From the moment Donald Trump became a national political figure, he has been shadowed by investigations and controversy.
They have been layered, lengthy and often inconclusive, leaving many Americans scandal-weary and numb to his behavior. And with each charge against him, Trump has perfected the art of deflection, seemingly gaining strength by bullying and belittling those who have dared to take him on.
Now Trump is facing a high-velocity threat like none he’s confronted before.
It has rapidly evolved from a process fight over a whistleblower complaint to an impeachment inquiry within two weeks. Much of the evidence is already in public view. A rough transcript of a phone call in which Trump asks Ukraine’s president to help investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden. The whistleblower’s detailed letter alleging the White House tried to cover up the call, and possibly others.
Unlike special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation, which circled an array of people in Trump’s orbit but not always the president himself, Trump doesn’t have the benefit of distance. His words and his actions are at the center of this investigation.
“The Mueller report , it was always Manafort this and his son that. There was a cascade of players,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, referring to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. “This was just Donald Trump and a disturbing conversation with another world leader.”
So, suddenly, Washington is different and the history of Trump’s presidency has changed. By year’s end, he could become only the third American president impeached by the House of Representatives.
That new reality caught Trump and his advisers off guard, according to people close to the president. If anything, they thought the specter of impeachment had been lifted after the Mueller investigation ended without a clear determination that Trump had committed a crime.
The contours of that investigation played to Trump’s strengths. Mueller spent two years in silence, allowing the president to fill the vacuum with assertions that the investigation was a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.” The details of the investigation that did leak out were often complicated and focused on people in Trump’s sphere. Even Mueller’s pointed statement that he had not exonerated Trump did not seem to stick. There was ultimately plenty of smoke, but no smoking gun.
Numerous other Democratic inquiries appeared likely to meet a similar fate, including House investigation into Trump’s business dealings, his tax returns and a variety of administration scandals. For many Americans, they were one big blur of investigations without any clarity of purpose.
Then the whistleblower gave the Democrats what they needed: a simple, easily explainable charge — that the president sought a foreign government’s help for personal political gain — and his words to back it up.
For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., and several Democratic moderates who had resisted calls for impeachment, the calculus shifted . It was now more of a risk to recoil from impeachment than charge ahead.
“What we’re seeing right now is a completely different moment in the history of this country,” said Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla.
One thing that didn’t change — at least not immediately — was the clear partisan divide over Trump’s actions, both in Washington and across the country.
According to a one-day NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted Wednesday, 49% of Americans approve of the House formally starting an impeachment inquiry into Trump. Among Democrats, 88% approve of the investigation, while 93% of Republicans disapprove.
Mike Staffieri, a retiree and Republican who lives just outside of Richmond, Virginia, said Democrats were trying to “throw enough poop at the wall and hope something sticks.”
On Capitol Hill, some Trump allies concurred, confidently dismissing the impeachment inquiry as just another partisan effort to take down a president who is despised by many Democrats. That rough transcript of a phone call in which Trump presses Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to work with Attorney General William Barr and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on an investigation into Biden? It’s just Trump being Trump, according to his backers.
“You’ve heard President Trump talk. That’s President Trump,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
Mark Updegrove, a presidential historian and president of the LBJ Foundation in Austin, Texas, said it’s that enduring support from Republican lawmakers that currently separates Trump from Richard Nixon, who resigned in the midst of the Watergate impeachment inquiry because his party began to abandon him.
“The big difference between this and Watergate is that you had both Republicans and Democrats being deeply concerned about the president being involved in criminal wrongdoing,” Updegrove said. “It was a bipartisan effort and you certainly don’t have that here.”
But it is early, compared with Watergate. There were small signs that some Republicans were trying to keep some measure of distance from the president. Some GOP lawmakers fled Washington for a fall break claiming they hadn’t yet read the whistleblower’s complaint. Others said they were open to learning more about the situation.
Trump’s hold on the Republican Party makes it nearly impossible to foresee a scenario in which the GOP-controlled Senate convicts Trump if he were impeached by the Democratic-run House.
The president is acutely well aware that it’s his party alone that can protect him. In the midst of the past week’s firestorm, he tweeted to Republicans: “Stick together, play their game and fight hard Republicans.”
He later deleted the tweet.
