Rhys McKinnon talking to Trevor Noah part 2:

Noah asks if trans women couldn’t compete against men instead of women.

So, like I said, this boils down to, are trans women really women [pumping fists up and down], are they really female. Because if you think yes, then we belong competing with other women. So it’s an extreme indignity to say, “I believe you’re a woman, except for sport.” Right? So you can’t single out one of the most important facets of our society, we are obsessed with sport, athletes are some of the most highly praised highly paid people on the planet, so you can’t say that like I believe you and I support you but not for this one really big thing that society really cares about.

Noah asks if we don’t know yet whether trans women have an advantage [we do know, but anyway] why not wait until we do know? McKinnon answers:

Because that’s not how human rights work. So the way human rights work, is that the default is inclusion, and the burden of proof is on people seeking to exclude.

And there’s a little flutter of applause at that.

I call bullshit. “Exclude” is a morally loaded word, and in this context it’s a highly manipulative word. We don’t have cheetahs competing against humans in races either, but we don’t call that “exclusion.” Sports used to be for men only, and then women started to organize their own sports. That wasn’t “exclusion,” it was inclusion of women in the category “sport.” And McKinnon himself doesn’t want to “include” all men in women’s sport, because he wants to win, and he’s not very good.

And that’s where they end it.

Et tu Trevor Noah?

I’m going to have to watch all 13.37 minutes of misery.

Noah starts with oh oh it’s so hard to talk about trans issues, people tense up, that’s why it’s good you’re here: we can talk about it.

Well, yes, they can talk about it, but here’s why its bad that Rhys McKinnon is on The Daily Show: it’s because he’s a cold-blooded ruthless liar and a bully who cheats women in cycling.

McKinnon starts with the Olympics motto that sport is a human right, then says people say it’s complicated, it’s a complicated issue, but he thinks it’s not.

It all boils down to do you think trans women and intersex women are really female, or not. And if you do, it’s really simple: just stop policing who counts as a real woman.

Ah. Well yes, that is really simple, and it’s also really stupid. That would mean throwing the women’s category open to everyone, which would mean women would be forced out entirely. So much for “sport is a human right.” Also it’s not really “policing” to notice that Rhys the Hulk McKinnon is a man.

Because this has had history of racism built into it over the years, it’s not an accident that the intersex athletes who get singled out are women of color from the Global South

All one of them, he means. Powerful statistic.

because who gets singled out for scrutiny is based on white women’s conception of femininity.

Says the hulking white man who stole medals from women.

And that’s being weaponized against trans people too. So it’s a fear of [air quotes] protecting the fragile cis white woman from the rest of us.

Meaning himself and Trevor Noah, a person of color from the Global South. They’re the same! They’re victims of racism buddies! There’s a smattering of applause for this disgustingly cynical move.

Noah then does point out, with much hemming and hawing and “it’s complicated” and “some would say,” that Rhys has an advantage over women and that makes the sport unfair and how would you respond to that?

Yeah there’s lots of ways to respond to that. So the first is, the very language of [looking imploringly at the ceiling] you are born and I’m not biological somehow, like I don’t think I’m a cyborg, so, like this idea that like oh you’re not a biological woman, well I am a woman, that’s a fact, I am female, so all my identity records, my racing license, my medical records all say female, right, and I’m pretty sure [waving his hands up and down in front of his abdomen] I’m made of biological stuff, so I’m a biological female as well, so [gazing wildly at the ceiling again] this question of do trans women have an advantage over

Ok I have to interrupt here – he never comes to a complete stop in all that and still hasn’t, so I’m interrupting to address that “argument.” It’s pathetic. “Look it says right here: I’m a woman!!” Yes, we know, because there’s been an intense campaign to allow people who say they are trans to change their records, and the record-keepers have bowed to the pressure. That’s all that is. It’s not an argument nor is it evidence that Rhys McKinnon is in fact a woman. It’s a ridiculous attempt at an argument, especially from a former academic philosopher.

this question of do trans women have an advantage over cis women – we don’t know.

Finally he ends the sentence.

Yes we do know. Of course we do.

Um in fact there’s basically no published research on this question

That will come as quite a surprise to some researchers I know of.

however there’s good reason to think that there isn’t – but I think it’s irrelevant because we allow all kinds of competitive advantages within women’s sports.

