Day 1151 Ah, to be sliced and diced by Fiona Hill.
Friday November 22, 2019
348 Days until the 2020 election and 433 days until the Inauguration
In Dr. Fiona Hill’s testimony we saw a real diplomat in action. With dignity, grace, calm, and poise she destroyed the Republican false narratives, parts of Gordon Sondland’s testimony all the while holding out a way forward for us to all work together as Americans for the common good of the country.
By the end of the day, two of the biggest blowhards were strangely silent toward her. They never asked her a question, and used their time to once again spout false narratives promoted by Russian intelligence. Of the three more minor and venial attack dogs whom Dr. Hill named and offered her sympathies to: two had left the hearing and the other sat there mute.
It was masterful. It was art – diplomatic art.
But who would want to mess with her?
A woman who as a young girl had one of her pigtails lit on fire while she was taking a test, and calmly put out the fire and continued taking the test. I wonder how the kid who did it felt as he sat behind her watching the reaction. Talk about cool. Talk about grace under pressure.
There were two textbook examples of how a really skilled diplomat works that Dr. hill demonstrated in her testimony that I’d like to talk about. She has been described as coming to a knife fight and wielding a machete. I disagreed. It’s a stiletto, used with surgical skill..
Take for instance when she was questioned about Gordon Sondland’s testimony that he had coffee with her in her office on her last day on the job, how she seemed mad and upset, and that he offered a shoulder for her to cry on. That she hugged him.
When asked she pursed her lips briefly and suggested that perhaps Mr. Sondland had conflated two meetings. She said she would not have been able to offer him coffee in her office as she had no means to make coffee, nor was there any nearby. The best she could do would have been to offer him water. (As if to suggest, she wasn’t the best host perhaps?)
But she did say a year earlier they had met for coffee and that was perhaps what he was thinking of (offering him cover and a way out.) On that day she was angry. Not at the situation or as some would describe a woman’s emotionality (she was more graceful than my description here.) She said she was mad at Sondland on that day because he was not forthcoming about what he was doing. Then she offered yet another olive branch and cover. She said now, after hearing his testimony of the previous day that he was absolutely correct. (Score one for Gordo!) That after seeing who he was communicating with and now understanding his mission that he was perfectly within his rights and given his mission to not communicate with her. She apologized for not understanding that at the time. (Score another point for Gordo!) That the president can choose whomever he wants to carry out missions and that is within his purview (Score one for the Donald!)
She realized that her mission and objective were different than the one Sondland had been given. As she put it the two missions had “diverged.”
She and her staff were involved in national security and Sondland was on a “political errand.” (Bang! What just happened? Did an “Aw Shit” just wipe out any points Gordo and Donnie had amassed?)
She at the time had said that she was afraid that his (Sondland’’s actions) were “going to blowup in his face” (Ouch, not done yet.) “And here we are.” (Point Game Set Match)
Of course that was late into the testimony. Her opening remarks were also of like precision and most of the Republicans questioning took time in their five minutes to categorically deny what she and everyone else knew they had been trying to push.
In her opening remarks she said that the Russians had hacked our 2016 elections and any idea that Ukraine had done so was false and cooked up by Russian intelligence.
I lost count of how many of the minor players on the Republican bench took pains to say, “We never said that. We even signed onto a bipartisan report that said so.”
Hum, then why did Nunes and Jordan keep pushing the Ukraine narrative? And why did neither one ask Dr. Hill about it? Or anything else for that matter?
(I know! I know!) They saw how she had filleted Gordon Sondland and wanted to not look like Swiss Cheese with their horse puckey leaking out of every surgically carved hole in their bodies that’s why.
348 Days until the 2020 election and 433 days until the Inauguration
PS The kid with the pharaohs. Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo, Egypt.