The Washington Post - 05.11.2019

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A21

TUESDAY Opinion

N

ow we see why the Trump adminis-

tration doesn’t want officials to tes-

tify in the impeachment inquiry.

Intelligence Committee Chair-

man Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) released the

first batch of transcripts Monday from the

closed-door depositions, including that of

Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to

Ukraine removed from her post by Presi-

dent Trump at the urging of his lawyer,

Rudy Giuliani.

If this is a sign of what’s to come, Republi-

cans will soon regret forcing Democrats to

make impeachment proceedings public.

Over 10 hours, the transcript shows, they

stumbled about in search of a counter-nar-

rative to her damning account.

Yovanovitch detailed a Hollywood-ready

tale about how Giuliani and two of his now-

indicted goons hijacked U.S. foreign policy

as part of a clownish consortium that also

included Sean Hannity and a corrupt Ukrai-

nian prosecutor. Their mission: to oust the

tough-on-corruption U.S. ambassador who

threatened to frustrate Giuliani’s plans to

get Ukraine to come up with compromising

material on Joe Biden and the Democratic

Party.

Mike Pompeo has a cameo as the feckless

secretary of state who refuses to stand up

for his diplomat out of fear of setting off an

unstable Trump. It all culminated in a 1 a.m.

call from State’s personnel director telling

Yovanovitch to get on the next flight out of

Kyiv. Why? “She said, ‘I don’t know, but this

is about your security. You need to come

home immediately.’ ”

Yovanovitch, overcome with emotion at

one point in her testimony, said she later

learned that the threat to her security was

from none other than Trump, who, State of-

ficials feared, would attack her on Twitter if

she didn’t flee Ukraine quickly.

Confronted with this Keystone Kops way

of governing, Republicans didn’t really at-

tempt to defend Trump’s actions. Instead,

they pursued one conspiracy theory after

another involving the Bidens, George Soros,

the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton, the

Obama administration, deep state social-

media “tracking” and mishandling classi-

fied information. They ate up a good chunk

of time merely complaining that Yovano-

vitch’s opening statement had been made

public (which under the rules was allowed).

“Ambassador,” Rep. Mark Meadows

(R-N.C.) interjected, “are you aware of any-

one connected to you that might have given

that to The Washington Post?”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) interjected:

“Did you talk to the State Department about

the possibility of releasing your opening

statement to the press?”

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) jumped in: “Am-

bassador Yovanovitch, do you believe that it

is appropriate for your opening statement

to be provided to The Washington Post?”

But Trump will need more than com-

plaints about leaks to counter the narrative

that Yovanovitch — and others — have doc-

umented.

Ukrainian officials had told her to “watch

[her] back” because Yuri Lutsenko, a Ukrai-

nian prosecutor with an unsavory reputa-

tion, was “looking to hurt” her and had sev-

eral meetings with Giuliani toward that

end. Lutsenko “was not pleased” that she

continued to push for cleaning up Lutsen-

ko’s office, and he tried to meet with

Trump’s Justice Department to spread mis-

information about her — including the now-

recanted falsehood that she had given him a

“do-not-prosecute list.”

She testified that wary Ukrainian officials

knew as early as January or February that

Giuliani was seeking damaging information

on the Bidens and the Democrats — perhaps

in exchange for Trump’s endorsement of the

then-president’s reelection.

When Yovanovitch was attacked by Giu-

liani and Donald Trump Jr., among others,

she asked for Pompeo to make a statement

supporting her, but he didn’t do it because it

might be “undermined” by a presidential

tweet. (Pompeo did, apparently, have a pri-

vate conversation asking Hannity to cease

his attack on her.) Instead of support, she

got career advice: Tweet nice things about

Trump.

Notably, Republicans didn’t respond to

her testimony by trying to make Trump’s be-

havior look good; they probed for ways to

make Yovanovitch look bad.

They suggested she was part of a diplo-

matic conspiracy to monitor Trump allies

such as Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs and Se-

bastian Gorka. They probed for damaging

details on the Bidens (“Were you aware of

just how much money Hunter Biden was

getting paid by Burisma?”) and for ways to

damage her credibility (“What was the clos-

est that you’ve worked with Vice President

Biden?”). Maybe Ukraine really did try to

help Hillary Clinton in 2016, they posited.

