Within Hearing Distance: Day Four

The public hearings on Tuesday were perhaps the most emotional and personal so far.  And what I liked from the start is that all the witnesses on the first panel were asked if they wanted Trump to win.  And all confirmed that they did.
 
But for all that, as good as all the witnesses were, as unrelenting as the stories of violent mob threats pushed by Trump and his team were, two people stood out (though you can sort of consider it three).
 
The first was Rusty Bowers, the Republican Speaker of the House in Arizona.  He was forthright, well-spoken, detailed, honorable, and stood up relentlessly to repeated pressure directly from the president.  He told his story clearly and with great impact.
 
While I don’t personally think the Constitution is “divinely inspired” as Mr. Bowers said he does, that effected his decisions.  And if it helped him stand up to Trump and Trump’s henchman, and helped him refuse to go against the oath he swore to defend the Constitution and the law, so be it.
 
For all his impressive testimony, my favorite statement was when he asked Rudy Giuliani about his claims, Giuliani replied, “We got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.”  As stoic as Bowers was when testifying, it was clear he was fighting to laugh at that.  And indeed said that at the time, he and those with him in his group and his counsel did laugh.

And it’s hard to top one of his final words, from what he wrote in a journal, to shine an even brighter light on Trump and his GOP acolytes pushing a coup – “I don’t want to be a winner by cheating.”
 
My one wish from his testimony came when he was asked by Committee member Adam Schiff about a statement Trump put out that very morning, claiming that Bowers had told him in a conversation that the election in Arizona was fraudulent and that Trump actually won.  Bowers made repeatedly clear that none of that ever happened, and that it was untrue, that he never said any of that.  What I would have loved, most especially since it was set up by Bowers’ expressions of faith, is that he would have added something like, “This is not my word against his.  It is not ‘he said/she said.’  I am testifying under oath, having sworn my word to God, with the penalty of perjury and risk of going to jail if I am lying.  That is not the case with Mr. Trump.”  And if he didn’t say that, I’d have liked Adam Schiff to have brought it up.  No, it wasn’t necessary to say that, but I think it would have been important and helped.
 
The other standout was Georgia election worker Shaye Moss.  And as a bonus, you can include her mother Ruby Freeman, who didn’t officially testify yesterday, but had earlier and much of her testimony was played on video.  Both together were regal and heart-wrenching, as they told of Trump relentlessly singling Ms. Moss out and repeatedly playing video of them at work, supposedly passing a secret thumb drive between them, when in reality it was a “ginger mint.”  It just added a profoundly human side to presenting Trump’s sickness.  A ginger mint.
 
When Shaye Moss explained why she loved being an election worker – for years – it was emotional, moving and inspiring, how much she loved helping older voters, but anyone who needed help.  But even more, it was her words about feeling it was all her fault that she’d hurt her mother and grandmother and family in getting them involved that was so difficult to hear.  Thank goodness Adam Schiff, who was questioning her, let her know it was not her fault.  That likely won’t change her totally-wrong sense of guilty, but it was good having it stated.
 
"I don't want to go anywhere, I second-guess everything that I do," Moss testified, about how Trump’s actions directed at her turned her world upside down. "It’s affected my life in a major way, in every way, all because of lies for me doing my job — the same thing I've been doing forever."
 
And almost more galling were the words of her mother Ruby Freeman, so proud of being known in her community and business as “Lady Ruby,” even having many t-shirts made up with that name on them which she wore all the time – and taking off that t-shirt she was wearing…and has never worn one of them again.
 
"I've lost my name, and I've lost my reputation,” she said. I've lost my sense of security -- all because a group of people, starting with 45 and Rudy Giuliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter, Shaye, to push their own lies about how the Presidential election was stolen.”
 
What I loved in that is she wouldn’t refer to Trump by name.  Just “number 45.”
 
But it was her final words that punctuated the entire hearing all the more for being played on video at the end. “There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States to target you? The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. But he targeted me, Lady Ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stand up to help Fulton County run an election in the middle of the pandemic."
 
Hearing those words, I remembered a story Harry Truman told (either in the book, Plain Speaking or Mr. Citizen, I don’t recall) after he had left the White House.  He had been giving a speech to a group of high school students, and took one of the kids to task over something the boy had said.  But afterwards, he went and found the student to smooth things over, because he said he knew how damaging the words of a former President of the United States could be on someone, especially one that age.  And then we have Trump publicly and repeatedly going out of his way to destroy the lives of these two people, whose only “crime” was passing a ginger mint and joyfully serving as election workers to help others.
 
Those were the standout moments for me.  Though there was more.

It’s always good to hear Trump recorded breaking the law trying to scam 11,870 votes – “only one more than we need,” which I think is the proof required to know he was well-aware he lost, despite insisting he really won by “400,000”!!!  Just one more vote.  Only one.  As if Democrats would say, “Okay, we lost by one vote, congratulations.”  Never mind that an automatic recount would kick in and those 11,870 would be able to be found.

Speaking of which, I’m glad that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger repeated that there actually were two recounts in the state, and all three results were near identical.  No missing “400,000” votes.  And all the while, there is Trump relentlessly whining and begging and pressuring to just get him those 11,870 votes.
 
And it was great to finally hear the first Republican senator named for participating in the coup, Ron Johnson (R-WI) trying to pass along a package of fake electors on the Senate floor to Vice President Pence on January 6.  To which Johnson now insists he didn’t know what was in the package and also doesn’t remember who gave it to him.  Because yeah, it's standard procedure for a senator to hand an unknown package from an anonymous source to the Vice President of the United States on the Senate floor, right before certifying the election for president…
 
In the end, I had one takeaway from all of this yesterday.  As much as I greatly admired all the testimony on Tuesday – upholding democracy and the U.S. Constitution shouldn’t rely on one man’s religious conviction to uphold his oath. 
 
That is not a criticism of Rusty Bowers.  His actions were noble.  But if that’s what it comes down to for protecting the United States of America, we then need new, stronger laws that are as close to fail-safe as we can get.