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On Taking Men at Their Word…
When Senator Ron Johnson (R — WI) was on yesterday’s Meet the Press, we heard a familiar refrain: A man deciding to take another man at his word when presented with a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Chuck Todd of Meet the Press merely asked Sen. Johnson to elaborate on a Wall Street Journal quote attributed to him, of his reaction when the U.S. ambassador to the European Union told him that President Donald Trump had withheld military aid to Ukraine for political reasons. “At that suggestion, I winced. My reaction was: Oh, God. I don’t want to see those two things combined,” Johnson told the Wall Street Journal. After some broad gestures toward deflection were not fruitful, Johnson finally answered Todd’s pressing: “When I asked the President about that, he completely denied it. He adamantly denied it. He vehemently, angrily denied it. He said, ‘I’d never do that.’” (It, I presume, meaning withholding financial aid to Ukraine for political pressure.)
We are still embroiled in unpacking what exactly happened in Donald Trump’s — the motivation and the goals — but given that Johnson, as the chairman of the Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the region that includes Ukraine, is the senator most embroiled in this growing scandal, wouldn’t he want and need more than an angry denial from a compulsive liar? I mean, for his own peace of mind and with his reputation at stake, wouldn’t…
