Margaret Brennan on Sunday's Face The Nation seemed to place her faith in the veracity of secondhand information produced by the whistleblower concerning the phone call between the Ukrainian president and President Donald Trump. Secondhand information which could be properly labeled as "hearsay" which is what guest Senator Lindsey Graham called it.
The sparks flew as Graham vigorously pushed back on Brennan's assertion that a secondhand source, or hearsay, for the phone call in question, is something that an impeachment inquiry could be based upon. Notice how he can hardly get a word in, edgewise.
LINDSEY GRAHAM: ...This seems to me like a political setup. It's all hearsay. You can't get a parking ticket conviction based on hearsay. The whistle blower didn't hear the phone call.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
GRAHAM: Who told the whistleblower--
BRENNAN: -- Which he says.
GRAHAM: ...about the phone call and everything else?
BRENNAN: He says...
GRAHAM: Donald Trump is..
BRENNAN: ...multiple White House officials were discussing it.
GRAHAM: ...still an American. Every American deserves to confront their accuser. So this is a sham as far as I'm concerned. I want to know who told the whistleblower about the phone call. I want to know why they changed the rules about whistleblowers not- the hearsay rule was changed just a short period of time before the complaint was filed. The complaint sounds like a legal document who help him- who helped this guy write it or this girl write it? We're not going to try the President of the United States based on hearsay. Every American has a right to confront their accuser.
BRENNAN: You wanted the President to release this partial call record.
GRAHAM: I did.
BRENNAN: But you're saying this is hearsay. The complaint on a number of fronts...
"A number of fronts" which were all secondhand, or hearsay. Brennan continued to hype the validity of secondhand hearsay but Graham was having none of it, even though Brennan kept interrupting him as if to keep him from talking about how the whistleblower report is based on hearsay.
GRAHAM: --who--
BRENNAN: --is matched by..
GRAHAM: --the...
BRENNAN: ...the call record.
GRAHAM: ...the transcript and the complaint are not matched...
BRENNAN: --the reference to the DNC server--
GRAHAM: --please let me talk--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --the will you do--
GRAHAM: --please, please--
BRENNAN: --a favor. I'm laying out the facts here.
GRAHAM: No- no you're not.
BRENNAN: The repeated--
GRAHAM: No, you're making an argument that--
BRENNAN: --reference to Joe Biden--
SEN GRAHAM: Here's the point--
BRENNAN: All of those things--
GRAHAM: Joe Biden--
BRENNAN: --are laid out here--
GRAHAM: --went to the--
BRENNAN: --the fact that the Attorney General was brought up.
Finally, Graham could put up with Brennan's rude interruptions no longer and asked why Brennan even had him on the show if she tried to keep him from expressing his opinions which she kept trying to suppress:
GRAHAM: You know you've got an opinion and I got an opinion. You've got me on the show to tell me what- what I think.
I think Mueller did a good job for the country and there was nothing there. I think this whole thing is a sham. I can't believe we're talking about impeaching the president based on an accusation based on hearsay. Who is this whistleblower? What bias do they have? Why did they pick this whistleblower to tell a hearsay story? The transcript does not match the complaint. What's going on here? Why did they change the rules about a whistleblower you can use hearsay when you could not just weeks before the complaint?
So I think this thing stinks and let me tell you about Republicans -- you want to know about Republicans? Republicans believe that you're guilty just by the accusation -- if you're Brett Kavanaugh, it doesn't matter. They don't tell you when it happened, and where it happened, it just happened 30 years ago. If you're Donald Trump, you don't get to confront your accuser like every other American. Republicans believe this president is being persecuted. They don't love Donald Trump and the way he does business. They like what he does, but they believe he's being persecuted. They believe that everybody's out to get him and I believe as to this complaint it smells.
Of course, Margaret Brennan who had been interrupting Graham while acting as if she were some sort of impeachment lawyer working on behalf of the Democrats did not answer the question as to why the whistleblower rules were changed shortly before the complaint to allow secondhand, hearsay material.