Maybe Ukrainian officials were “trying to

sabotage Trump.” They asked if she ever

said anything that might have led somebody

to “infer a negative connotation regarding”

Trump.

Meadows, struggling mightily to prove

some wrongdoing by Yovanovitch, found he

couldn’t pronounce the names he had been

given — so he spelled them out. “I’m sorry,

I’m not Ukrainian,” he said.

“Neither am I,” she replied.

No, she’s what threatens Trump most: an

honest American.

Twitter: @Milbank

DANA MILBANK

IMPEACHMENT DIARY

No wonder

Trump doesn’t

want officials

to testify

W

ith the fact of serious ethical

breaches by President Trump

all but demonstrated, most

elected Republicans do not

seem to be struggling with their con-

sciences over impeachment. They wrestle,

instead, with a more practical challenge:

continuing to support a corrupt man

without appearing too corrupt them-

selves.

This is not the kind of political objec-

tive that encourages idealism and attracts

young people to public service. Instead,

the torch has been passed to a new

generation of shills and rationalizers,

frightened of their own mercurial leader,

intimidated by an angry base and dedicat-

ed to maintaining the blessing of presi-

dential fundraising for their campaigns.

The main occupation of the GOP at this

point in history is the defense of public

corruption, which is a particularly insidi-

ous form of corruption. Those who excuse

Trump’s abuses of power will not escape

his taint.

And yet — at this low point of presiden-

tial character and congressional GOP

courage — perhaps the most politically

talented Democratic challenger to Trump

in 2020, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), is

six points behind the president in Michi-

gan, even with Trump in Pennsylvania

and Wisconsin, and four points behind

Trump in Florida (according to recent

surveys by the New York Times Upshot

and Siena College).

This should horrify Democrats. One of

the most exciting, substantive, compel-

ling voices in their presidential field

would stand a good chance of reelecting

President Trump. And this is not a prob-

lem that can be solved through good

speeches and clever advertising. The weak

points that Trump would exploit are the

centerpieces of Warren’s campaign — the

very reasons that Democrats are falling

for her.

The health-care issue symbolizes the

problem. In producing her recent funding

plan for Medicare-for-all, Warren doubled

down on ending private health insurance

in the United States. This ideological

boldness is precisely what many Demo-

crats like about her. But now Warren has

very little flexibility to make her plan

seem less disruptive and frightening in a

general election against Trump. “You can’t

unring that bell,” says William A. Galston

of the Brookings Institution.

This presents three difficulties. First,

Warren is proposing to hugely expand the

role and reach of government in our lives,

and to spend an additional $20.5 trillion

(or more) over 10 years, at a time when

trust in government is near an all-time

low. Her plan to socialize — there is no

other word for it — the health insurance

industry fights against a swift current of

public skepticism.

Second, Obamacare, which Warren

proposes to replace, has stabilized over

time. Though it never achieved what its

champions promised, it has reduced the

number of uninsured Americans and

provided some useful lessons for the next

rounds of reform. This argues in favor of

incremental changes — of the kind former

vice president Joe Biden proposes —

rather than the dramatic transformation

of a system that would displace insurance

arrangements for tens of millions.

Third, Warren’s contention that Medi-

care-for-all can be created without

middle-class tax increases remains ques-

tionable, in spite of her recently released,

26-page funding proposal. In Galston’s

view, the Warren approach relies on

optimistic cost and revenue estimates

that the Urban Institute and others have

sharply disputed. It doesn’t account for

the likely responses of corporations and

wealthy individuals to massive tax in-

creases. It assumes huge cuts in defense

spending and the passage of comprehen-

sive immigration reform. And it assumes

that rural hospitals can meet their costs

based on 110 percent (or less) of current

Medicare payments.

When Biden was asked about Warren’s

funding approach, he replied: “She’s mak-

ing it up.” There is serious evidence to

support that charge — and it will be

Warren’s burden to answer it during the

Nov. 20 debate.

The main question that Warren faces as

a candidate is this: Can she eventually

transform her public image from being a

progressive populist to being a mere

populist? Her health-care proposal indi-

cates she cannot. Trump’s charge of social-

ism — more accurately, SOCIALISM! —

may seem hyperbolic. But it is more likely

to stick when a candidate proposes to

abolish all private health insurance, put a

government bureaucracy in charge and

spend an additional $2 trillion a year on

her ambitions.

