Dr. Fiona Hill, the government’s top Russia expert, was born in England, the daughter of a coal miner. She said in introducing herself that if she had stayed in England, her accent would have marked her and her opportunities would have been limited. She didn’t mention it, but in the US, her British accent makes her sound upper-class, not a coal miner’s daughter.
Her testimony was, to me, the most crucial of the impeachment hearings. She has worked as the federal government’s top Russia expert for both Republicans and Democrats. Michael Flynn appointed her as the Trump administration’s person in charge of Russia, Europe, NATO, etc. When Flynn abruptly left, she remained under the succeeding National Security Council advisors, most recently John Bolton.
Dr. Hill made clear that Russia and its security services attacked our elections in 2016 and are doing so even now. She said that those who blame Ukraine for what Russia did have swallowed Russian propaganda and are repeating a “fictional narrative” that benefits Russia.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“her British accent makes her sound upper-class, not a coal miner’s daughter.” Loretto Lynn had the same experience.
RT
When I was in England last month. My son in-laws father, a College Professor turned to us at the restaurant in Oxford. He said the waitress was clearly from the upper class.
How you do you know? Her diction/ accent.
I laughed when she said her father said with her lower class accent you better leave the country. (or something to that effect) Her British accent only sounds upper-class to us. The coal miners daughter took the Republicans to the woodshed.
For a good portion of my life I have enjoyed laying a real southern drawl down as a good base and then striking out with some sophisticated logic and fifty dollar words. Causing cognitive dissonance is more fun than a majority of similar pursuits. The susceptible form a large sample of the public.
I remarked to myself an hour or so ago that Castor should stop questioning her. He really should have.
We have seen some extremely impressive career diplomats in these hearings. Dr. Hill is certainly one of these. She’s magnificent.
Note that Jim Jordan — who tried, in his usual fashion, to bully David Holmes with nonstop yelling and interruptions — steered clear of Dr. Hill. She is compelling, credible, brilliant, and unflappable. Her performance today was awesome — and I’m talking mainly about her performance under questioning by Castor, not her opening statement — and I mean that almost literally. Wow.
Jim Jordan is a rude bully. He was afraid of Fiona Hill. I can barely stand to listen to Devin Nunes. His stupidity is irritating.
I wrote on Twitter, “If I had my life to live over, I want to be Fiona Hill.”
Like everyone who watched her, I was impressed by her intellect, her steely resolve, her composure, her grace, her ability to disarm critics. She was magnificent.
This was marvelous.
Castor’s attempt to flap Hill?
He covered up his question with a follow-up but, when he asked he was smirking. It was the question about the time of day a meeting occurred. Hill appears to have the same type of total recall as Marilou Henner. Castor’s question seemed to momentarily distract Hill and may have been intended to embarrass her. As Henner described, it’s O.K to be perceived as intelligent, but the memory part can make a person be viewed as odd by others.
Trump tweeted that yesterday was a great day for him and he was surprised that the media distorted the reporting. He is really delusional.
Longer clip here. Steve Castor starts this exchange by probing Dr. Hill on whether Sondland had a propensity to exaggerate the extent of his interactions with the president.
I haven’t followed this closely, but I assume Castor’s goal was to undermine Sondland’s credibility by eliciting testimony from Hill about a “blowup” she had on the topic of Sondland’s authority. If so, this could not have been a bigger backfire. And the way Hill handled her response was just masterful.
Also elegant was her vigorous defense of Lt.Col. Vinland, whose loyalty had been questioned by Republicans. And she let Roger Stone and InfoWars have it between the eyes for defaming her.
I wish they had let Fiona go into more detail about Vindman, as here is what it appeared happened:
She was briefing Morrison and told Morrison that Vindman would not play along with the politics and look the other way when the White House used foreign policy to personally benefit the Trump re-election effort. It was clear THAT was what Fiona was telling Morrison — not that Vindman could not be trusted. Fiona was telling Morrison that Vindman could not be trusted to remain quiet when he heard foreign policy being used for Trump’s political gain. Which clearly was based on the fact that when Sondland did just that in the first July meeting, Vindman spoke up and was “arguing” with Sondland. Fiona witnessed that and was telling Morrison that Vindman would not remain quiet about any improper actions by Trump’s minions following his orders.
And Morrison – the witness the Republicans called — intentionally smeared Vindman by implying there was a “judgement” issue. The only “judgement” issue is that Vindman could not be trusted to remain quiet like John Bolton, Morrison, Volker, and many, many others too cowardly to object publicly despite knowing it was wrong.
I watched Morrison’s face and body language when he insisted that he thought there was absolutely nothing wrong with Trump asking a “favor” from a foreign leader to help his political campaign and smear his opponent. He was asked why he then immediately rushed to report it to a lawyer if he believed it was okay. Honestly, the guy is no Trump and he doesn’t know how to blithely lie — to his credit he clearly felt somewhat uncomfortable committing perjury instead of reveling in it.
So it doesn’t surprise me that Morrison completely mischaracterized what Fiona told him in order to smear Vindman. There is something truly awful about Republicans like him. They have sold their soul to Trump and I wonder if they can get it back.
She really put it into perspective. I also had more sympathy for Sondland when I saw him testify yesterday. Trump and Mulvaney – with what appears to be the clear and full approval of the highest White House officials – agreed that it was fine for Trump to use his office to get help smearing a political opponent – even if it meant holding up an important White House meeting or desperately needed foreign aid.
It is notable – and not talked about much – that Fiona Hill and others directly reported this to John Eisenberg. Eisenberg reported it to his superiors and we can assume that William Barr himself knew about it.
