“President Trump and his defenders have been arguing, weakly, that his actions toward Ukraine, including demands for the investigation of his political opponents, were somehow consistent with U.S. national interests. There is no way to make that case about his treatment of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. In compelling testimony during the House’s impeachment inquiry on Friday, she described how the president’s firing of her was orchestrated by corrupt Ukrainian actors whom the United States had been trying to neutralize — and how that reversal damaged U.S. diplomacy around the world.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post

“Despite Republican efforts to throw up a smokescreen, despite their complaints that they are being muzzled even as they pose questions, it is clear that the president was putting his own political interests — looking for dirt on Hillary and the Bidens — above national security and using shady henchmen to do it…Reagan would be stunned to find Republican members of the House at war with the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.— all to bolster Trump’s tender ego.”
Maureen Dowd, New York Times

“Never before, in our experience or frankly in the history of US foreign policy, has a President publicly sought to intimidate a career public civil servant… Friday's testimony by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and President Donald Trump's threatening tweets -- sent while she was testifying -- provide a devastating window into the administration's preternaturally destructive campaign to politicize the Department of State, undermine US diplomacy, and smear the reputations of career State Department officers for upholding the oath they take to defend the Constitution and American national interests…

“Three career foreign service officers have now testified before Congress in public impeachment inquiry hearings -- in direct defiance of both the White House and the Department of State. They are alone and exposed. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has failed to discharge his duty to support, protect and defend the Department or these dedicated professionals.”
Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky, CNN

“Whether this is technically witness tampering, it’s undeniably appalling. Even on Fox News, Ken Starr called Trump’s attack on Yovanovitch during her testimony ‘extraordinarily poor judgment.’ What it shows — as does all of the former ambassador’s testimony, along with lots of other evidence we have seen — is that Trump has been running a thugocracy, one in which the president talks and acts like a Mafioso and so do the people who have the greatest influence over him…

“There’s an irony here, which is that Yovanovitch’s story is tangential to the case for impeachment. Trump’s firing of her was disturbing, undermined U.S. interests and was despicable in many ways, but it wasn’t in and of itself impeachable. It doesn’t bear directly on the pressure campaign to strong-arm Ukraine into helping Trump’s reelection by launching a sham ‘investigation’ of Joe and Hunter Biden.”
Paul Waldman, Washington Post

“This kind of petty and nasty attack put [Republicans] in a position of defending the indefensible… [and] undermined the big talking point that the White House had pushed and Republicans had repeated on Wednesday, the claim that the hearings were boring. Providing supporters with safe ground is important to Trump’s future. Most politicians are willing to go pretty far out on rhetorical limbs to advance what they see as their political interest. What they don’t like is to be exposed as fools soon after doing so. The real importance of the ‘smoking gun’ tape that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency was that it discredited his supporters for repeating what turned out to be lies, and convinced them that Nixon would go on doing that to them as long as they were willing to stick with him…

“Trump is repeatedly giving Republicans that same choice. So far, they've been willing to go along. But each time he pushes them, it makes it a little more likely they’ll eventually make the same choice that Republicans made in August 1974.”
Jonathan Bernstein, Bloomberg