It is increasingly hard to watch the absurd lengths that some members of the Republican Party – especially in Tennessee – are reaching toward to defend Donald Trump.
There’s the no-harm-no-foul defense, which dovetails with the it-wasn’t-a-crime-if-it-wasn’t-successful defense.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R. Ohio, trotted this one out in Wednesday’s first public impeachment inquiry hearing when witness, veteran and U.S. charge d’affaires in Ukraine, William Taylor, asserted that he was not wrong about Trump’s insistence that aid would not flow to Ukraine until Ukraine provided political dirt on his opponents. “I was not wrong about what I told you because that is what I heard,” Taylor told Jordan.
“What you heard did not happen,” Jordan said.
Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas later in the hearing made the point that attempted crimes – like extortion and bribery – are still crimes, even if the schemes don’t work.