And what happened after that? Just a very few weeks after the White House was informed by Eisenberg about what Sondland had been ordered to do by Trump, Trump HIMSELF told Ukraine in no uncertain terms that he wanted a favor – help smearing his political opponent.
And when THAT got reported to Eisenberg, what happened next? This: Trump ordered Giuliani and Sondland to draft a statement for Zelensky in which he had to announce publicly that Biden was being investigated for wrongdoing by Ukraine. And that happened all through August.
What astounds me is that the Republicans are not saying any of this is false. What true fascist enablers like Will Hurd are saying is that the important thing is for him to interview the whistle blower who brought this to the nation’s attention after Eisenberg and the White House had two warnings but still allowed Trump to continue this.
Remember, fascist enablers like Will Hurd do not care about interviewing Eisenberg, who was told two times that Trump was doing this, locked up the evidence, and then Trump continued to do it.
Will Hurd is only concerned about whether the whistle blower might be biased. As if that has anything to do with whether Trump acted improperly and the Republican White House knew about and covered up for Trump doing this improper act.
It is shocking how corrupt the entire Republican Party has become. Will Hurd is the “good” Republican. Scary that Hurd is saying it isn’t a crime – even if multiple witnesses have presented clear evidence of it — if the witness who FIRST reports it can be shown to have any bias.
There is where we are, and I truly worry about our future. We all knew how truly corrupt Trump and the entire Republican party has become.
The whistleblower is protected by federal law.
The Republicans should stop demanding that he testify.
Everything he warned about has been confirmed over and over.
His identity is irrelevant.
Revealing it would break the law.
I almost wish that Adam Schiff would turn to Will Hurd and say:
Let’s assume the whistle blower is a left wing socialist Bernie Sanders supporter. And then let’s assume the whistle blower is a neo-Nazi white supremacist. And then let’s assume that the whistle blower is sympathetic to Russia. And then let’s assume that the whistle blower is sympathetic to Ukraine. And then let’s assume that the whistle blower is sympathetic to Israel. And then let’s assume that the whistle blower is sympathetic to the Palestinians.
Please tell the American people, Mr. Hurd, how knowing which – if any – of those statements are true somehow exonerates the President from the wrongdoing that he did and changes the facts that you have been presented at this hearing.
Please tell the American people, Mr. Hurd, what important information you need to have from the whistle blower in order to decide whether the testimony of Fiona Hill is perjury?
I think Sean Patrick Maloney, Rep from NY state, cleared away any sympathy one might have had for Gordon Sondland, who clearly wishes to extricate himself from this mess and go back to his lucrative hotelier career. Maloney lowers the boom about 3:15, but the set up is important.
Brilliant responses from Dr. Fiona Hill. The Republicans are still determined to discredit her and Schiff and Pelosi and every democrat. Republicans want to disclose the identify of the whistleblower. They are calling that person a spy.
Dr. Hill is correct that the Russians must be really pleased with the dissention that they have propagated, aided by Republicans who are not the party of Trump..
Laura,
The Republicans never laid a glove on her, to use a boxing term. The usually vicious, voluble, and loud Jim Jordan was clearly intimidated by her steely presence. They targeted David Holmes.
Shall we raise money to buyJordan a jacket?
A straight jacket??
Laura,
Rhetorically, do you think the Koch network is separate from Trump because they say they are?
“aided by Republicans…”
I have a friend who grew up and made a pretty high rank as general in the army. He was speaking to our historical society one time several years ago and made reference in his talk to the renewed rivalry between Russia and the US that was taking place about the time of the Crimean invasion. Something he said stuck with me.
He described how cumbersome the Soviets were as a foe and contrasted some of the brilliance displayed by the modern Russian army. He warned that we were confronting a very dangerous situation.
I cannot get that warning out of my mind as we watch Washington these days. The Russians must be salivating.
I did. She was. I loved that in her opening statement, she made clear that she would take on the conspiracy theories that Republicans, including those on the committee hearing her testimony, have been pushing about Ukraine’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
She nailed the liars:
“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country — and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” Hill said. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
She added: “In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”
That was a brilliant statement.
So good to see a powerful mind at work. In combination with a real spine, it’s a powerful combination.
“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
Given that Hill is a person who might know what Russia is doing, it is completely believable that the right wing, which discounts authorities in other fields, biology, climatology, etc, will hold on to this belief the same way they cling to other conspiracy theories. This fits with our zeitgeist: we have grown to reject the authority and accept the clownish mountebank. Phrenologists, don’t give away your birthright. You may yet attain your true status among the greats.
Hill should expand on the divisions in America which she said serve Russian interests. Attributing those divisions solely to Russian influence, wisely, kept the topic limited to the subject at hand, but…
who suspects Koch network footprints?
(1) Race- ALEC’s 3 strikes policy disproportionately imprisoned more black people. Countless studies show discriminatory sentencing based on race. 3 strikes exacerbated the discrimination.
(2) Religion – John F. Kennedy said, “I believe in an America where no religious body seeks to impose its will upon the public acts of government officials”. The highly political Charles Koch was given a hero’s welcome at the Catholic University of America. The Koch network is on the side of school privatization. The bishops and Catholic Conferences are politically pushing school choice, at the sacrifice of the common good.
(3) Income inequality- The Koch’s reward politicians who, through tax policy, increase wealth concentration.
(4) Privatization- The Koch network backs the policies that destabilize society like outsourcing of government functions and elimination of public pensions and Social Security, etc.
(5) The two approaching conflictual divisions are age and gender. We could delve in and identify the footprints.