When the walking talking crime scene declared on the South Lawn yesterday that he’s indeed soliciting illegal collusion with Ukraine (“I would recommend they start an investigation into the Bidens”), and that he’s soliciting illegal collusion with a key authoritarian nation (“China should start an investigation into the Bidens”), I couldn’t help but wonder what thoughts, or fragments thereof, were rattling through his damaged psyche.
Was he launching an Engelbert Humperdink defense, with tweaked lyrics (“Pleeeease impeach me..”.) that suggest he understands the gravity of his crime and is thus crying out for punishment? In other words, does he grasp the seriousness of violating the federal law that prohibits the solicitation of domestic political dirt from a foreign nation? Or perhaps he grasps it but thinks that it’s not really a crime if he says it out loud – like a bank robber who thinks he’s in the clear if he live-streams the theft? Or perhaps he truly thinks his powers are unlimited, an American riff on the 17th-century European “divine right of kings,” and can thus prevail on that basis?
It’s probably an inchoate mashup of all of three. At this point (and how fast we’ve reached this point), he’ll apparently try anything that might slow his plummet. Having been caught committing a manifestly impeachable offense (the phone call summary, the meticulous whistleblower complaint, the South Lawn confession, and, last night, the release of diplomats’ text messages that show Ukraine getting squeezed for Biden campaign dirt), Donald Trump is careening down a turbulent river and grasping desperately for a twig.
If the Republicans on Capitol Hill were not such craven enablers, I would almost feel sorry for him. They spent the past week questioning the evidence, insisting that the phone call summary told them nothing, and second-guessing the whistleblower’s procedural moves. Then Trump flaps his yap yesterday and yanks the rug out. Which is how it always goes, because while Trump demands blind loyalty from his complicit toadies, he gives none in return.
Rick Wilson, the Republican strategist, said it best yesterday: “I have some bad news, Republicans. It never gets better. There is no daylight at the end of this tunnel. Trump is a suicide bomber, and you’ve strapped yourselves to him so tightly that when he explodes, you’re going out to meet the 72 porn stars of the Trumpian afterlife with him.”
Republicans can’t question the accuracy of the phone summary anymore, because Trump has now confessed to it in public and expanded his solicitation to China. Republicans can’t paint Trump as innocent anymore, because last night we learned, via The Wall Street Journal (you know, the “liberal media”), that Trump fired Marie Yovanovich, the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine, because she was refusing to abide Trump’s dirt-digging quest. Plus, the diplomats’ summer texts – obtained from ex-envoy Kurt Volker (who recently quit), and released last night by House Democrats – clearly indicate that the promised U.S. military aid was held in limbo unless or until a reluctant Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to play ball and dig up (fake) Biden dirt to aid Trump’s re-election.
Several days before Trump’s July 25 phone call, Bill Taylor, the top American diplomat in Kiev, texted a colleague that “President Zelensky is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic, reelection politics.” Zelensky wanted a White House meeting, but somehow it wasn’t happening. The military aid was still in limbo on Sept. 1, when Taylor, clearly disturbed by what was happening, texted a colleague: “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” A day later, he texted again: “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”
Those texts bring to mind a passage from the great political novel All the King’s Men. A hat tip to Jack Pitney, a former Republican aide (and an old source of mine), who spied it. The passage reads: “For nothing is lost, nothing is ever lost. There is always the clue, the canceled check, the smear of lipstick, the footprint in the canna bed, the condom on the park path, the twitch in the old wound, the baby shoes dipped in bronze, the taint in the bloodstream.”
And the diplomats’ texts were just the fruit of one session with Volker. There will be many more witnesses – their stories likely buttressed by the incriminating rants that Trump pumps from his own mouth. Philip Klein, the executive editor of the conservative Washington Examiner, wrote yesterday, “As President Trump keeps talking, he makes it more and more difficult for his supporters to mount an actual defense of his underlying behavior.”
There is no defense. Trump is already at DefCon-1, in the apparent belief that he can normalize high crimes and misdemeanors if he cops to them in public. As Rick Wilson, the Republican strategist, rightly observes, Trump “is driving himself deeper into what I call the Eccentric Dictator Phase of his presidency.” The ultimate stress test of our institutions – totally foreseeable from the moment he took the oath – is now at hand.