It is a complete shit show. Cheatle can't answer a single question. I don't know if it's a women thing or just a basic politician thing but she completely avoids taking responsibility for what happened. She, 9 days after the incident, still has no information; she is waiting on a report from the FBI which will take at least 60 days. She never visited the site. She didn't speak to any agents that were at the scene until three days later.
It's been mentioned a ton of times by Congress that this is a bipartisan hearing. Oddly enough, that seems to almost be true. People on both sides of the uniparty are calling for her to resign immediately. However, the Dem side are using this to condemn "weapons of war" and "this could have been prevented if the shooter didn't have an AR-15" and "Could your agents' job be easier if these arms were not available to the public?" You never want a serious crisis to go to waste, right?
I'd say this is a show trial but Cheatle's replies, when she actually provides one, show how fucked this whole thing was from the beginning.
She's an absolute cipher.
She knows nothing and only cares about herself and her job, not the job. The secret service is supposed to take a bullet for the President, whether it's a physical bullet or a deadly serious question.
Here's how the Jim Jordan exchange should have gone:
Jim: "How many times did the Secret Service deny the Trump campaigns requests for extra protection?"
Cheatle: "To the best of my knowledge 48 times" and then go into how they thought it was adequate, it was a mistake, they've given increased resources to Trump. Except they didn't think it was adequate, it wasn't a mistake, and they didn't increase resources.
Instead this is how it went:
Cheatle: "A denial of a request does not equal a vulnerability" and more refusing to answer.
Absolutely disgusting.
Yeah Republicans suck at grilling people. Because they don't realize the average viewer is retarded or ill equipped to understand what is going on.
Jim Jordan did ask the question and repeated it several times after her refusal to answer, but you're kind of right.
Problem is he's only doing it so the audience sees him yelling at her. He could have maneuvered her to admit there was a number, she'd have to dodge by saying she didn't know it, and then "will you commit your staff to providing us with the number of denials for more protection".
Then you eventually get the answer or you add that in the reason to impeach; failure to provide information to Congress in a timely manner, which is way stronger than just 'we don't like you'.
Lmao there's no maneuvering in the world that's going to get Cheatle off the script she was given by lawyers from the 3 letter agencies