Lawyers, liars and Trump on trial:
Bill Moyers details how the GOP cover-up puts America
on extremely dangerous ground
Moyers:
You will remember that Nixon resigned just before he was
to be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and
later defended himself by claiming, “If the President does
it, it’s not illegal.”
It comes down to this:
"... one of those witnesses, if John Bolton is accurate,
is the White House counsel, sitting right there in front
of both Mitch McConnell and the Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court."
Harper: Right.
Moyers: What would you call that?
Harper: I would call that treading extremely dangerous grounds,
if I were Pat Cipollone.
Moyers:
What we’ve just seen is the dictator of the Senate manipulating
the impeachment process to save the demagogue in the White
House whose political party has become the gravedigger of
democracy.
Harper:
"...when the complete story of the Trump presidency is told,
it will be a very dark mark on Senator Mitch McConnell’s
legacy."
Moyers:
Senator Ted Cruz (said) impeachment “is not going anywhere
because the facts are not there.”
Adam Schiff, the lead manager for the House when impeachment
moved to the Senate, told the same audience that “They don’t want
the American people to see the facts.”
Who was right?
Harper:
Who was right?
The person who was right is the person who says, “Look,
don’t take my word for it,” and I used to tell juries this all
the time, “Don’t take my word for it, just bring an informed
skepticism to whatever evidence each side brings to the question.
And if one side is not willing to bring you any evidence at all,
that should tell you something. If one side is obstructing, blocking
your effort to see evidence, that should tell you something. If the
other side is working diligently to try to not only uncover but to
provide to you facts and evidence, then you’re at least in a position
where you can assess which one to believe.
So, that’s what should happen.
"...the facts are not their friends, obviously; otherwise, they’d
be talking about the facts, they’d be arguing the facts, they
would be presenting the facts, they would be pushing the facts."
And they’re not doing that, they’re doing the opposite of that.
Moyers: Isn’t this ultimately a moral issue, beyond politics and even the law?
Harper:
Hannah Arendt said:
“If, everybody lies to you, if everybody always lies to you,
the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather
that nobody believes anything any longer…And a people
that can no longer believe anything, cannot make up its mind.
It is deprived, not only of its capacity to act, but also of its
capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people,
you can then do what you please.”
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/la...p-puts-america-on-extremely-dangerous-ground/
Bill Moyers details how the GOP cover-up puts America
on extremely dangerous ground
Moyers:
You will remember that Nixon resigned just before he was
to be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and
later defended himself by claiming, “If the President does
it, it’s not illegal.”
It comes down to this:
"... one of those witnesses, if John Bolton is accurate,
is the White House counsel, sitting right there in front
of both Mitch McConnell and the Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court."
Harper: Right.
Moyers: What would you call that?
Harper: I would call that treading extremely dangerous grounds,
if I were Pat Cipollone.
Moyers:
What we’ve just seen is the dictator of the Senate manipulating
the impeachment process to save the demagogue in the White
House whose political party has become the gravedigger of
democracy.
Harper:
"...when the complete story of the Trump presidency is told,
it will be a very dark mark on Senator Mitch McConnell’s
legacy."
Moyers:
Senator Ted Cruz (said) impeachment “is not going anywhere
because the facts are not there.”
Adam Schiff, the lead manager for the House when impeachment
moved to the Senate, told the same audience that “They don’t want
the American people to see the facts.”
Who was right?
Harper:
Who was right?
The person who was right is the person who says, “Look,
don’t take my word for it,” and I used to tell juries this all
the time, “Don’t take my word for it, just bring an informed
skepticism to whatever evidence each side brings to the question.
And if one side is not willing to bring you any evidence at all,
that should tell you something. If one side is obstructing, blocking
your effort to see evidence, that should tell you something. If the
other side is working diligently to try to not only uncover but to
provide to you facts and evidence, then you’re at least in a position
where you can assess which one to believe.
So, that’s what should happen.
"...the facts are not their friends, obviously; otherwise, they’d
be talking about the facts, they’d be arguing the facts, they
would be presenting the facts, they would be pushing the facts."
And they’re not doing that, they’re doing the opposite of that.
Moyers: Isn’t this ultimately a moral issue, beyond politics and even the law?
Harper:
Hannah Arendt said:
“If, everybody lies to you, if everybody always lies to you,
the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather
that nobody believes anything any longer…And a people
that can no longer believe anything, cannot make up its mind.
It is deprived, not only of its capacity to act, but also of its
capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people,
you can then do what you please.”
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/la...p-puts-america-on-extremely-dangerous-ground/
