We begin today’s roundup with Asawin Suebsaeng and Sam Stein at The Daily Beast on the latest revelations about John Bolton in the Ukraine scandal:
[F]or all of Trump’s grousing and preoccupation with who is and isn’t stabbing him in the back, loyalty has always been a one-way street for this president. Last week, after the news broke that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Soviet-born businessmen tied to Giuliani, were arrested on charges of violating campaign-finance law, a reporter at the White House asked Trump if the former New York mayor was still his personal attorney. The president responded that he didn’t know.
Though the president would later tweet out his support for Giuliani over the weekend, Trump has a long track record for being loyal to and supportive of a longtime associate, friend, or staffer—up until the moment he’s not. Perhaps the quintessential example of this is that of one of the president’s former attorneys, Michael Cohen, who famously turned on Trump after becoming convinced that the president had abandoned him while he was in the crosshairs of federal prosecutors.
More on loyalty from Peter Wehner at The Atlantic::
Individuals like Donald Trump, who chronically betray others, are incapable of authentic relationships or genuine human connections. They view other people solely in transactional terms. For malignant narcissists, they themselves are the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Other human beings don’t have inherent dignity; their worth is determined solely in terms of what they can do for the person who is the betrayer. If the answer is nothing, then others are dismissed, discarded, and abandoned. There is no empathy, no sympathy, no guilt or shame.
Jeet Heer at The Nation on the Giuliani-Trump relationship:
If Giuliani is the trigger of Trump’s political destruction, it’ll be an ironic turn of events because Giuliani was crucial to creating Trump. Some former Giuliani admirers have painted his alliance with Trump as disappointing falling off. According to biographer Andrew Kirtzman, Giuliani was “iconoclastic and fearless” during his first term as mayor in developing innovative crime-fighting policies, but “Giuliani is not really the Giuliani we have seen for a long time.” Giuliani has become a kind of fallen hero to many moderate Republicans, who yearn for the days when he could be seen as the leading GOP avatar of mainstream social views. (He is pro-choice and supports gay rights.)
But this is a far too rosy view of Giuliani’s career. In truth, there is a strong continuity between the mayor of the 1990s and the Trump co-conspirator of 2019. Writing in The Nation, investigative reporter Tom Robbins notes that despite Giuliani’s being renowned for work pursuing criminals and Trump’s being equally famous for skirting rules, the two men have much in common. “Both reveled in public brazenness. Giuliani walked stockbrokers off the trading floor in handcuffs. Trump ripped down precious landmarks to make way for his buildings. Both were also fluent in the language spoken among the elite of New York deal-makers, where favors are traded, punches are pulled, and the public interest always finishes a dismal last,” Robbins writes.
Meanwhile, Gabriel Debenedetti looks at the Democrats’ strategy:
But as the inquiry matures, Pelosi’s leadership team hasn’t sent rank-and-file Democrats talking points, and its messaging advice hasn’t changed. They “understand this is a deeply personal, member-by-member [situation], and we’re gonna talk about it like we want to talk about it. The train has left the station,” said Ruben Gallego, a Phoenix-area congressman who first called for an impeachment inquiry in July. “The president impeached himself by releasing the transcript. We don’t have to overthink this.”
On a final note, on the topic of Syria, The Washington Post calls out Republicans for failing to hold the president accountable:
How often have Mr. Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress berated President Barack Obama for allowing Syria to cross his “red line” without dire consequences? None of them is entitled ever to mention that again. [...]
And speaking of preening: Republican senators such as Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), who have cheered and celebrated Mr. Trump and his national security team, now huff and puff about imposing sanctions on Turkey as punishment for its invasion. Mr. Trump said Monday that he now supports such sanctions. But only one week ago he greenlighted Turkey’s incursion, and on Sunday he further encouraged it with his announcement of a hasty U.S. withdrawal. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan bears responsibility for Turkey’s depredations, of course. But if there is any coherence — or morality — in Mr. Trump’s position, he is doing a good job of concealing it.