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| Marie Yovanovitch |
Any experienced teacher can tell you that it is harder to
get students to unlearn bad information then it is for students to learn new
information. The bad information – the mind gremlins – block out knowledge and
insight. It is more important to make your own case then it is to refute
objections. However, if bad ideas have planted themselves into the audience’s
minds, a speaker must address them directly. Debaters call this pre-empting objections.
Former United States Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch’s
opening statement to a group of congressional committees yesterday specifically
refuted several unsupported accusations and conspiracy theories that
conservatives have made against her. Her positive points, that democracy and opposition to corruption are important, were the most important.
However, no less a personage than the president of the United States had
been smearing her and she confronted the smears directly. The underlying issue is that President Trump wanted Ukraine to prove that Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, was corrupt.
Yovanovitch began by making a general point: “I want to categorically state that I have never myself or through
others, directly or indirectly, ever directed,
suggested, or in any other way asked for any government or government official in
Ukraine (or elsewhere) to refrain from investigating or prosecuting actual
corruption.” She cited her Ukrainian critic, former Prosecutor General
Lutsenko, who had withdrawn his accusations against her, to prove her point. She denied being disloyal to President Donald
Trump. She also denied that the Obama administration asked her for help in the 2016 campaign
and stressed that she would not have done so even if asked.
Continuing, she said that she had never met Hunter Biden, whose
actions are at the center of Republican conspiracy theories, while also
denying any political conversations with Vice President Biden. She
lashed out at Rudy Giuliani, stressing that, “I do not know Mr. Giuliani’s motives for attacking me. But individuals
who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have
believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption
policy in Ukraine.” Ouch!
Yovanovitch said that her supervisor, the Deputy Secretary
of State, told her that there had been a concerted campaign against her and
that the president had wanted to remove her for some time: “He also said that I had done nothing wrong.”
Those last two points not only attacked her critics, but,
more importantly, set the stage to turn the tables and investigate them. Very clever. Giuliani is already facing criminal inquiries. It will be
interesting to hear what the Deputy Secretary of State has to say.
Finally, Yovanovitch expressed that she was “incredulous that the U. S. government
chose to remove an Ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and
false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.”
That was an important point. "Unfounded and false claims." Conspiracy
theories have dominated American politics for too long. Indeed, many of the things
we call conspiracy theories hardly rise above the level of wild
accusations. Partisan people believe them without evidence only because they
want to believe them. It was refreshing to hear Yovanovitch strike back against
the falsehoods. I can pretty much guarantee that conspiracy theorists will come
up with new accusations against her, while the old ones will continue to
circulate. That doesn’t mean that Yovanovitch wasted her time, just that falsehood
will play whenever its turn comes up.
Yovanovitch met her critics head-on. That’s the only way to
do it. Emotions are running too high for halfway arguments to do any good. Her
refutations were clear and specific. She did not wander around the issues, as
political people often do, but instead attacked her critics directly. She gave details
and her denials were clear-cut. Some of the accusations against her are of the “he
said-she said” variety, and those could linger. She gave evidence against other
smears. Those will still linger, since people who want to believe falsehoods
willingly believe falsehoods even after they are proven wrong.
This is also why she spent so much time establishing her
credibility as a faithful, nonpartisan public servant. I wrote about that yesterday. Persuasion often comes down to deciding who you
believe.
Of course, millions of people will never believe Yovanovitch because
she said things that they don’t want to believe. Mind gremlins at work! But let’s remember the burden
of proof: people who make vicious accusations against Yovanovitch are obligated
to prove them. They haven’t. So why should they expect her to refute their
unproven, unsupported, and implausible accusations?
Social media are emphasizing that Yovanovitch had the
courage to defy attempts to silence her. She spoke out to defend herself when
so many of President Trump’s targets meekly fall into line behind him. Sometimes
one courageous speaker is all it takes to open the floodgates of truth.
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