Inside the White House, President Trump’s aides could not believe their luck as three exceedingly self-assured law professors insisted that Trump deserved to be impeached.
Trump allies are considering how to weaponize footage of what they saw as cloying smugness from Harvard scholar Noah Feldman and Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan, backed by University of North Carolina law professor Michael Gerhardt. They say it was a pivotal moment in an investigation where the outcome seemed inevitable.
“I’m not sure who in the majority thought that Americans wanted to be lectured by three biased law professors,” said a White House official. “The Democrats are out of touch and have never understood what the American people see in President Trump, and that was on full display.”
“[White House] staff watching thought it was a win for the White House and that Republicans on the committee did a fantastic job, particularly selecting [Jonathan] Turley as their witness,” the White House official said.
How best to splice and broadcast the footage to pressure House Democrats is under discussion by Republican operatives.
Pundits’ reaction to the hearing has featured widespread praise for Turley, a George Washington University law professor who said he does not support Trump, but that Democrats have not assembled the evidence needed to impeach him.
Karlan and Feldman were widely derided among Trump allies for their tone. Karlan’s joke about the name of Trump’s son Barron, in a swipe at Trump’s alleged sense of power, elicited a quick denunciation from first lady Melania Trump and an apology from the professor.
“The fact Democrats even had this hearing is a loss,” said a senior administration official. “They are scrambling on impeachment, and this hearing shouldn’t have even happened.”
One Republican involved in fighting against impeachment called Democrats’ proceedings a “flaming bag of dog shit,” describing the Democratic-requested law professors as long-winded, dull, and off-putting.
“The one guy with the hair, Feldman. How is that guy with that look not wearing a bowtie?” he joked.
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said in a TV appearance Thursday, “If you went to work today to manicure nails, to manicure lawns, if you went to work with a jackhammer or a welding machine … that woman yesterday looks her nose down on you.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, however, offered a positive appraisal of the hearing, saying Thursday, “When the professors talked about it, they taught about it.”
But Republicans say it was clear that Turley won the day with a more nuanced presentation in which he allowed Democrats might proven impeachable conduct, if only they put effort into finding more evidence.
Democrats “picked three partisan liberal lawyers, who all came across very stiff and unlikable, to serve as the basis for their prosecution of the president,” said Andy Surabian, a Republican strategist and former Trump White House official.
