10/23/2019 - Betsy McCaughey Townhall.com
House Democrats are grilling a
stream of disgruntled career diplomats in a basement hearing room of the
Capitol. The hearings are supposed to be secret, but -- no surprise --
Democrats leak snippets of the testimony daily. They're hoping it will add up
to a case for impeaching President Donald Trump.
So far, all the testimony actually
proves is that these State Department diplomats think they -- not President
Trump -- ought to be running the nation's foreign policy.
Never mind executive privilege or
impeachment. The most pressing constitutional issue at hand is who decides the
nation's foreign policy: the president or the permanent bureaucracy.
House Democrats are accusing Trump
of offering Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a quid pro quo: dirt on
former Vice President Joe Biden in exchange for nearly $400 million in aid.
Trump's July 25 phone call with Zelensky is the subject of the hearings, but
these witnesses have no firsthand knowledge of the call.
Instead, they're whimpering about
being sidelined by the Trump administration and objecting that top
ambassadorial appointments are going to Trump's friends instead of to them.
They're seething with disdain for the president.
For example, a deputy assistant
secretary named George Kent, who testified on Oct. 15, complained he was cut
out of important decisions. Boohoo. Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., leaked Kent's
testimony, saying "here is a senior state department official responsible
for six countries" being ignored, while he watches Trump's appointees
"undermining 28 years of U.S. policy."
William Taylor, acting Ukrainian
ambassador who testified Tuesday, seethed with indignation that Trump went "outside
regular State Department channels."
Trump's chief of staff, Mick
Mulvaney, described what's happening: "A group of mostly career
bureaucrats" refuse to accept that "elections have consequences. And
foreign policy is going to change from the Obama administration to the Trump
administration."
The State Department insurrection
spans embassies across the globe.
On Aug. 8, Chuck Park, a 10-year
foreign service officer stationed in Mexico, penned a vitriolic public
resignation for The Washington Post, condemning Trump for carrying out
"mass deportations," failing "dreamers" and pursuing a
"toxic agenda around the world." He publicly accused the president of
"naked cruelty."
Two weeks later, Bethany Milton, a
pro-immigration advocate and state department official stationed in Rwanda,
announced her resignation in The New York Times, scathingly labeling Trump's
foreign policy "small-minded chauvinism."
Good riddance to Milton and Park.
Resigning is what diplomats should do when they are fundamentally at odds with
the administration's foreign policy approach. Taxpayers should not have to foot
the bill for bureaucrats intent on sabotaging the president. No one elected
them.
Predictably, the foreign policy
establishment disagrees. William J. Burns, who capped his career as deputy
secretary of state for President Barack Obama, argues that State Department
careerists should be in charge, not the president and his appointees.
But these career diplomats favor
globalism, open borders and huge American handouts to multinational
organizations and third-world nations. The public elected Trump to implement
the opposite -- an America First agenda. Trump must wrest control to achieve
that.
Fifty years ago, Henry Kissinger
understood that the diplomatic bureaucracy was biased against President Richard
Nixon's foreign policy goals. As national security adviser, Kissinger pulled
control of diplomacy into the White House, inciting resentment and pushback
from the State Department.
Again, in 2003, Newt Gingrich warned
that State Department bureaucrats were engaging in "a deliberate and
systematic effort" to undermine President George W. Bush.
It's happening again. The
bureaucrats are slithering up to Capitol Hill to complain about President
Trump. History reminds us what's actually going on here.
On Monday evening, House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi issued a "fact sheet" about Trump's alleged impeachable
offense. It provides no damning evidence, just speculation.
On Tuesday, Taylor told the hearing
that another diplomat, Gordon Sondland, had informed him there was a price for
military aid. But Sondland denies that, insisting the president made it clear
there was no quid pro quo.
Too bad for the impeachment-hungry
Dems and their sympathetic allies from the State Department.
Disagreeing with the foreign-policy
elites is not an impeachable offense. In fact, millions of Americans are
cheering Trump on.
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