NYT mind reading of politicians and why it matters (thread)
NYT told readers, "...the test for Mr. McConnell is whether he can again bulldoze over Democrats while keeping his Republican colleagues together, persuading them to share both his low regard for the impeachment charges and his view of the Senate’s role." nytimes.com/2019/12/20/us/…
This statement implies both that McConnell actually holds the impeachment charges in low regard and that his actual view of the Senate role is to quickly dismiss them.
As an alternative hypothesis, Mitch McConnell is a very intelligent person. He has followed the case as it developed. He knows full well that the goal of Trump's actions in Ukraine was to get Zelensky to slime Biden to help his re-election. Hard to make the facts say otherwise.
McConnell also knows that it is an extreme abuse of presidential power to use foreign aid to extort a foreign leader into sliming a political opponent. And, he knows that it is the Senate's "role" to give this allegation a serious hearing and determine whether it is true.
McConnell does not say what he believes because he is doing service for Trump.
Digression: Three and a half years ago, Lindsey Graham was a harsh critic of Trump as someone unsuited to be president. Now he gets hysterical yelling about anyone who raises the same sort of criticisms today.
We can believe either that Senator Graham has (a) totally changed his view of Trump or (b) is now lying about his view of Trump and his opponents. For my part, I find "b" more plausible.
Just as Graham is faking his outrage over criticisms of Trump, McConnell is also faking his "low regard" of the impeachment charges.
The NYT is being dishonest and committing a serious disservice for its readers when it tells them as a matter of fact that McConnell has low regard for the impeachment charges. It has zero way of knowing this to be true and there is good reason to think it isn't.
The WaPo happened to run this piece about all the judges Trump was able to appoint because McConnell blocked appointments under Obama washingtonpost.com/politics/one-i…
The NYT's assertion that McConnell's actions on impeachment are motivated by his assessment of the merits of the case, as opposed to politics, is really pretty damn incredible
