There's No Lynching Here, But There Is a Smoking Gun
Lynch is a perfectly fine Irish surname that has been damaged by history and by the brutal ignorance of the human race. (It comes from the Irish, Ó Loingsigh, meaning "mariner;" the Irish itself is probably a gaelicization of the French-Norman de Lench.) My grandmother was a Lynch, one of the seven Lynch sisters who were shepherds in Lixnaw, in north Kerry. Of course, thanks to the brutal ignorance of this current president*, Lynch is now Trending, and not in a good context, either.
This was a deliberate insult, whether it was intended as a distraction or not, to the thousands of people who were lynched in this country. It was calculated to summon up the rage in 2019 that drove the mobs in 1919. The president* is going to stage one of his wankfests in South Carolina this week, and in Tupelo, Mississippi, on November 1. What are the odds he's going to talk about how he is being "lynched" to an audience of angry white people in South Carolina and Mississippi? I'm already nauseous.
Plus, the idiot parade marched in step. White House spokesman Hogan Gidley tried to explain that the president* hadn't tweeted what he'd plainly tweeted. Senator Huckleberry Graham, on the other hand, apparently wants to die on every single hill. He told Alex Bolton of The Hill:
“This is a lynching in every sense.”
Holy hell. History tells us that there are, ah, several senses in which a constitutional process of impeachment does not resemble a lynching. Graham could ask around at home. There have to be Polaroids. I'm absolutely convinced now.
But let's look into another Lynch in the news—namely, U.S. Representative Steve Lynch, from South Boston in the Commonwealth (God save it!). Congressman Lynch is an actual conservative Democrat. He's constantly under pressure from the city's changing demographics, and Ayanna Pressley's primary defeat of Congressman Michael Capuano undoubtedly weighs more heavily on him than on other members of the delegation.
Lynch was in the room on Tuesday for the testimony of Bill Taylor, the career diplomat who had been the top official in Ukraine at the time the president* was shaking the president of that country down in an attempt to enlist him in ratfcking the 2020 election. Taylor already was a major figure in the episode, because a text from him released earlier specifically linked the quid of the military aid to the quo of the ratfcking and extortion. On Tuesday, having heard Taylor's deposition, here's what Steve Lynch, the careful conservative Democrat, said:
This testimony is a sea change. I think it could accelerate matters. This will, I think, answer more questions than it raises. Let's put it that way."
According to multiple reports, Taylor drove several nails into the administration*'s rapidly closing coffin. He completely undermined the previous testimony of Gordon Sondland, the hapless ambassador to the EU who was the administration*'s errand boy. And Taylor apparently made it quite clear that all of the administration*'s tawdry denials are even more worthless than most of the public statements out of Camp Runamuck—that they are pure and unadulterated gaslighting. His opening statement shreds every one of them.
Ambassador Sondland told me that he now realized he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelenskyy was dependent on a public announcement of investigations -- in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, "everything" was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelenskyy "in a public box" by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.
Right now, it's hard to find a gun that isn't smoking.
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