When is a hearing not a hearing?

Senate confirmation hearings have become nothing more than opportunities for self-aggrandizing politicians to grandstand by purposefully mischaracterizing and misrepresenting partial statements by nominees to mislead the public. Too many sitting on the dais are working to protect their pharmaceutical, corporate, and military industrial donors from fact-finding that would reveal the truth about their influence on government policies that do not benefit American citizens.

Hearings have been a tour de force of democrat ignorance

Thus far, the hearings have been a tour de force of democrat ignorance of the missions of the offices for which these candidates stand to fill. The questions, which are rarely allowed to be answered in full, let alone in part, are intentionally crafted to be deceptive or peppered with half-truths.

Congressional committee panels are overly populated with blowhards cherry-picking ambiguous excerpts from statements that witnesses may or may not recall. How many folks remember, off the top of their heads, specific remarks they’ve made over decades of writings and conversations?

What is distressing and deliberately contrary to the purpose of these hearings is the fact that most all senators are not conducting a “hearing” at all. They have no interest in hearing what the nominees have to say except to pontificate, talk over their answers, or refuse them a chance to respond.

Leaving no space for taking a breath, the inquisitors keep invoking, “this is my time,” when it is not. The time allotted them is to hear the nominees answer the queries, relay their beliefs, expectations, and how they understand the mission of the office to which they’ve been appointed by the president.

The worst of these televised performances is how often the democrat senators (and some republicans) pretend to know the law while having no understanding of what they’ve said, reading a script compiled by staff like any stage actor playing a role. 

The panelists continually pressure the witnesses to supply a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to questions that clearly require explanation

The panelists continually pressure the witnesses to supply a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to questions that clearly require explanation and not a one-word response that creates an illusion of misconduct or disingenuousness. Interrogators insist on twisting nominees’ or supporters’ statements to generate public impressions of those nominees that they’ve conjured up.

It is incumbent on the senatorial committees to conduct their questioning with accuracy and avoid skewing testimony to fit their own agenda. Such a situation was witnessed with Senator Cory Booker receiving a straightforward answer from Kash Patel regarding viewing documents that President Trump had declassified. Booker’s attempt to recharacterize Patel’s response, where he clarified that he witnessed the president issuing an order to declassify documents, as refusing to identify specific declassified documents, distorting Patel’s testimony and accusing him of lying in summation.

Each of these hearings have been nothing of the sort. They have been riddled with strident democrat misconstructions of nominees’ statements, both past and cut short by committee members during the hearing, in order to malign the integrity of the nominees and those with whom they may have interacted over the years.

The ones who should come under scrutiny for their lack of honesty are the lockstep democrats and RINOs who are willing to debase themselves, delivering superfluous, condescending rants that illustrate their buffoonery. Hearings are conducted to hear the testimony of nominees, not the unstudied blusterings of the president’s opposition.

Note: This column isn’t as packed with the usual reference links because anyone can find complete videos of the confirmation hearings online.