It is always tempting to view the

weakness of a political opponent as an

opportunity to gain total ideological victo-

ry. But in the case of Trump, this would be

a blunder. If the 2018 midterms are any

indication, the president has shed sup-

porters at the more moderate edges of his

coalition. And they will be attracted by

stability and incrementalism, not disrup-

tion and radicalism — no matter how

principled and well explained.

[email protected]

MICHAEL GERSON

A health-care

plan to get

Trump

reelected

BY RICHARD RATCLIFFE

I

am an accountant by trade, but

for the past 3½ years my job has

been to fight for the freedom of

my wife, Nazanin Zaghari-

Ratcliffe. She has been imprisoned in

Iran since April 2016, falsely accused

of plotting to overthrow the Iranian

regime.

Nazanin is a British charity worker

and mother, arrested on holiday

while visiting her family with our

22-month-old daughter, Gabriella,

who was herself allowed to return to

Britain only last month. Nazanin is

one of a number of innocent people

Iran is holding hostage to use as

diplomatic leverage in disputes with

Britain, the United States, France and

others.

The Iran hostage crisis that began

40 years ago this week, when radical

Iranian students stormed the

U.S. Embassy in Tehran, is now over.

But for us, the crisis is ongoing.

Our experience is a profound cru-

elty. The isolation and interrogations,

the threats and torture Nazanin has

endured are spectacularly unfair,

judged illegal by the United Nations

and others. Even after she is released,

it will take us a long time to mend.

But alongside the cruelty, we have

experienced overwhelming kindness

from ordinary people. Our online pe-

tition has received more than 2.5 mil-

lion supporters. We received thou-

sands of visitors this year in front of

the Iranian Embassy in London,

where I was on hunger strike in soli-

darity with Nazanin’s own hunger

strike in prison.

With human rights campaigns,

there can be a risk of campaigner

hagiography. I am aware that much

of the support for my family stems

from our position of privilege. I am

middle class and white, and I have an

accent like a BBC presenter. If I

worked in a kebab shop, this might be

different, a story seen or heard just

once before the carousel moves on.

Yet ours is not just one family’s

story. The Iranian regime is in the

middle of a new wave of hostage-

taking. Three new British cases were

announced in recent months. For

example, Anoosheh Ashoori, a 65-

year-old retired engineer with no po-

litical connections, was looking for-

ward to spending retirement with his

wife and helping his children, but

was arrested during a routine visit to

Iran to check on his mother. He was

sentenced to 10 years in prison. There

are many other U.S. and European

families that are traumatized for

years.

Hostage cases are not solved just

through public campaigning but

through political will. So far, our gov-

ernments have failed. Our case has

been allowed to linger for more than

3½ years. There are innocent U.S. cit-

izens who have been held for longer.

Other political priorities and point

scoring have been allowed to take

precedence.

The British and U.S. governments

have an obligation to protect their

own citizens and to work with allies

and the United Nations to bring an

end to Iran’s hostage-taking. And the

world has an obligation, not just to

stand up for Nazanin, but to stand up

for human rights.

The author is the husband of Nazanin

Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

My wife is a hostage of Iran.

The world must help free her.

PROVIDED BY RICHARD RATCLIFFE

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her husband Richard Ratcliffe and their daughter, Gabriella, in Iran in 2015.

BY ELLEN L. WEINTRAUB

T

witter’s surprise announcement

last Wednesday that it would

stop selling political advertising

is an inflection point in paid

political ads on the Internet. Twitter has

made its move; pressure will build for

the other Internet giants, particularly

Facebook, to respond.

Here’s a move that would allow politi-

cal ads while deterring disinformation

campaigns, restoring transparency and

protecting the robust marketplace of

ideas: Sell political ads, but stop the

practice of microtargeting those ads.

“Microtargeting” is the sales practice

of limiting the scope of an ad’s distribu-

tion to precise sets of people, such as

single men between 25 and 35 who live

in apartments and “like” the Washing-

ton Nationals. But just because micro-

targeted ads can be a good way to sell

deodorant does not make them a safe

way to sell candidates. It is easy to single

out susceptible groups and direct politi-

cal misinformation to them with little

accountability, because the public at

large never sees the ad.

