it will add up to a case for
impeaching President Donald Trump.
So far, all the testimony actually proves is that these
State Department diplomats think they -- not President Trump -- ought to be
running the nation's foreign policy.
Never mind executive privilege or impeachment. The
most pressing constitutional issue at hand is who decides the nation's foreign
policy: the president or the permanent bureaucracy.
House Democrats are accusing Trump of offering Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky a quid pro quo: dirt on former Vice President Joe
Biden in exchange for nearly $400 million in aid. Trump's July 25 phone call
with Zelensky is the subject of the hearings, but these witnesses have no
firsthand knowledge of the call.
Instead, they're whimpering about being sidelined by the
Trump administration and objecting that top ambassadorial appointments are
going to Trump's friends instead of to them. They're seething with disdain
for the president.
For example, a deputy assistant secretary named George
Kent, who testified on Oct. 15, complained he was cut out of important
decisions. Boohoo. Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., leaked Kent's testimony,
saying "here is a senior state department official responsible for six
countries" being ignored, while he watches Trump's appointees
"undermining 28 years of U.S. policy."
Trump's chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, described what's
happening: "A group of mostly career bureaucrats" refuse to accept
that "elections have consequences. And foreign policy is going to change
from the Obama administration to the Trump administration."
The State Department insurrection spans embassies across
the globe.
On Aug. 8, Chuck Park, a 10-year foreign service
officer stationed in Mexico, penned a vitriolic public resignation for
The Washington Post, condemning Trump for carrying out "mass
deportations," failing "dreamers" and pursuing a "toxic
agenda around the world." He publicly accused the president of "naked
cruelty."
Two weeks later, Bethany Milton, a
pro-immigration advocate and state department official stationed in Rwanda, announced
her resignation in The New York Times, scathingly labeling Trump's foreign
policy "small-minded chauvinism."
Good riddance to Milton and Park. Resigning is what
diplomats should do when they are fundamentally at odds with the
administration's foreign policy approach. Taxpayers should not have to foot
the bill for bureaucrats intent on sabotaging the president. No one elected
them.
Predictably, the foreign policy establishment disagrees. William
J. Burns, who capped his career as deputy secretary of state for President
Barack Obama, argues that State Department careerists should be in charge, not
the president and his appointees.
But these career diplomats favor globalism, open borders
and huge American handouts to multinational organizations and third-world
nations. The public elected Trump to implement the opposite -- an America First
agenda. Trump must wrest control to achieve that.
Fifty years ago, Henry Kissinger understood that the
diplomatic bureaucracy was biased against President Richard Nixon's foreign
policy goals. As national security adviser, Kissinger pulled control of
diplomacy into the White House, inciting resentment and pushback from the State
Department.
Again, in 2003, Newt Gingrich warned that
State Department bureaucrats were engaging in "a deliberate and systematic
effort" to undermine President George W. Bush.
It's happening again. The bureaucrats are slithering up
to Capitol Hill to complain about President Trump. History reminds us what's
actually going on here.
On Monday evening, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a
"fact sheet" about Trump's alleged impeachable offense. It
provides no damning evidence, just speculation.
On Tuesday, Taylor told the hearing that another
diplomat, Gordon Sondland, had informed him there was a price for military aid.
But Sondland denies that, insisting the president made it clear there was no
quid pro quo.
Too bad for the impeachment-hungry Dems and their
sympathetic allies from the State Department.
