We begin today’s roundup with Eugene Robinson and his analysis of the Republican Party’s defense of Donald Trump:
Arms for dirt. That was the exchange Trump demanded, using as leverage taxpayer funds that had been appropriated to buttress U.S. national security. Explain to me how anyone can honestly believe that is an appropriate use of presidential power. […]
The fact is that Republicans in the House, at least publicly, have performed heroic gyrations and contortions to remain in lockstep with the president. As devastating fact after devastating fact has emerged in the testimony, Trump’s defenders are reduced to arguing, essentially, that Trump can do no wrong.
Had Trump pulled out that (so far) proverbial gun and shot someone on Fifth Avenue, Republicans would trot out the exact same defense they have this week: The shot was fired at 2 a.m. and there were no eyewitnesses. Those nearby who claimed to have heard the shot had actually heard a car backfiring. The closed-circuit video capturing the incident is, as the president says, a hoax concocted by the same Fake News outlets that manufactured the Access Hollywood video. The confession released by the White House was “perfect” evidence of Trump’s innocence. Election records show that the cops who arrived on the scene were registered Democrats and therefore part of a deep-state conspiracy to frame the president for a crime he didn’t commit but that the Democrats did. The victim was not killed and will make a complete recovery, so no crime was committed anyway. And even if Trump had killed the young woman he gunned down, the argument advanced by Trump’s lawyer last month would apply: “The person who serves as president, while in office, enjoys absolute immunity from criminal process of any kind.” Next case!
Virginia Heffernan at The Los Angeles Times points out that the claim Trump was only concerned about corruption doesn’t hold water:
Yeah, no.
Just like all the other times Republicans have tried to make this case, it went over like a lead balloon. Clearly, if Trump cared for a second about actual corruption in Ukraine, he wouldn’t have droned on and on about one board member (Hunter Biden) at one company (Burisma).
Instead, he would have supported Ukraine’s true reformist priorities: Building up the anti-corruption courts. Cracking down on embezzlement. And, for heaven’s sake, recovering the money reportedly stolen from Ukraine by Kremlin ally and former President Viktor Yanukovich, former client of the convicted felon Paul Manafort, who also served as Trump’s campaign chairman. By some estimates, Yanukovich reportedly lifted $40 billion or even $100 billion. (Ukraine’s GDP is about $112 billion.)
At USA Today, Wendy Sherman outlines how Sondland’s testimony sounds alarms for America’s foreign policy:
[Sondland] is a fixer, a kibitzer, someone who wants to fly close to the sun and be in the presence of power. And he might not even understand that he has now been badly burned. […]
We are left with an image of a bunch of corrupt clowns who are downright dangerous to our democracy.
At
The Nation,
John Nichols dives into the behavior of Senator Johnson, who is both a witness and juror:
Johnson isn’t just another Republican spouting pro-Trump talking points, however. He’s a figure whose involvement in the Ukraine scandal runs so deep that if the House approves articles of impeachment, it is now unimaginable that Senator Johnson could serve as a credible juror in Trump’s trial. […]
Johnson should, of course, recuse himself from that latter responsibility. Yet the senator refuses to do so, despite testimony that has linked him to some of the shadiest aspects of the scandal.
And on a final note, here’s Paul Krugman’s take on the Republican loyalty to Trump in the face of devastating facts:
There is no bottom. The inquiry hasn’t found a smoking gun; it has found what amounts to a smoking battery of artillery. Yet almost no partisan Republicans have turned on Trump and his high-crimes-and-misdemeanors collaborators. Why not? The answer gets to the heart of what’s wrong with modern American politics: The G.O.P. is now a thoroughly corrupt party. Trump is a symptom, not the disease, and our democracy will remain under dire threat even if and when he’s gone.