The crunch of bones you just heard was Rick Perry being thrown under the bus.
You’ve probably thought about Perry for less than a millisecond since early ’17, when he signed on with Trump as Energy Secretary and discovered (because he apparently didn’t know) that Energy oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Pre-Trump, you may dimly recall his failed presidential bid, when he couldn’t remember the three federal departments that he wanted to abolish (one of them was Energy), and denounced Social Security as “a Ponzi scheme.”
In other words, the seemingly perfect fall guy.
Which explains why Trump, in a conference call with House Republicans on Friday, inexplicably blamed Perry for the crime that will likely get Trump impeached. According to Republican sources who were on the conference call, Trump discussed his Biden dirt-digging summer phone chat with the Ukraine president. Then, out of nowhere, he uncorked this beaut: “Not a lot of people know this, but I didn’t even want to make the call. The only reason I made the call was because Rick asked me to.”
Trump was indeed correct: Not a lot of people knew that – probably because he made it up on the spot. But before we parse the absurdity of what he said, let’s try to list his various defenses, which seem to shift by the hour. In rough chronological order:
My call to the president was “perfect” and “beautiful,” and the whistleblower is a lying partisan, whoever it is.
The whistleblower got fake hearsay information from people who “in the old days” would’ve been shot as spies.
The call was perfect because I’m dedicated to fighting corruption, and shifty Schiff should resign.
If the call was wrong, go look at Mike Pence, because he was doing stuff too.
The call was right because I have the power to solicit domestic political dirt from any country I want. China, if you’re listening…
If the call was wrong, Rick Perry made me do it.
The Rick Perry Defense will probably have the life span of a mayfly, so I’ll simply say that it was totally in character for the beleaguered crime Don to finger a disposable underling. That’s how things typically work in the mob. The problem, however, is that even though Perry was doing business in the Ukraine (as Energy Secretary, he was trying to sell U.S. coal), there’s zero evidence that he was helping to pressure Ukraine for dirt on Biden.
Indeed, Perry signaled on Friday that he won’t play the patsy. He told the Christian Broadcasting Network that in the course of his Ukraine duties, “I’ve talked to the previous (U.S.) ambassador. I’ve talked to the current ambassador. I’ve talked to…every name that you’ve seen out in the media and not once, not once, as God is my witness, not once was a Biden name – not the former vice president, not his son – ever mentioned.”
Remember the text messages that were released by Congress last Thursday? Not once did Trump’s trio of diplomats – Kurt Volker (who has quit), Gordon Sondland, and William Taylor – ever mention Perry as the impetus for Trump’s dirt-digging phone call. The name cited prominently was Rudy Giuliani. Remember the phone call summary that was released by the White House, hailed by Trump as an accurate report on his conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zalensky? It doesn’t mention Perry at all. And when The Washington Post reported on Oct. 3 that Perry plans to quit his job by year’s end, it said “no evidence has emerged that Perry participated in the effort to pressure Ukranian officials to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.”
The moral (or amoral) of this story: Trump will slime everyone in his circle if he thinks it will save him. When he blamed Perry during his Friday conference call with House Republicans, he also said that “more of this will be coming out in the next few days.” We’ll see about that. It’s far more likely that today’s revelation of a second whistleblower – someone with “first-hand information” – will dominate the next few days. And the Rick Perry Defense will be as dead as Trump University.