On Friday, as former Ambassador Maria Yovanovitch was
testifying, President Trump made a series of tweets criticizing her performance
as ambassador, which got Democrats so triggered, his tweets were read soon
after they were made, and the narrative presented was that the tweet was
witness intimidation.
"Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,"
Trump tweeted. "She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast
forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about
her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right
to appoint ambassadors."
"They call it 'serving at the pleasure of the
President,'" Trump continued. "The U.S. now has a very strong and
powerful foreign policy, much different than proceeding administrations. It is
called, quite simply, America First!" Trump also noted that he's done far
more for Ukraine than his predecessor than Obama.
This triggered Adam Schiff. "What we saw today is it
wasn't enough that Ambassador Yovanovitch was smeared. It wasn't enough she was
attacked. It wasn't enough that she was recalled for no reason, at least no
good reason. But we saw today witness intimidation in real-time by the
president of United States," Schiff said. "Once again going after
this dedicated and respected career public servant in an effort to not only
chilled her but to chill others who may come forward. We take this kind of
witness intimidation and obstruction of the inquiry very seriously," he
added.
Really? First of all, Yovanovitch wouldn't even had
known about the tweet until after her testimony had Schiff not posted the
tweets in the first place, but regardless, where's the intimidation? I can't
see any. If Schiff was taking this seriously, he wouldn't be lobbing absurd
charges for the purpose of piling on more ridiculous charges against Trump
hoping something will stick.
But what really gets me
is how it's been almost seven years since Barack Obama left one of his
ambassadors to die in a terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate, and the same
people who defended the Obama administration endlessly over that, are feigning
outrage over Trump's tweet expressing his opinion. Democrats have been crying
"impeach!" over everything for years, and now every time Trump
expresses an opinion, we're hearing "intimidation."
The same party
that defended the Obama administration's failure to protect our consulate in
Libya from an attack that claimed four American lives, including that of a U.S.
ambassador, are now trying to tell us that we should be outraged over a
harmless tweet—a tweet that, regardless of what one thinks of the content, was
written after Yovanovitch started testifying, and as far as
Trump knew, she wouldn't have even had an opportunity to see until well after
her testimony concluded? A tweet that she'd have been oblivious to had Schiff
not brought it up.
As White House
spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said
in a statement, the tweets were “simply the President’s opinion, which he
is entitled to.”
_____
Matt Margolis is the
author of Trumping Obama: How President
Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama's Legacy and the bestselling
book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama.
You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
