Quite a while back, a wag formulated the stages of Trump
scandals. Using the formula that has been proven time and again over the past
three years, the Ukraine scandal is now moving into stage three as Republicans begin
to acknowledge that President Trump attempted to engage in a quid pro quo
arrangement with President Zelensky of Ukraine.
The Trump scandal cycle goes something like this:
1. Denial (“fake news”)
2. Attack the source (“Deep State”)
3. Admit that allegations are true, but say they aren’t serious
(“He only attempted a crime unsuccessfully”)
4. Admit that the allegations are serious, but say that Democrats
are worse (“What about Hillary”)
Over the past few weeks we have zipped past denials that the
whistleblower’s account was false and that it was based on secondhand
information. Those claims were shot down by the release of the call summary and
corroborating statements and testimony from other members of the Trump
Administration. The destruction of the
first line of defense led to…
The claim that the whistleblower was a liberal in league
with Adam Schiff and that he had a bias toward the Democrats. Unfortunately for
Trump’s defenders, claims of bias could not be credibly applied to members of
the Trump Administration such as Bill Taylor, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, and
the well-known nonliberal John Bolton. When character assassination failed to stop
the bleeding, Republicans began to…
Stop denying that there was a quid pro quo and instead argue
that it was not illegal. Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney
was one of the first White House insiders to admit to a quid pro quo
several weeks ago. However, Mulvaney quickly attempted to walk back his
comments to avoid being hung out to dry by the president’s legal team.
Now it seems that Mulvaney was ahead of his time. Yesterday,
Trump advisor Kelly Ann Conway told CNN’s
Dana Bash, “I don't know whether aid was being held up and for how long” when
pressed about whether there was a quid pro quo.
Conway doesn’t seem to be the only Republican unwilling to
go very far out on a limb for Donald Trump on the matter. A few Republicans,
such as Sen. Rob
Portman of Ohio, have long acknowledged that Trump’s actions were bad but
not impeachable. Now others are more open to the strategy.
The Washington
Post reports that Sens. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
are among the Republicans who admit that there was a quid pro quo but deny that
it was unethical or illegal. Kennedy reportedly argued at a private Republican
luncheon that quid pro quos are common in foreign aid while Cruz held that “corrupt
intent” must be present to make such an arrangement illegal.
There are several big problems with this line of reasoning.
First, is that it is “illegal to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value
from a foreign national in connection with a US election.” That statement is
from Ellen Weintraub, chair of the Federal Election Commission in a tweet from
June, more than a month before President Trump’s phone call with President
Zelensky.
Weintraub’s tweet came a day after Trump
openly told reporters that he would accept campaign help from foreigners. The
call summary released by the White House confirms that Trump specifically asked
Zelensky to investigate the Bidens, which would directly aid Trump’s reelection
campaign.
The second problem is that Trump himself undercuts
Republican efforts to find a middle ground with his own strategy of denying
everything. Over the weekend, Trump said in a tweet, “There is no quid pro quo!”
The president doesn’t seem to be willing to give an inch on the issue and
continues to insist that the call was “perfect.”
The third problem is that most voters don’t see Trump’s
actions as being as innocent as congressional Republicans do. A new Fox
News poll found that 49 percent want Trump impeached and removed. While voters
said that it was inappropriate to ask foreign leaders to dig up dirt on his
political opponents by a 64-27 margin, 56 percent of Republican primary voters
thought it was okay to do so. Thirty-two percent of Republicans believe that
Trump asked Ukraine to investigate the Bidens compared to 60 percent overall.
At this point, the evidence is that Donald Trump either acted
corruptly or incompetently. If the president was ignorant of the fact that asking
a foreign government for help in an election is illegal after years of the
Russian investigation, Weintraub’s statement to the contrary, and what must
have been numerous discussions by White House lawyers, it must have been a case
of willful ignorance. Even more than for an average citizen, to a president who
should have known better, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
There is also the possibility that yet another smoking gun
will emerge that undercuts the Republican defense that Trump did not have a “culpable
state of mind,” as Sen. Kennedy put it. With news breaking quickly and damaging
testimonies coming at an alarming pace, it isn’t impossible that Rudy Giuliani,
Mick Mulvaney, John Bolton or others could testify to Trump’s “corrupt intent,”
either purposefully or accidentally.
At that point, the script of the Trump defenders will likely
shift to read, “Sure, he broke the law, but he’s still better than [insert
Democrat here].” The Trump base will buy that argument but what about the rest
of the country?
Originally published on The
Resurgent
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