Like I said: it’s one day. Two witnesses. The celebrations are premature. Most of the stuff Republicans are doing endzone dances over is addressed by other witnesses. We know that because of the depositions.
Biggest takeaway from yesterday should have been:
Since WW2 the industrialized nations have lived under a set of rules that established a peaceful world order. When Russia invaded Crimea, they broke a central tenet of those rules: respect for sovereign borders. We can’t bomb them or we risk starting WW3. We can’t do nothing or we risk them starting WW3. We also gain a number of collateral benefits from this union, like watching how Russia conducts warfare in the modern era. Finally, we have (for decades) including during the Trump era, attempted to reduce corruption in foreign countries and this wasn’t an action that furthered that goal.
Basically, the argument that this was a legitimate action to serve American interests died a gruesome, fiery death yesterday. It wasn’t well publicized because the democrats suuuck at this but nobody watched that testimony and came away honestly saying those guys didn’t know their craft and they effectively shut down any narrative that what delaying aid for investigations into Burisma served any American interest.
Based on what I’ve seen of their testimony, other witnesses will establish other things. The nexus to Trump is the only thing that’s “in question” as that’s up to Sondland but at this point there is almost no wiggle room for him to say he wasn’t ordered by Trump (because how else would he have known it was a mistake to tell Taylor that only the WH meeting was conditioned on investigations? Who else could have corrected him on that?)
