Trump makes defending him tough
GOP looking for ways to get him to ease off on attacks
WASHINGTON — Up against the wall, President Donald Trump has always reached into his ready arsenal of aggressive tactics. Confronted with challenges that would make many people search for a way out, he punches back, insults those who speak against him, tosses up falsehoods and distracting stories he knows will get big play in the news media and offers frequently shifting alternative narratives.
Now, facing the likelihood that he will become only the third president ever to be impeached, Trump is deploying his full playbook — even as his statements repeatedly undercut the case Republican defenders in Congress have made on his behalf.
“It makes it more politically difficult for us,” said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., “but it doesn’t change how we’ll vote on impeachment.”
The president’s unsupported attacks on some of the key witnesses appearing over the past two weeks before the House Intelligence Committee not only surprised many of his Republican allies but also contradicted the narrative that they had settled on to describe why Trump’s actions in the Ukraine controversy do not justify his removal from office.
Even as the ousted U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was testifying before the committee and a national TV audience, Trump tweeted that “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” an assertion unmoored from her record as a diplomat serving in seven countries. Democrats called the attack “witness intimidation,” and although most Republicans were publicly quiet, some privately felt that the president they were avidly defending had kneecapped them, according to House Republicans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they didn’t want to be seen as publicly breaking with their colleagues.
“We Republicans were going to say ‘she’s had an excellent career, but she wasn’t there in the decisive moments, so thank you for testifying, have a nice day,” King recalled. “Then he attacked her and that set a tone. It makes it more uncomfortable for people.”
Trump went after Yovanovitch again Friday, saying on Fox News that she “hated me so much” and falsely calling her “an
Obama person” while complaining that because “she’s a woman, you have to be nice.”
Similarly, White House statements criticizing the judgment of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who coordinates Ukraine policy for the National Security Council, and declaring Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, as a “Never Trumper” left some Republicans looking for ways to get Trump to ease off on the accelerator.
“I think it’s better (to) not attack our career Foreign Service officers,” said Rep. Francis Rooney, R-Fla., “Those people are just trying to do their job.”
Before the impeachment hearings began earlier this month, some Democrats expected that Republicans would concede that Trump’s behavior was impolitic, even inappropriate, but would argue that it simply wasn’t consequential enough to justify him being removed from office.
For a while, it appeared that a number of Republicans in Congress were preparing exactly that defense. But it soon became apparent that the strategy had two big flaws: First, there was no Republican consensus that the president had done anything wrong. Some parroted Trump’s line about his conversation having been “perfect,” some seemed to want to blame Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, for steering U.S. policy toward a conspiracy theory, and some were genuinely perturbed that the president had twisted foreign policy for political gain.
The second problem faced by the president’s party was the one that has bedeviled Republicans in Congress for three years: Trump’s eagerness to say whatever seems advantageous to him in a given moment.
Several GOP lawmakers said last week that the best thing Trump could do now is focus on his policy agenda and let his allies on the Hill manage the impeachment process.
But other House members said that’s just not how Trump operates. The president’s brash manner and penchant for breaking china are already baked into both public opinion and his relations with Republicans in Congress, they said, and there’s no concerted effort to get the president to temper his public remarks.
“His comments complicate things,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., “and in some cases, it’s excessive, but you’ll hear members saying it’s just Trump being Trump. He is just different, such a unique figure, and that’s one reason he won. Traditional politicians, including me, have a difficult time figuring out what he means. But the president is probably as popular as any Republican president has been within the party. When we go home, the criticism you get is for not being forceful enough in defending the president.”
Trump has nonetheless made this moment difficult for some of his defenders by contradicting their version of events. For example, some House Republicans conceded that it was at least unseemly for Trump to have asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy “to do us a favor” and launch a corruption investigation connected to former vice president Joe Biden.
But Trump, who has posted at least 18 tweets declaring his conversation with Zelensky “perfect,” blasted that defense: “Republicans, don’t be led into the fools trap of saying it was not perfect, but is not impeachable . . . NOTHING WAS DONE WRONG!”
King said that some in Congress have already approached Trump and “talked to him about the tweeting. If he can tone it down a little, that would help. He’s a very sharp businessman. We’re not at war and the economy’s doing very well. He should be winning 55-45. As he gets closer to the end of impeachment and the Democratic primaries, he’ll realize he should win if he tones it down.”