Donald Trump has discovered that the pillars of this temple we call the American democracy are weak. He’s growing ever more confident that he has the strength to topple them.
The phone call Donald Trump is reported to have had with the president of Ukraine in which he demanded that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter, if true, is a shocking example of a president who feels invincible and unrestrained.
The phone call is reported to be part of the whistleblower report that the Trump administration is preventing from being forwarded to Congress, and by extension, is concealing from the public.
There is no evidence that then-Vice President Biden or his son did anything illegal. There is, however, clear evidence that Trump has broken the law — both in the conspiracies to pay off women who allege sexual affairs with him and in obstructing justice over Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
But that doesn’t matter to this man. For him, “real” is relative. The only truth, the only thing that matters, is what you can make people believe. Facts are not absolute; they have alternatives.
This is the chief executive officer of the country, and he is single-handedly mutilating it.
The Constitution is not sufficient restraint on a lawless president, in part, I assume, because it was inconceivable that such a dishonest man would rise to the office.
Trump has tested the slim guardrails erected to constrain presidential power and behavior, and he has shown them wanting, frail and assailable. He can thwart, resist and make a mockery of attempts to hold him accountable and to coerce acceptable behavior because Washington is filled with more survivalist politicians than with selfless patriots.
Trump has captured the Republican Party, and that means that he is holding Republican legislators hostage. None — or precious few — would dare to openly, publicly disagree with him, let alone challenge him. And Trump’s loudest supporters feel like the ascendant voices in the party.
He also has a particularly pernicious propaganda machine in Fox News. Fox’s promotion of Trump’s agenda and narrative, at the same time that Trump attacks and diminishes other, more legitimate and unbiased news sources, sufficiently muddies the water for enough people, especially those who support him.
Democratic leaders are investigating the president and his administration on multiple fronts, but they, too, are muddled when it comes to articulating a coherent and consistent perspective on their greatest power of presidential chastisement: impeachment. Is an impeachment process underway or not? Is this impeachment by another name? Is this impeachment-lite?
CNBC’s John Harwood tweeted Saturday:
“is whistle-blower/Ukraine situation changing Pelosi’s view on potential Trump impeachment? adviser tells me: ‘no. see any GOP votes for it?’”
He followed up Sunday, tweeting:
“senior Dem aide on Speaker/impeachment: ‘contrary to popular belief, Pelosi isn’t giving members a red light. She’s telling them to do what’s right for them and their district. But Ukraine stuff may be breaking point. goes to whether we can actually have free/fair 2020 election’”
It is possible, but Pelosi is weighing another concern: Maintaining Democratic control of the House and her own speakership. There is a school of thought that a vote to impeach in the House that is met with a refusal to convict and remove in Moscow Mitch McConnell’s Senate will be viewed as a “failed impeachment,” would put the country through unnecessary strife and might turn swing voters against the Democrats or rile up Republicans to vote for Trump.
The first rule of politics is self-preservation, and everyone in Washington is following that rule to the letter. But as they do, the country suffers. The country succumbs. The country collapses.
Trump thinks that the idea of Congress as a coequal branch of government is largely a tradition and convention, even though it is written as so in the Constitution. Trump, however, knows that the enforcement mechanisms are weak and rusty. To a large degree, Congress will have to fight his obstruction in the courts, where cases can have a long horizon. He can simply run out the clock, or stall as the sting of an accusation dulls in the public consciousness.
The public is being told that the only real, meaningful remedy to the Trump problem is to defeat him at the polls next year. But that is by no means a surety. As Nate Cohn wrote in The Times in July, Trump could lose even more of the popular vote next year and still win the Electoral College by an even larger margin than in 2016.
But even more disturbingly, the Ukraine call, if the details are as reported, shows us in plain sight that not only would Trump accept help from foreign actors to win in 2020, he is willing to actively participate in and encourage foreign interference.
We only know about this instance because of leaks about the whistleblower report. There is no way to know how much else may exist that we don’t know, or who is planning to interfere in our election or doing so right now.
In some ways America is strong and resilient. But Trump has found America’s soft spot, its vulnerability, and he’s plunging his fangs into it.
Charles Blow |The New York Times
Charles M. Blow is an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times.