Therefore we have to allow men to compete against women…but of course only some men, not all men, because if all men did it, where would McKinnon be?

He cites a high jump in which one of the women was taller than one of the other women, therefore trans women don’t have an unfair advantage. Trevor Noah goes “uh huh” encouragingly at intervals.

So if there’s an advantage, and I’m not saying there is, it’s not an unfair advantage.

Also, he whines, we’ve been competing for ages and we’ve hardly won anything. Trevor Noah does more uh-huh-ing.

So this idea that trans women are suddenly gonna take over women’s sport is an irrational fear of trans women, which is the dictionary definition of transphobia.

Full stop at last. There’s a tepid smattering of applause, at which McKinnon smirks.

That’s the first 5 minutes. Taking a break from the torture.

The mobster vibe continues.

Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson received at least one message tacitly warning her not to cooperate with the House January 6 select committee from an associate of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

…

“[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition,” read the message. The redaction was Meadows, the sources said.

The message was presented during closing remarks at the special hearing with Hutchinson by the panel’s vice-chair, Liz Cheney, who characterized the missive as improper pressure on a crucial witness that could extend to illegal witness tampering or intimidation.

Of course it’s improper pressure.

These guys have seen The Godfather just as the rest of us have, you know. They’re not from Planet Zebulon, they’re from here, and they know what a mobster threat is supposed to look like. Add pop culture to innate piggyness and there’s your “veiled” threat.

The other message was also directed at Hutchinson, the sources said; the quote displayed on the slide was one of several calls from Trump allies that Hutchinson recounted to House investigators.

“What they said to me is, as long as I continue to be a team player, they know that I’m on the team, I’m doing the right thing, I’m protecting who I need to protect, you know, I’ll continue to stay in the good graces in Trump World,” the slide read.

“And they reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind as I proceeded through my depositions and interviews with the committee.”

All of which seems quite silly. She worked for the monster herself, she knows what a vindictive mob boss he is, there’s really no need to nudge her with it. Maybe they just felt obliged to live up to their roles.

Oh you thought men had been banned from competing against women in cycling? Hahahaha no there’s a clause that gets around that, which you can find in the archives in the filing cabinet in the basement behind the boxes of old tank parts.

The Telegraph has taken up the Wings Over Scotland story.

Women who question transgender ideology have been branded ‘farts’ as part of equalities training offered to civil servants in Nicola Sturgeon’s Government, it has emerged.

Doesn’t sound great, put that way, does it.

Workers who attended a workplace “trans 101” course were told the term was an acronym for “feminism appropriating ridiculous transphobe” and that women who oppose inclusivity measures were part of a “trans hate group”.

Staff who attended the training session, run by the Scottish Government’s taxpayer-funded LGBTI+ internal staff network, were also urged to study claims that biological sex is a “falsehood” invented by the medical profession to “reinforce white supremacy and gender oppression”.

The whole thing is just riddled with stupidity and venom, as we saw a few hours ago.

The email including a link to a dictionary of terms called a “trans language primer” was sent to staff by a senior official from the Scottish Digital Academy, a Scottish Government body which delivers training across the public sector.

Really? A grown-up sent it? That’s hard to understand.

Susan Smith, a director at the For Women Scotland campaign group, said it was “shocking” to see a member of the organisation “promoting highly political and discriminatory material which flies in the face of UK law”.

…

Other claims set out in the document are that “all research” shows there is “virtually no difference” between sporting performance of transgender women and natural women, which is inaccurate.

It goes on to state the idea that men and women have “inherent, unique and natural” distinct attributes based in biology is an “outdated understanding of sex”. It calls on non-trans people to acknowledge their “cisgender privilege”, asserts that trans people’s biology and genetics match their gender identity, and says people should ask for a person’s pronouns in “everyday conversations” as it is “impossible to know a person’s gender just by looking at them”.

Childish nonsense throughout, in short, yet a senior official sent it along.

The email directing staff members to the trans language dictionary was leaked to an online Scottish nationalist blog which was once supportive of the SNP, but is now hostile to the party under Ms Sturgeon’s leadership.

I saw it via Glinner. I hope everyone sees it.

