Jim Jordan just stepped in it
Eleven hours after today’s televised House impeachment hearings first began, the House Democrats were still plowing forward because the testimony was going just that well for them. By the time the sun had gone down, some of the House Republicans had resigned themselves to merely whining about how long the hearings had lasted. But not Jim Jordan, who came out swinging late in the day and promptly punched himself in the face.
Kurt Volker has been a particularly valuable witness today for House Democrats. Tim Morrison has been a more reluctant witness, as he hasn’t said much that helps or hurts Donald Trump. But late in the day, Jim Jordan decided that he was going to single handedly turn Morrison into a pro-Trump witness.
Jordan began crafting a narrative about how Tim Morrison was justified in his concern that the Trump-Ukraine transcript would end up leaking, because it did indeed end up leaking. But when it came time for Jordan to ask Morrison to confirm this, a befuddled Morrison explained that the transcript didn’t leak. Instead, a whistleblower came forward, and then Trump himself chose to declassify the transcript.
Jim Jordan then kept going with his script, but by then it was too late. Morrison had just punched a gaping hole in the narrative. Not only did Jordan stupidly prompt Morrison to shoot down a key House Republican narrative, Jordan also unwittingly shot down the narrative that the Trump White House was justified in burying the transcript on a secret server. Oops.