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey

diagnosed the problem exactly correct-

ly: “Internet political ads present entire-

ly new challenges to civic discourse:

machine learning-based optimization

of messaging and micro-targeting, un-

checked misleading information, and

deep fakes,” he tweeted. “All at increas-

ing velocity, sophistication, and over-

whelming scale.”

But Dorsey’s prescription — killing

off political ads altogether — isn’t the

only way to address the problem. One of

the primary ailments of the current

online political advertising system is

the way Internet platforms sell their

ads. Microtargeting by foreign and do-

mestic actors in 2016 proved to be a

potent weapon for spreading disinfor-

mation and sowing discord. There is no

reason to think it will not be wielded

even more effectively going forward.

The microtargeting of political ads

might be undermining the united char-

acter of our United States.

Such ads also undermine the main

remedy that the Supreme Court has set

out for lies in politics: counterspeech.

Counterspeech is most possible where a

broad public can hear the speech and

respond.

Eliminating political-ad microtarget-

ing would address a healthy share of the

worst problems we see in online politi-

cal advertising. It would:


 Enhance transparency and ac-

countability. Ads that are more widely

available will contribute to the robust

and wide-open debate that is central to

our First Amendment values. Political

advertisers will have greater incentives

to be truthful in ads when they can more

easily and publicly be called to account

for them. And ad-targeting disclosures

would be much more straightforward

and helpful than they are now.


 Deter and flush out disinformation.

Malicious advertisers, foreign and do-

mestic, would be less likely to say to an

entire state what they have been willing

to say to a small audience targeted for its

susceptibility.


 Unite us. Political advertisers, who

would have to appeal to a wider audi-

ence, would have incentive to avoid

fueling the divisiveness that pulls us

apart.

The remaining large sellers of Inter-

net advertising — Google, Facebook,

Amazon, Microsoft and Verizon —

would do well to consider voluntarily

stepping back from microtargeted polit-

ical ads. This would entail forgoing

“custom audiences” programs and al-

lowing express-advocacy ads and elec-

tioneering communications (ads that

mention candidate names and run right

before Election Day) to be targeted only

by large and fully disclosed geographic

areas.

A good rule of thumb could be for

Internet advertisers to allow targeting

no more specific than one political level

below the election at which the ad is

directed. Want to influence the gover-

nor’s race in Kansas? Your Internet ads

could run across Kansas or target indi-

vidual counties, but that’s it. Running

at-large for the Houston City Council?

You could target the whole city or indi-

vidual council districts. Presidential ads

could likely be safely targeted down two

levels, to the state and then to the county

or congressional district level.

This would be a major departure

from the way political ads are sold on

the Internet today. But as Twitter’s an-

nouncement highlights, nothing about

the status quo is immutable. It is the

product of decisions the Internet com-

panies have made. Will those companies

continue to use an ad-sales technique

that further divides our democracy?

Internet advertising companies have

created this problem. What are they

willing to do to fix it?

It would be unwise, unnecessary and

counterproductive for political speech

to be shut out of the Internet advertising

market altogether. The overall advertis-

ing market has moved decisively toward

the Internet. Political advertising on the

Internet is an important part of our

political discourse — perhaps the most

important. I favor more political speech,

not less.

The far less drastic step of forswear-

ing the microtargeting of political ads

would in essence turn back the clock

about a dozen years. In the decades

before Facebook began to sell targeted

ads in 2007, plenty of campaigns were

well fought. Political actors who wished

to communicate with voters individual-

ly or in a highly targeted fashion could

still do so using their own email, tele-

phone and address lists. Similarly, any-

thing political actors posted on their

own pages would still reach their follow-

ers. Moving the Internet advertising

market for political ads closer to a

broadcast model would not eliminate

all problems in Internet political adver-

tising, but it would knock out some of

those that most threaten the integrity of

our discourse.

When candidates — or anyone else —

try to influence voters, they should be

willing to let a wide range of voters hear

what they have to say, instead of a

precision-targeted few. “Requiring peo-

ple to stand up in public for their

political acts fosters civic courage,”

wrote Supreme Court Justice Antonin

Scalia in Doe v. Reed, “without which

democracy is doomed.”

The writer is chair of the Federal Election

Commission.

Abolishing political ads isn’t the answer