Wings Over Scotland shares an item via a training course civil servants are being sent on by the Scottish Government. The obedient civil servants who attended got a followup “thank you and here is a long list of further reading” from one Jonah Coman; the item Wings shares is on that long list of further reading.

As you can see, one of the sites that staff are directed to is something called The Trans Language Primer. We thought you should see some of its content.

So Wings shares a lot of that content. It is, of course, grotesque. The grotesquery is amping up all the time, I guess because it has to. The demands and instructions have to keep getting more outrageous or all the fun goes out of it. The “primer” is a list of obnoxious and calculatedly offensive vocabulary items. It’s funny in the usual way, but also this is Scotland, where women are told to wheesht or else.

Here’s one:

It’s one brazen lie after another. We were not “using” TERF for ourselves except ironically, we’ve called ourselves feminists all along. We’re not organized into a trans hate group, loosely or otherwise. We consider the ideology of trans-ism – the ideology that leaps off the page of this “primer” by the way – to be wrong and destructive; that’s not the same as hating trans people. Most of us don’t ally with the religious right, although some do. We of course don’t do anything that even resembles “putting forth” legislation, or seeking or urging legislation, that bars trans people from public and private life. What an idiotic claim. How would we even start? How would we word it?

We don’t “hate all trans people.” We don’t “attack trans women,” especially aggressively or even gently. We don’t object to men who identify as trans forcing themselves on women’s sports because they “challenge our view of biological essentialism around the indenniny and experience of womanhood. We object to men who identify as trans forcing themselves on women’s sports because women’s sports are for women, not men who identify as trans, and because men have large physical advantages over women. It’s simple, it’s clear, it’s easy to understand, and it’s true. The garbage about our malign secret motives is just that: garbage.

And so on – and this is just one item from that “primer.”

Good enough for government work?

Oh and also let’s all just jump off a tall building.

The Supreme Court on Thursday curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, one of the most important environmental decisions in years.

That’s great. Global warming is spreading across the global sky like the eruption of Vesuvius as seen from Pompeii, and the Supreme Court says yeah let’s have more of that.

I wonder if any of them are at all bothered by thoughts of their children and grandchildren.

In a setback for the Biden administration’s efforts to combat climate change, the court said in a 6-3 ruling the EPA does not have broad authority to shift the nation’s energy production away from coal-burning power plants toward cleaner sources, including solar and wind power. 

…

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the court’s ruling “strips the Environmental Protection Agency of the power Congress gave it to respond to ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.’”

Kagan, who was joined in her dissent by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, said the limits the majority of the court imposed on the EPA’s authority “fly in the face of the statute Congress wrote. The majority says it is simply ‘not plausible’ that Congress enabled EPA to regulate power plants’ emissions through generation shifting. But that is just what Congress did when it broadly authorized EPA in Section 111 to select the ‘best system of emission reduction’ for power plants.” 

Well yeah but it’s not plausible that they actually meant it. It’s more plausible that they were being sarcastic, or ironic, or surrealist.

The Times drags Halifax:

Halifax has suggested that customers close their accounts if they oppose a policy allowing staff to display their personal pronouns on name tags.

Or, more accurately, if they oppose the absurd ideology behind posturing about “displaying” “personal” “pronouns.” We don’t actually care what banks allow employees to put on their name tags, but we do care about the idiotic truth claims such banks make in bragging about their Name Tag Pronouns Policy.

The bank tweeted a picture of a name badge with the pronouns she/her/hers and the caption: “Pronouns matter.” In response to complaints the social media team said that Halifax wanted to “open the conversation around gender identity. We care about our customers and colleagues’ individual preferences. For us, it’s a very simple solution to accidental misgendering.”

That’s what I mean. We don’t need banks “opening conversations” around “gender identity.” We don’t need their “solutions” to an absurd non-event like “accidental misgendering.” We see how stupid it is, and we mock.

The bank told two vociferous critics: “We strive for inclusion, equality and, quite simply, in doing what’s right. If you disagree with our values, you’re welcome to close your account.” When users purporting to be customers said they would cancel their accounts the administrator supplied details of how to do so.

Which is funny, in a way, because I’m hearing from friends that their service is terrible.

