What Went Down On Day 1 Of The Impeachment Hearings

Democrats have basically given up on forcing the White House to cooperate with their subpoenas through court battles, which they might win, but would take months to conclude. So as Perry mentioned, they appear to be trying to weaponize Trump’s stonewalling against him by including it in an article of impeachment.

One thing I’m wondering about, as I listen to Schiff lay out what he sees as the stakes of these hearings, is how much regular people will pay attention to these hearings on the news tonight or in the paper tomorrow morning or on Twitter or Facebook whenever they have a spare minute at work. The way that the public perceives the testimony is key. What springs to mind is something my mother talks about — sitting and ironing while she watched the Nixon hearings. It’s a great image in my head, but also speaks to how much the American public was captured during those proceedings.

I still wonder about the framing around bribery. I haven’t seen hard data on the question of how Americans perceive bribery (I’m assuming most are against) but I’d guess that people associate it with bags of cash in the freezer, not extortion in a foreign aid context.