Trump (now) says he was only interested in corruption when he asked Ukraine (and China) to investigate the Bidens. Why? To defend himself against charges of criminal misconduct.
The public may not believe Trump. Even Mitt Rmoney says “it strains credulity”.
But according to at least one constitutional scholar, Trump’s intent matters: lack of proof of bad faith is grounds for acquittal in the Senate.
That may explain Team Trump’s throwing Rudy under the bus. Pompeo disavowed Rudy. Sekulow disavowed Rudy. Trump doesn’t know if Rudy is still his attorney.
The NYT’s Ken Vogel argues that it was Rudy who has caused all this trouble for Trump.
Well, it’s sort of ironic that Rudy was brought on as Trump’s defense attorney, to help him navigate his way through the Mueller investigation, and instead, he quickly branched out and became sort of an opposition researcher, and campaign attack dog, and even a quasi-diplomat engaging with foreign governments in a way that has led Trump right into the next crisis of his presidency, in many ways, potentially worst crisis, that is now at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
The Washington Post has the most insane circular argument that Trump is a victim of the conspiracy theories propagated by Trump. Some in the media seems ready to excuse Trump for receiving bad information from Rudy, that led to Trump’s otherwise impeachable Ukrainian call. Despite the fact that Rudy fingers Trump: “Giuliani’s account heavily suggests that Trump decided to fire Yovanovitch because she was standing in the way of their plan to pressure Ukraine to go after Biden”.
And so it goes on in much Trump reporting. Instead of considering how Trump himself (or Putin) benefits, Trump is given the benefit of the doubt by being labeled an idiot: Erdogan rolled Trump into clueless Syria decision.
So, is Trump an unlucky, gullible idiot, unfortunately surrounded by corrupt people, or is Trump the source of the corruption?
And if Trump isn’t ever to blame for doing anything wrong, then who advised Trump to falsely accuse the Central Park 5, to discriminate in his housing, to investigate Obama’s birth certificate, to violate campaign finance, to allegedly launder Russian mafia money, to pay off porn stars, to assault women, to falsify business records, to threaten violence against immigrants, to prevent the FBI HQ being sold as a competing hotel to his, to promote his hotels to Pence, the G7 & foreign governments, to disseminating Russian propaganda, to ask Comey to stop investigating Flynn, to fire Comey, to try to fire Mueller, to intimidate witnesses, to obstruct justice & Congress, and to attack the press?
People claim Trump knows nothing, but he obviously knows an awful lot about how to be evil and corrupt.
Harry Reid warns us that Trump is actually smarter than we credit.
I used to think that Donald Trump was not too smart. I certainly don't believe that anymore…. I don't think he's, intellectually, a powerhouse but he is basically a very, very smart man. No matter what the subject, any argument he involves himself in, it's on his terms. You're always arguing against him. He never, never, is willing to debate an issue on terms that aren't his….
Rachel Maddow warned recently of Trump’s effort to redefine the meaning of corruption.
What they’re trying to do is to take this word [corruption] away from their accusers to try to make any reference to the President’s corruption seem like sort of muddy cross-fire where there’s allegations of corruption on all sides and who can say. As with their adoption and perversion of that phrase ‘fake news’, they’re trying to make us basically linguistically incapable of characterizing the very real and very simple thing for which the President is being impeached. The President saying “corruption, corruption, corruption” as if he’s a force for anti-corruption now, it seems hilarious to hear him say it, given what he’s been like as President and given what he’s being impeached for right now. But I do believe we’re on a very short time-frame now before which we’re not be able to use the word corruption anymore to talk about this scandal for which the President is being impeached, because by his shear repetition of it and the adoption of it by his supporters and by the conservative media for it to mean the opposite of the real English use of that word, the word will become meaningless, will become something that is no longer available to us, it will become something that means both its real meaning and its opposite, it’ll be an unspeakable and unusable part of this drama.
So when Trump goes out and repeats the word “corruption” twelve times in a brief interview, that’s no simple-minded trick. That’s Trump intentionally trying to execute the same rhetorical strategies that got him elected and have kept him from being impeached so far.
That’s also straight out of the Kremlin’s fake news playbook. Putin is definitely trying to manipulate Trump. But is Trump the village idiot victim? Or has Trump been playing along with Putin for his own benefit, willingly, for his own power and enrichment? If Trump were actually an innocent victim of Putin, couldn’t he use his tremendous power as President of the US to fight back? Instead, he skillfully shares and amplifies the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns and abuses the power of his office to influence the conservative media, foreign governments and Republicans to support him.
Are we also willing to excuse Trump for his malfeasance? Or will we demand that he be held responsible and punished?
Please choose the best answer available in the poll below, and don’t bother leaving some wishy-washy “oh, it’s a combination of those, so I can’t decide” answers in the comments.