Women at Lloyds Banking Group, Halifax’s parent company, earn 66p for every pound earned by men when comparing median salary. Across the financial sector it is 76p, according to analysis of official data by Capital Monitor.

Those women need to start identifying as men at once.

The author of that revolting piece in the Independent about the chop shop in the woods was written by Io Dodds, who is – can you guess? – a man who says he’s a woman.

We’ve met him once before, a few months ago, when he wrote another piece for the Indy, this one explaining why it’s perfectly fine for Lia Thomas to cheat women out of prizes.

Where the hell have all the adults gone? Isn’t it supposed to be adults running institutions like universities and health services and councils and newspapers? Not reckless moody children?

ExCUSE me??? “Legendary”? A “legendary” “underground” “surgical clinic” where they mutilated people’s genitals? Which The Independent is flattering in public? Are they drunk?

Where are the adults?

But don’t try to tell these sadists that there’s no way to know who is a predatory male and who is a man who wants to live as if he were a woman.

It makes her angry, more angry than she can say, that a woman who is a rape victim wants a women-only support group.

Yes that’s nice but explain to us how you know that the man in question is not a predator. Saying “she is a trans woman” does not count as such an explanation.

Always put the men first.

Can women have anything for women? No.

A woman who is suing a rape crisis charity says she felt unable to speak at a support group after a transgender woman began attending the same meeting.

“Sarah”, who says she was raped in her 20s, stopped going to the sessions, saying she became uncomfortable sharing details of her past with the group.

She says the centre could have offered separate groups, telling the BBC: “I think my case is about women’s rights.”

The charity, Survivors’ Network says it plans to vigorously defend the claim.

It says male victims of sexual violence are referred to neighbouring services, but trans women “are welcome into all of our women-only spaces”.

They shouldn’t be. Trans women are men, and women who are rape victims should be able to have support groups that don’t have any men in them.

However, Sarah’s lawyers claim that by adopting a trans-inclusive approach – and not providing a session for women who were born female – the charity, in Brighton, failed to meet the needs of all sexual violence victims.

But in adopting a “trans-inclusive” approach they adopted a “force women who are rape victims to be in the presence of men at their meetings” approach. Never mind about trans, just don’t force women to be around men when they’re there because they were raped.

She told the BBC she had been groomed and sexually abused when she was a child and later, in her 20s, a man she knew raped her. She did not go to the police.

Last year, she knew she was going to have to come into contact with the man who attacked her. “I was finding it really hard to cope and I was having increased anxiety attacks,” she says. “So I decided to approach Survivors’ Network for help.”

She found the group sessions very helpful.

She added: “We spoke a lot about how we were manipulated and coerced by men. I can’t tell you how much it helped me mentally.”

Sarah says a new person attended a session, whom she understood to be a trans woman. She said the person presented as typically male, wearing male clothing. “I was a bit taken aback. I decided I wasn’t going to speak that week because I wasn’t comfortable.”

“I don’t trust men because I have been raped by a man. I’ve been sexually abused by men. And I just don’t necessarily trust that men are always who they say they are,” she said.

She wouldn’t, would she. She was groomed and abused as a child – she has every reason not to trust that men are always who they say they are. How is she supposed to know that the man who attended the session was what he said he was? Seriously: how is she supposed to know? How is anyone? What is to stop predatory men saying they’re trans so that they can go to rape counselling sessions and terrorize the women there? How does anyone know this is not happening routinely all over the UK? How can anyone know? All that’s required is the man’s assertion.

This isn’t even about “transphobia” or “being against trans rights,” it’s about “how the fuck do you think you know?” Maybe exactly zero of the men who do this are genuinely trans, maybe every single one of them is simply taking advantage of this grotesque policy.

Meanwhile, Survivors’ Network, which is funded by a number of bodies, including the Ministry of Justice and the NHS, said in a statement: “Continuing to deliver our services supporting survivors of sexual violence and abuse is of paramount importance and we want to reassure all our current survivors and anyone seeking support that we are still here for them.”

But they’re not. They refuse to provide women-only services, so they’re not still here for them.

Also Renato Mariotti:

The thing about the “they’re not here to hurt me” admission that I hadn’t fully taken in is that it implies “they are here to hurt other people.” It’s not “they’re not here to hurt me” but “they’re not here to hurt me.”

