Saturday, November 16, 2019

Why Stefanik wasafforded so much prominence at the Yovanovitch hearing

Now I get it.
Republicans attempted to approach Yovanovitch respectfully. They praised her service—even as they defended Trump for ending it prematurely—and gave prominence to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) so as to avoid the optics of men attacking a woman.

  Daily Beast
And I might point out that Stefanik is the only female on the Republican side of the Committee.
Yet they were at times dismissive of what Yovanovitch had described as a nightmare. Rep. Michael Conaway (R-TX), asked her basic questions about her post-ambassadorship gig at Georgetown University—how many classes does she teach? How many students does she have?—and the regard her diplomatic colleagues have for her, suggesting that she suffered no real harm after the president capped an assassination of her character by firing her.

Later, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) had the room laughing when he spelled out the upshot of that inquiry. “It’s like a Hallmark movie,” he said from the dais. “You ended up at Georgetown. This is all OK!”

[...]

The ambassador’s appearance met a rare ending for the staid hearing rooms of Capitol Hill. Schiff closed with a thundering statement, and before Yovanovitch could even rise from her chair, the crowd in the gallery erupted in a standing ovation.


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