Trump's Ukraine Defense Is the Same One He's Used for Years: I Did It. So What?

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Trump’s Ukraine Defense Is the Same One He’s Used for Years: I Did It. So What?
By John Cassidy
5:03 P.M.
Donald Trump’s effort to turn the Ukraine scandal into a story about a Presidential opponent is entirely familiar.

snip//

Forty years on, Trump is taking his jackhammers to the checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution, and the very notion that a President can be held to account. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump, during a July 25th call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, urged Zelensky “about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani on a probe that could hamper Mr. Trump’s potential 2020 opponent” Joe Biden, whose son Hunter had business interests in the Slavic country. The contents of the July call are the subject of a complaint, by an anonymous intelligence whistle-blower, which the Trump Administration has refused to pass along to Congress.

After having been subjected to a two-year investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller into whether he, or any of his associates, conspired with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election, Trump might be expected to be somewhat sensitive to the suggestion that he urged another foreign country to dig up dirt on a possible Presidential opponent. Not a bit of it. During a back-and-forth with reporters at the White House on Sunday, he openly admitted that he brought up Biden during his call with Zelenksy. The subject of the call was “largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place, was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice-President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine,” Trump said.

Asked about the other critical issue—whether he withheld two hundred and fifty million dollars in military aid to squeeze the Ukrainian leader—Trump said that he wanted Germany and France to pay more. That wasn't a denial, either; it sounded more like a cover story. And on Monday Trump appeared to acknowledge that the aid money did come up during his conversation with Zelensky. “It’s very important to talk about corruption,” Trump said when he was asked again about the July call. “If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country you think is corrupt?"

There you have it. To the charge that he used the power of his office to try to get dirt on a domestic political opponent, Trump’s response is the same as it was when he was accused of demolishing the friezes: Yes, I did it. So what? To charges that he dangled U.S. aid as part of a squeeze play, he says the money was indeed linked to the corruption issue, which, to him and Giuliani, meant trying to pin some discredited corruption charges on Biden.

Again, none of this should be shocking. Trump adopted the same unapologetic and defiant stance after he urged Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, after he fired an F.B.I. director who refused to give him a pledge of loyalty, and after he publicly backed Vladimir Putin over the entire U.S. intelligence community. The effort to turn the Ukraine scandal into a story about Biden is also entirely familiar. During the Russia investigation, Trump and his Republican lackeys did the same thing with their attacks on John Brennan, Robert Mueller, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok. Any evidence that suggested that Trump’s campaign courted Russian help, or that he attempted to obstruct the subsequent investigation, was all part of a “witch hunt” by the “deep state”—terms that have rolled out again in recent days.

Can the Presidential wrecking ball be stopped before Trump reduces everything to rubble? Not by the laws of the land, which—he has been delighted to discover—don’t seem to apply to a sitting President. Impeachment was the remedy that James Madison and some of his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention came up with, and this could prove to be the moment at which Nancy Pelosi, losing control of her caucus, finally takes the plunge. But Madison assumed that all parties and factions in Congress would be sufficiently independent to bring a rogue President to heel. That assumption no longer applies. With most elected Republicans terrified of incurring the wrath of the MAGA hordes, it seems inconceivable that the Senate would convict Trump of impeachable offenses, regardless of the evidence.