The Impeachment ‘Partial Transcript’ Lie Just Got Blown Out Of The Water
In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, both Jennifer Williams, an adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman stated that the transcript of the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zolodymyr Zelensky was substantively accurate.
In direct response to a question as to whether the transcript was complete and accurate, neither suggested that it was not, except for minor details they found in their notes of the call.
This testimony blows up a month-long lie pushed by Democrats and their media allies that the transcript was partial, or redacted, suggesting that the White House was potentially hiding important details. For weeks the baseless claim that the transcript was so doctored that we don’t really know what happened on the call has been floated all over mainstream media coverage.
Like so much of this impeachment farce this has now been shown to be abject nonsense. Much of this confusion stems from a breathless New York Times report on October 30 asserting that Vindman attempted to make changes to the transcript. What Vindman and Williams testified to on Tuesday is that the transcript is substantively accurate, meaning that to the extent there are mistakes, they were the result of faulty transcription, not any attempt to deceive, and that such mistakes were minor and insignificant.
This is just one of many examples of the news media misleading the American people in their hysterical attempt to gin up support for impeachment, an attempt that had some minor success weeks ago, but that has failed to move the needle ever since.
Will CNN anchors stop referring to the “partial transcript” now that two of the Democrats’ star witnesses, who were on the actual call, have stated that the transcript is accurate? Don’t count on it. Will the news media apologize for or even acknowledge that they have been pushing this nonsense for over a month? Even in the unlikely case that they have the honor to do so, as the old saw goes, a lie can make it halfway around the world while the truth is getting its shoes on.
Tuesday’s confirmation that the transcript of the July 25 phone call was substantively accurate takes away a major talking point for those seeking the impeachment of President Trump. The whole reason this duplicitous talking point existed was that the president’s critics found the call wasn’t as damning as they hoped it would be. Perfect or not, nothing impeachable occurred on the call, so it was necessary to pretend that maybe we were missing some key information.
That is over now. The transcript is the transcript, the call is the call. Yet another ace in this crumbling house of impeachment cards has tumbled to the floor. And Democrats and media know it.