(AP)
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18 Responses
Apparently AP (YWN preferred source for news of the goyim) does not realize that “impeachment” means nothing if the Senate is unlikely to convict. So far, no charge against the president, whether encouraging the Ukraine to investigate corrupt Democrats, or paing hush money to a woman for doing that which we don’t discuss on YWN, are actually illegal, and certainly no “High crimes and misdemanors”.
AP Mainstream media pablum!
This site is so Anti-President, I hope that another Jewish news website opens up that is balanced and not in bed the the left leaning liberals /communists / socialists. We need a fair and balanced source for Jewish and world news.
You’ve bought the MSNBC/CNN narrative hook line and sinker. The press and Democrats were calling for impeachment before they even saw the transcript. They claimed things that weren’t there! The supposed whistleblower had no first hand knowledge , was repeating gossip and was in many cases factually wrong.
Trump is conducting national negotiations like business transactions but the benefits are not always instantly evident.
conservatibe1: YWN is not really anti=Trump, rather they buy the AP news feed (probably since it is less expensive than conservative alternatives), and unfortunately, AP (owned by main stream media) has become quite “blue” and overly partisan in recent years.
Let them impeach
Who cares
They will feel victorious and it’s a meaningless thing so long as the senate doesn’t convict him
Much like Charlie rangle getting “censured “no the senate floor for his tax evasion.
A punishment I imagine everyone convicted for tax evasion wishes they could get
To all the critics, this seems like a fairly accurate summery of a much more complex news story quoting both Republicans and Democrats. AP, the Associated Press is a recognized news agency with no obvious bias.
beware of Soros. his money is behind all of the fake lies etc.
This shall do nothing more than boomerang on the Democrats who are still in denial of the 2016 election results which they are still trying to overturn, and is only going to increase # of votes going for President Donald Trump in 2020, who anyways is going to be reelected because of the SUPERB job he is doing as President of the United States of America.
@Conservative1: “This site is so Anti-President, I hope that another Jewish news website opens up that is balanced and not in bed the left leaning liberals /communists / socialists”
Agreed….. just read through any of the YWN news/political stories about the Trumpkopf….all the comments are derogatory, demeaning, and insulting of the greatest President we’ve had since Obama. As we approach the yomim no’raim, we should all do t’shuvah and strive to be more deferential to the Trumpkopf in his final months in office. If YWN continues to act as a tool of the vast left-wing conspiracy, we will all have to take our commentary to the new TrumpVelt website.
Another DOA attempt by the hate filled left against our president. It didn’t work before and it won’t work now.
Even if the original accusation had been true, the very worst construction that could be put on it is that Trump did the exact same thing that Biden did. So anyone who claims that this makes Trump unfit to be president MUST say the same about Biden, and must declare that he will not support Biden even if he gets the nomination.
But even in that worst case scenario, all Trump did was threated the Ukranians to restart the investigation that Biden forced them to stop. In other words he fixed the damage Biden did. How would that be a crime?
The real question is why Biden has not been arrested and charged.
The level of bias exhibited by the AP is utterly astounding.
It’s so interesting watching Democrats and Republicans fight on this forum without addressing the facts. Knee-jerk reactions are so easy to predict. As a registered Independent and an attorney it appears to me that Trump may be in trouble this time.
To understand Torah, you must understand the world. And not one of the first 4 commenters understands the world.
How can you defend this Rasha? He clearly has done a federal crime, that if were done by any other president would be a viable reason for a bipartisanship push for impeachment. The magnitude of the crime and the complete lack of morals should convince those brainwashed Republicans that the time for Trump is passed. To directly attempt to influence and manipulate a presidential election should be beyond the audacity of any person with scruples. We can draw a similarity between Nixon (who also attempted to manipulate an election) and Trump: Both were Republicans.
This is absolutely outrageously ridiculous. First of all he did really nothing that justifies impeachment.
Second – the previous president did so much to weaken this country in many aspects and was forgiven.
Why? Because those Dems do not really care about the country with their Sanctuary cities, anti wall agenda etc. They do not like President Trump because he is a real patriot who did not grow in the political world.
He doesn’t care being Politically Correct but rather Practically Correct.
Third – he has done so much for us Yiden that I’m quite confidant that HASHEM will watch over him and wouldn’t let these crooked Dems touch him
Shana Tova