‘Meet the Press’ panel: Dems seek ‘emotional’ witnesses for impeachment hearings

NBC’s Chuck Todd moderated “Meet the Press” guests on Sunday who said the key to impeachment proceedings for Democrats is a stable of “emotional” witnesses who can “dramatize” events.

The media watchdog News Busters noted commentary by The Washington Post’s David Ignatius and PBS NewsHour correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, which described the Democrats’ blueprint for impeachment.

House Democrats, they said, are failing to “to tell the story” to the American people.

“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,” Mr. Ignatius said. “And if that gets through, or if there’s something corrupt that Rudy Giuliani was doing that we discover, I think that changes the stakes. It makes it a very different process.”

Ms. Alcindor said that former Ukraine Ambassador William Taylor’s military service, coupled with emotional testimony from former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, would be a rhetorical winner for Democrats.

“I will say that Democrats are very, they’re very focused on how to tell the story this week,” Ms. Alcindor said. “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.’ “

Republicans, however, stated that any hearings that do not allow for cross-examination of the Ukraine whistleblower and Hunter Biden, son of 2020 Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, make the issue “dead on arrival in the Senate.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham made the statement during a Fox News interview on Sunday.

“It’s impossible to bring this case forward in my view fairly without us knowing who the whistleblower is and having a chance to cross-examine them,” the South Carolina Republican said.