David French explains why Hutchinson’s testimony makes the case for prosecuting Trump stronger:

I confess that I’ve been skeptical that the January 6 committee would produce evidence that Donald Trump was directly criminally responsible for the attack on the Capitol. Certainly he was morally and politically responsible. There’s no credible argument that a mob would have stormed the Capitol if he had the basic decency to concede a race he clearly lost. 

At the same time, it’s legally quite difficult to hold a politician responsible for the violence of his followers.

It’s very difficult for non-lawyers to keep that distinction in mind – at least it’s very difficult for me and I doubt I’m special that way. It feels as if the two ought to be the same, so we balk at accepting that they’re not. Times a million in Trump’s case.

That was yesterday’s analysis. Today’s is different. Because of a courageous woman named Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows. 

…

Hutchinson claims she overheard Trump say about the crowd, “You know, I don’t effing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the effing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the effing mags away.”

As Jake Tapper noted, the “mags” refer to magnetometers deployed to keep armed individuals away from the president. 

Trump has denied Hutchinson’s testimony in a series of “truths” (equivalent to a tweet) on his website, Truth Social. Moreover, it is important to attempt to corroborate Hutchinson’s sworn testimony by interviewing others who may have heard Trump’s words. But Hutchinson’s sworn testimony closes a gap in the criminal case against Trump, and Trump is closer to a credible prosecution than ever before.

I hope she has very good security.

Aw yeah, fun times.

A lot of cops were seriously injured thanks to these guys an hour or two after this snap was taken. Nice to see them feeling so perky.

Let’s hope so.

Stupidity or malice or both?

But we’re not “debating the legitimacy of trans rights.” We don’t for a second disagree that people who call themselves trans should have human rights. What we’re doing is seeking clarity on what “trans rights” are. Are they human rights that trans people, like all people, should have? Or are they special, custom, bespoke rights that only trans people should have? If the former, there’s no disagreement; if the latter, we definitely want to know what those rights are and how they conflict with other people’s rights. So would Fern Riddell if she had the sense of a pile of wet pasta.

Of course people who call themselves trans exist. Why does their “right to exist” need protection more than anyone else’s?

Not that I’m expecting a reply.

Greg Sargent notes that the Trump headlines in the wake of yesterday’s hearing are brutal.

Yet Trump’s propagandists have found an answer. They are claiming Hutchinson’s appearance was a flop, based on the fact that a single anecdote about Trump — one barely related to the central allegations against him — is now being questioned by a handful of bit players in this saga who aren’t even offering this pushback publicly, let alone under oath.

…

Trump’s spinners have seized on Trump’s episode with the Secret Service. Hutchinson testified to the Jan. 6 select committee on Tuesday that Tony Ornato, then-White House deputy chief of staff, told her Trump erupted in fury as his detail refused to take him to the Capitol to join the mob, cursing and lunging for the steering wheel.

The Secret Service now says it will offer a response. A source close to the agency leaked word that Robert Engel, the agent in charge of Trump’s detail that day — along with the vehicle’s driver — are prepared to say under oath that Trump never lunged for the wheel.

What good would that even do the Trumpies? Hutchinson didn’t even claim Trump lunged at the wheel, she said Ornato told her he did.

The leaks in Trump’s favor don’t address this point. They simply say Engel and the driver will dispute that Trump lunged for the wheel. Ornato can deny ever recounting this episode to Hutchinson. He hasn’t.

Which brings us to the more fundamental point. If Ornato wants to respond under oath to Hutchinson’s testimony, guess what: There are many other things he can be asked about as well.

For instance, Ornato was the person who informed Meadows that Trump supporters attempting to enter the rally were armed at a meeting on the morning of Jan. 6, according to Hutchinson’s testimony.

Ornato also told Meadows he informed Trump of this, per Hutchinson. She went on to recount that Trump angrily demanded that armed supporters be let in, after which he directed the mob to the Capitol to intimidate his vice president into completing his coup attempt.

The Trumpies want that in the headlines all over again? Go for it.

