Following Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd grilling Republican Senator Rand Paul and tossing softballs to Democratic Congressman Jim Himes on Sunday, regarding impeachment, the political panel admitted that House Democrats had an uphill battle in upcoming public hearings. The worried journalists urged liberal lawmakers to “dramatize” those hearings as much as possible and hoped some of the witnesses would cry or become “emotional.”
“I think in those two segments, with Rand Paul and Jim Himes, we had a good snapshot of how difficult this is going to be for the – for the Democrats to convince the country that this is extraordinary behavior that disqualifies the President from office,” The Washington Post’s David Ignatius admitted. He also acknowledged that impeachment effort against President Trump looked “purely partisan.”
As a result, Ignatius eagerly offered advice to Democrats on how to change that image problem: “The one thing that will break through, I think, is if this can be dramatized so that our diplomats struggling against the President feel like soldiers in a battlefield, and their commander abandoned them.” He argued: “…if that gets through…It makes it a very different process.”
Moments later, PBS NewsHour correspondent Yamiche Alcindor seemed giddy as she touted the political strategy of Democrats:
I will say that Democrats are very, they’re very focused on how to tell the story this week. And I’m told, from Democratic aides, that they wanted Taylor to be there because he’s a Vietnam vet. He’s gonna be able to tell this story in a simple way. And they wanted Marie Yovanovitch there because I’m told she cried in her testimony, and they essentially want someone who’s going to be emotional to say, “I was a victim of the President trying to do this for his own political gain.”