We begin today’s roundup with Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes who write in The Atlantic that Donald Trump is running out of defenses for his conduct:
The message Trump’s allies used to tar the chief U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, Bill Taylor—that he was motivated to attack the president over supposed political differences—largely failed to catch on. And the argument that gained steam on Fox News against the National Security Council staffer Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman—that the emigration of Vindman’s Ukrainian Jewish family from their home country when Vindman was 3 years old had somehow inculcated in the staffer a loyalty to Ukraine over U.S. interests—quickly ran into a brick wall of condemnation, even from congressional Republicans. [...]
[T]he prospect of the House conducting such hearings in public, with credible witnesses who are all telling variants of the same damning story as seen from their own angle, creates problems for the president’s defenders. How do you complain about secrecy when the proceedings are no longer behind closed doors? How do you attack the integrity of witnesses against whom your previous attempted attacks have already failed, when they are on television seeming like credible public servants trying to do their jobs? How do you defend presidential conduct, when the president’s own staff is describing it in alarming terms?
Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly details the latest defense — ”so what if he did it”?
What they are proposing is that Trump used the withholding of military aid to pressure a foreign government to investigate his opponents, but in doing so, he didn’t have a “culpable state of mine.” That would amount to a pretty classic case of sociopathy.
The other way Senate Republicans plan to use this new argument is to suggest that there is nothing wrong with using a quid pro quo in this situation. [...]
In the end, the focus of these arguments is not to counter the facts of Trump’s corruption and abuse of power, but to normalize it.
At The Washington Post, Dana Milbank takes a look at the recently released transcripts of the closed-door testimony:
If this is a sign of what’s to come, Republicans will soon regret forcing Democrats to make impeachment proceedings public. Over 10 hours, the transcript shows, they stumbled about in search of a counter-narrative to her damning account.
Meanwhile, USA Today argues against unveiling the whistleblower’s identity:
The fundamental promise of whistleblower protection is to create a safe space for a witness of wrongdoing to come forward and report it — and, for the sake of his or her professional reputation or even physical safety, to remain anonymous in doing so.
Nothing chills truth-telling in the halls of power like the risk of retribution, and no risk is more harrowing than unmasking potentially impeachable offenses by a president. [...]
Making the whistleblower's identity known would expose the person to the kind of character assassination from the extreme elements of the president's supporters that other impeachment inquiry witnesses have endured.
Or worse. Lawyers for the whistleblower said they have been targets of violent threats and one of them, Andrew Bakaj, said his worst fear for his client, if the person is identified, is "physical harm to include death."
And speaking of retribution, David Graham at The Atlantic explains how government officials are terrified of Trump’s tweets:
Twitter is often seen as Trump’s most effective tool for communicating with the general population, but as Yovanovitch’s account shows, it may be most effective at cowing bureaucrats and forcing them to comply with his wishes. [...] The way the government bureaucracy leaps to react when Trump tweets these orders creates an awkward situation for the government’s lawyers at the Justice Department, who have repeatedly argued in court that the president’s tweets should not be taken either seriously or literally if they undercut the legitimacy of government actions. (In July, a federal judge reamed out a team of government lawyers after they agreed to drop a quest to include a citizenship question on the U.S. census, only to have the president tweet that he was not dropping the matter.) Federal judges may, on occasion, be willing to believe that the president’s tweets aren’t what matter. But executive-branch officials know better. Nothing seems to get them moving faster than a tweet.
On the topic of climate change, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel blast the president’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement:
On Monday, President Trump took the step he promised in 2017 to officially withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change, which every other country on Earth has signed. This is not America first; once again, it’s America isolated. [...]
The United States can rejoin the agreement at any time once we have a leader willing to do so. We must all mitigate the damage Trump does to the United States before then, but if there was ever an election in which U.S. leadership and the nation’s security were on the ballot, 2020 is it. Americans can pull the lever for the clearest choice ever on climate action to ensure that on Day One of a new administration, America will be back.
On a final note, here’s David Plouffe and Tara McGowan highlighting the need for Democrats to invest in their online communications:
Little on the left has been done to counter the president’s advertising onslaught online and what is being done is so far insufficient. This isn’t simply about playing defense. This is an election where we can leave nothing to chance. Even if the Trump campaign were asleep at the switch, progressives should be running a persistent, well-funded campaign to the voters who will decide this presidential election — not episodically, but consistently and across all available platforms, newsfeeds and channels where voters go for their news. [...]
Until late this summer, not a single progressive political organization had begun to fill that void — and to this day progressive groups and their donors remain underinvested in the digital space.
That is why we are launching Four is Enough, a $75 million digital effort to fill that gap. A program of the progressive political action committee PACRONYM, Four is Enough will counter the Trump campaign’s online narratives with voters in key states. We’ll reach audiences on Facebook, YouTube and other platforms, and engage them from now until next November.