Peter Wehner in The Atlantic:

This new account of what Trump did leading up to, on, and after January 6 was shocking, yet not surprising. His behavior did not amount to an abrupt about-face by an otherwise honorable man, but was the last link in an almost unfathomably long chain of events—vicious, merciless words and unscrupulous, unethical acts that were said and done, many in public view, in ways that were impossible to deny. All of the signs of Trump’s corruption and disordered personality were obvious for years.

And yet he was able to become the president. Without the popular vote.

Perhaps the case against Trump presented by the January 6 committee and previous Trump loyalists—by now so overwhelming as to be unquestionable—will cause some members of Congress, academics, and “public intellectuals” in the right-wing infrastructure to distance themselves from Trump. Of course, until now Trump has crossed no ethical line, has shattered no norm that caused them to say “Enough!” Instead we’ve heard whataboutism and strained-to-the-breaking-point excuses.

…

Massive cognitive dissonance—in this case individuals and a political party that have historically championed law and order, “traditional values,” high ethical ideals, moral leadership in political leaders, and a healthy civic and political culture defending at every turn a person who was indecent, cruel, vindictive, demagogic, unstable, and ultimately deranged—can produce some very creative justifications.

I’m not convinced about the high ethical ideals and the moral leadership. When’s the last time the Republican party championed those things?

Hutchinson’s testimony was a withering indictment of America’s 45th president. But it was also, if less directly, an indictment of his party, his supporters, his acolytes, those who went silent and those who spoke up on his behalf. He and they are ever twinned.

Well, yes, and have been all along.

LP is trying to sound intelligent again. This never goes well.

I wonder what she thinks she means by “a word like woman.” Like woman how? What other words are like the word woman? Man, girl, boy, I suppose. Will those do? Is that what she’s saying? The four words that name people of the female and male sex?

If so why do those words, in particular, need to be subject to change of meaning more than others?

I would think it’s the opposite – we need those words to be particularly stable and clear in their meaning.

The fakery about thinking it’s languagephobic and anti-freedom of expression to continue knowing what “woman” means is laughable. Laurie Penny doesn’t love language, she loves her image of herself as hip and enlightened.

CNN underlines some points from yesterday’s January 6 hearing:

The reality of Trump’s intentions became clear to national security officials in real time as they learned the Secret Service was scrambling to find a way for the former President to travel to the Capitol while he was on stage urging his followers to march, according to National Security Council chat logs from that day that were revealed for the first time during Tuesday’s hearing.

The NSC chat logs provide a minute-by-minute accounting of how the situation evolved from the perspective of top White House national security officials on January 6 and, along with witness testimony delivered on Tuesday, contradict an account by Meadows in his book where he says Trump never intended to march to the Capitol.

“MOGUL’s going to the Capital … they are clearing a route now,” a message sent to the chat log at 12:29 p.m. ET on January 6 reads — referring to the former President’s secret service code name.

“MilAide has confirmed that he wants to walk,” a 12:32 p.m. message reads. “They are begging him to reconsider.”

Meanwhile the committee is finding that Trump has been tampering with witnesses. (Quel surprise.)

The committee has secured testimony from some major witnesses members of Trump’s inner circle, even members of his family. But Cheney suggested during the hearing that there might be a Trump-imposed blockade of sorts, and that the panel has evidence of witness tampering.

She said one witness — whom the committee did not identify — testified that: “What they said to me is, as long as I continue to be a team player, they know that I’m on the team, I’m doing the right thing, I’m protecting who I need to protect, you know, I’ll continue to stay in good graces in Trump world.”

Another unidentified witness said they were told by someone in Trump’s orbit that Trump was “thinking about you” and that “he knows you’re loyal” and hopes that “you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”

If only he could have been a mob boss instead. It would have harmed a lot of people, but not nearly as many as he did by being mob boss president.

The new evidence from the committee is consistent with a years-long pattern of behavior by Trump, who has repeatedly used private and public channels to pressure people who could testify against him. This happened with his former lawyer Michael Cohen and his 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort during the Russia investigation, and with a US ambassador during the 2019 impeachment hearings.

Trump has also retaliated against people who provided damaging public testimony against him, including a top White House national security official and his ambassador to the European Union, who both described his pressure campaign against Ukraine during House impeachment hearings in 2019.

A born mob boss.