What Went Down On Day 1 Of The Impeachment Hearings

The Republicans’ defense right now seems to hinge on the idea that Ukraine could plausibly have been responsible for interfering in the 2016 election to help the Democrats. To be clear, this is a conspiracy theory — there is no evidence so far that Ukraine did anything remotely comparable to the Russian election interference described in Mueller’s report. Here’s a good fact-check of several of the strands of this conspiracy theory and why they don’t amount to much.

George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer doesn’t think this is going well for the GOP, either.

Castor’s questioning isn’t really effective right now in my book. Taylor seems confused by his questions, in part because Castor hasn’t really laid out a universe of facts/context for Taylor to explain where he, Castor, is coming from. Castor largely seems to be asking Taylor “do you agree” to questions that are sort of akin to “Wasn’t it fair for Trump to think that some in the Ukrainian establishment was out to get him?”