Frank Rich: Republican Impeachment Panic Sets In

[babylonsister]

the national circus Oct. 25, 2019
Republican Impeachment Panic Sets In
By Frank Rich
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today, diplomat William Taylor’s “smoking gun” Ukraine testimony, Trump’s fading GOP support on impeachment, and the Democratic Party’s Hail Mary attempts to hold off Warren and Sanders.


Congressional testimony this week by William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, laid out an explicit quid pro quo linking U.S. military aid for Ukraine to a Biden investigation, and detailing the rogue “diplomacy” driven by Rudy Giuliani. Is this the “smoking gun” Democrats have been waiting for?

When Richard Nixon finally was forced to concede in August 1974, that a 1972 White House tape implicated him in the Watergate cover-up, the conservative columnist George F. Will called the revelation a “smoking howitzer.” Nixon was gone four days later. Some have been recycling Will’s locution this week, with good reason given the damning evidence provided by Taylor and so many others (including Trump himself) that the president of the United States committed an unambiguous criminal act. But Trump isn’t going anywhere so fast.

Yet over the past week there have been repeated signs that he and his party are more panicked than ever. The first indication of desperation was the White House trashing of Taylor, a Vietnam combat veteran with a bipartisan 30-year-plus career in public service, as a “radical unelected bureaucrat” and “human scum” despite the fact that it was Trump’s own secretary of State and Ukraine shakedown co-conspirator, Mike Pompeo, who put Taylor in his current diplomatic post. Then came the farcical and failed effort of a congressional flash mob, approved by the president, to physically disrupt the impeachment inquiry on the spurious grounds that Republicans are being shut out of the proceedings. (Forty-eight GOP representatives are permitted to attend the hearings on impeachment.) These protesting clowns, among them the racist Iowa congressman Steve King, not only violated national security by bringing cell phones into the room but thought it was a hilarious idea to order in pizza to further dramatize their ostensibly serious act of civil disobedience.

Another sign of Trump panic was his reversal of his decision to host the G7 at his own Miami hotel — a very rare about-face, prompted by complaining GOP congressmen fearful of 2020 blowback in their own reelection campaigns. You’ll notice, too, that Trump seems to be retreating from his claim to be a “lynching” victim. This may have something to do with an unexpected editorial that ran Wednesday in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal — a newspaper that, unlike the Times and the Washington Post, has not been subjected to the White House’s new “fake news” ban. In stark contrast to Trump lackey Lindsey Graham’s defense, the paper’s editorial page condemned Trump for using “self-indulgent” and “reckless” and “indefensible” language that exacerbates the “political trouble” he’s in.

Now comes the pièce de résistance, reported yesterday: In response to congressional Republicans’ complaints that the White House has no coordinated impeachment battle plan, Mick Mulvaney has been tasked with “working on getting a messaging team together.” To put Mick (“Who do you believe, me or your own ears?”) Mulvaney in charge of White House messaging can only mean that either that Trump can no longer recruit new political operatives to join him in his bunker or that Baghdad Bob was not available.

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[Farmer-Rick]

1. If Trump is not found guilty in the Senate,

He is going back to that bad idea of having the G7 at one of his failing properties.

There is no bad idea too bad for Traitor Trump to give up on. I still think he has plans to have the dictator Putin come to visit the white house.

[bdamomma]

2. That will be

it for tRump if Putin rears his head in the WH, or the Rose Garden. Then those Americans (who are in denial) will really know who's running the country.

Put a fork in both of them.

[Harker]

3. That's a pretty good idea.

Last edited Mon Oct 28, 2019, 11:54 PM - Edit history (2)

Edited for clarity: the insertion of forks would be a good idea, irrespective of any other consideration.

[Farmer-Rick]

4. Yes, it's a very bad idea when Traitor Trump had it.

But that would be the reason he does it. Though I'm not sure Putin is stupid enough to give up his cover....yet.

[bdamomma]

5. tRump

gets his daily briefing from Putin I would guess everyday by phone, can you imagine if those phone calls surface into the public sphere.

[True Blue American]

6. Putin and Russia have already

Said capturing Bagdahdi meant nothing and they knew nothing about US Planesflying over Russian territory.

They are making fun of Trump.

[bigbrother05]

8. That would explain the timing of his tweets

Lackeys always operate on the Boss's timetable, Vlad ain't losing sleep over Donnie.

[UCmeNdc]

7. Trump is calling Putin for help!

Donald Corruption Trump!