Republicans are shifting their anti-impeachment arguments ever more toward the Sideshow Bob defense: Wrongdoing doesn’t count if you didn’t succeed. In this version of the cartoon clown defense, Donald Trump’s attempts to extort Ukraine didn’t happen because the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid he was withholding was released without President Volodymyr Zelensky going on television and announcing investigations against Trump’s political opponents.
Never mind that the aid was only released after the whistleblower’s report about the July 25 call in which Trump pressured Zelensky and after House Democrats started to investigate. Never mind that Zelensky was apparently poised to make an announcement of exactly what Trump wanted. It all fell apart at the last minute, so no harm, no foul.
“The Ukrainians did nothing to—as far as investigations goes—to get the aid released,” Rep. Jim Jordan said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “So there was never this quid pro quo that the Democrats all promise existed.”
”The president’s defense is that those things didn’t happen,” Rep. Steve Scalise, the number two House Republican said on Fox News. “The real bottom line is he got the money. Ukraine got the money.”
This is a defense Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have put forward repeatedly during questioning of witnesses, and based on the Sunday talk shows, it’s what they’re going with. But, of course, Trump did withhold the aid, even if it eventually went through after attention focused on the issue. Trump did tell Zelensky “I would like you to do us a favor, though.” Trump’s flunkies did repeatedly press Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials to announce investigations into the Bidens and CrowdStrike. The failure to competently execute the plan doesn’t mean there was nothing wrong with the attempt.
As Sideshow Bob put it, “Convicted of a crime I didn’t even commit. Hah! Attempted murder? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?”