I was sure I was going to be working up a rant for this week’s column. I figured everybody in the U.S. House of Representatives’ chamber would be chewing gum and tossing paper airplanes back and forth all week long, and I’d be sputtering by now, and it would show.
Then, Nancy Pelosi says there’s going to be an impeachment inquiry and, lo, there is an impeachment inquiry. Next thing, I’m binge-watching CNN and scouring online news sites for eight hours straight. I love a good impeachment inquiry. No longer sputtering, my mood has completely turned around.
The 1974 Nixon impeachment was the best. But I also enjoyed the Clinton impeachment, because it had all those great lines. “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” “I did not have sex with that woman.” Classics. This one is shaping up to be just as good as that one, and may eventually surpass the Nixon one.
I’m loving the rich textures of the unfolding story.
Who among you knows that, prior to being elected president of Ukraine this year, Volodymyr Zelensky played the role of president of Ukraine in a Ukrainian TV series? The political party he headed up to win the real presidency was created by people from the same company that produced the TV show, and was named after the show. That’s some fine texture I would never have made up.
I would not have made up a Rudy Giuliani outburst in which he would end up shouting, “And I will be the hero! These morons — when this is over, I will be the hero!”
Or Trump blurting out that as far as he’s concerned, Nancy Pelosi isn’t Speaker of the House anymore. It’s hard to fathom the mind of a man so stupid as to think that if he says Nancy Pelosi isn’t speaker of the House, that declaration could ever have anything to do with her position as speaker of the House.
“Abracadabra! Nancy Pelosi, you are no longer Speaker of the House. For I, Donald Trump, direct the Fates!” Yeah, right.
Or Trump blithely releasing a transcript of the phone call that confirms the whistleblower complaint as if it did the opposite. And then, having released the transcript his own self, said people who revealed to the whistleblower what he just revealed are “close to” being spies and treasonous and hints he thinks they should be executed.
Or that White House officials would hide the transcript of Trump’s July 25 call to Zelensky on a code-protected, stand-alone server meant for national security secrets — “hush-hush everyone” — so no one would find them, and then the whistleblower would be told about it.
“Don’t anybody let anyone know where we’re hiding this. Except for that guy over there, the one who is always asking what we’re up to.”
I’m in awe of the whistleblower. His complaint is high-quality literature.
I say “his” complaint because The New York Times has described him as a “he” and has probably blabbed enough about him to enable White House staff to figure out who he is. “All the news that’s fit to print” (The Times’ slogan) and some that isn’t.
Granted, it’s likely the White House will figure out who the whistleblower is just from an analysis of the writer’s style, the knowledge displayed and from narrowing down who had access to whom and when. So I’m not going to let The New York Times story ruin my good mood. But before I let go of the matter, I would like to point out a little inconsistency in their position.
Almost exactly a year ago, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by “Anonymous,” a senior official in the Trump administration, titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” The Times revealed that they knew the identity of the author but wouldn’t “out” him or her. What’s the difference now? Would NYT have kept mum about this whistleblower if instead of using the Whistleblower Act to get his message out, he had just sent his complaint to The Times to be their exclusive story?
Maybe the author of that op-ed last year, who has so far not been outed, is still in the Trump administration and was one of the whistleblower’s sources.
Surprise: The New York Times says the whistleblower works in intelligence. For the CIA. Who would’ve guessed?
So he really is a spy, only not for a foreign power. For us. And he’s on the job.
Dr. Wes Browning is a one time math professor who has experienced homelessness several times. He supplied the art for the first cover of Real Change in November of 1994 and has been involved with the organization ever since. This is his weekly column, Adventures in Irony, a dry verbal romp of the absurd. He can be reached at drwes (at) realchangenews (dot) org
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