Day 1,034: Trump seems to have given up on almost everything outside monitoring impeachment hearings
With public impeachment hearings in their second week, Donald Trump seems to have waved the white flag on even pretending to do anything throughout the day.
One look at his public schedule reveals virtually nothing: a couple meetings Monday and exactly one on Tuesday. (Notably, the White House continues to be coy about his health.)
His Twitter account is full almost exclusively of commentary about impeachment, ranging from retweeting right-wing hacks desperate to make an impression with his base to elected Republicans doing anything to distract from the overwhelming facts presented thus far.
Meanwhile, since Trump was likely watching much of Tuesday live, he got to see in real-time what a disaster it was for him.
The first part of the hearing featured testimony from two witnesses called by the Democrats: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official who listened in on President Trump’s call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, and Jennifer Williams, a foreign policy adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. The second part was devoted to two witnesses called by the Republicans: former US ambassador to Ukraine Kurt Volker and former Trump foreign policy adviser Tim Morrison.
All four of the witnesses confirmed key parts of the overall case against the president — that he twisted US foreign policy into a tool of his reelection campaign by using military aid in an effort force Ukraine into opening an investigation into the Biden family. In one particularly striking example, Volker — one of the GOP witnesses — amended his earlier closed-door deposition to clarify that the administration’s behavior was shadier than he had previously thought.
Republicans — including Trump — have been content to blast the process, try to out the whistleblower and lambaste the media. Notably absent from that list is any real defense of Trump’s actions seeking to exchange foreign aid to Ukraine for a personal political favor.
Trump asking for that favor was immediately a source of concern for people working in the White House that heard the call as it happened, including Pence’s aid.
Vindman testified that he raised concerns about the call inside the US government, saying that he interpreted it as an “improper … demand” that “a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen and political opponent.” Williams said it was “unusual,” unlike any other similar call she had been on because it “involved discussion of what appeared to be a domestic political matter.”
And that phone call was not the only instance of Trump trying to commit bribery, according to a former Trump policy adviser.
Daniel Goldman, the Democratic counsel who handled much of the questioning, asked Morrison about a conversation he had with Trump’s ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland. Morrison testified that Sondland described another conversation, with Ukrainian official Andriy Yermak, in which he made it very clear that there was a quid pro quo on the table.
“[Sondland told Yermak] that the Ukrainians would have to have the prosecutor general make a statement with respect to the investigations as a condition of having the aid lifted,” he said.
Sondland is set to testify Wednesday, along with two others. Trump is flying to Texas to tour Apple’s plant for about an hour. There’s little doubt he’ll be following the various testimonies on Air Force One throughout the majority of the day.
1,034 days in, 428 to go
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