War Room Breaks Down Yovanovitch’s Opening Statements

On Episode 30 of War Room: Impeachment, former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus joined Stephen K. Bannon, Raheem Kassam, and Jason Miller to discuss Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s opening statements in the impeachment hearings.

“It was a pretty powerful opening statement,” Kassam explained, “Establishing her credentials as somebody who has literally taken fire in her service to the United States; somebody who is from a foreign background, a USSR background, her mother fleeing Nazi Germany. She walked through the corruption things that were taking place in Ukraine, the U.S. policies that she was trying to put in place to stop those things.”

“And it would have been an incredibly compelling testimony if what was on trial was America first foreign policy. Oh, but it is! That is what’s on trial here. That’s exactly what the testimony was against. It wasn’t against the President, it wasn’t about the phone call, it wasn’t about abuse of power. This was Ambassador Yovanovitch, mostly talking about herself, saying this foreign policy doesn’t work.”

“Do you think,” Bannon asked his co-host Jason Miller, “we can have a deeper policy debate about what this is?”

“Absolutely,” Miller answered. “Because she’s talking about the role of the ambassadorship: how our allies and strategic partners around the world look at the ambassadors, how important this is. This is that worldview that was before Trump, they’re going to be here after Trump, and they put it up on a different pedestal.”

“One quick thing I’d say today: watch Elise Stefanik, the congresswoman from upstate New York very closely.”

“She’s fired up,” Priebus added.

“She’s fired up,” Miller reiterated. “And if she comes after Yovanovitch on this point that this is not about America first foreign policy, this is the allegation that President Trump did something wrong, this is where we’re going to see the fireworks and the star player for the GOP.”

“What else should we watch for today?” Bannon asked.

Priebus responded: “I think people need to sift through the noise, sift through the case that’s being made here: ‘well, I wasn’t treated well, I worked hard for this country and I should be able to keep my position.’ That doesn’t matter to the case. First of all, the president has the authority to put whoever he wants in as ambassador.”

“Or remove them,” Miller added.

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