Bristling at ‘cover-up’ lays bare GOP’s weakness
Congressman Adam Schiff, lead House manager of the impeachment case against President Trump, delivered a tour de force last week, painfully, crushingly detailing the president’s obvious guilt and decimating his defenses. Fair to say, however, that this did not go over all that agreeably with Senate Republicans who, determined to sidestep the evidence of Trump’s abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, opted for phony professions of outrage at being called to account.
Leading the charge was Susan Collins, whose depressing forfeiture of a once-meaningful reputation for independence has led former admirers to shake their heads at what fear of a Republican primary can do to a person’s conscience. Collins claimed to be appalled at Congressman Jerome Nadler’s phrase “cover-up” to describe conduct by Senate Republicans that can’t easily be described otherwise. Donald Trump’s “defense” to the mountain of evidence against him is the patently false assertion that none of it is “firsthand.”
But Republicans have not merely looked the other way at Trump’s blanket order that the documents reflecting his conduct be withheld and the aides to whom he gave orders be gagged; presented with a simple request that the documents be turned over and the aides being muzzled be required to tell the truth, they have made this impossible. For his part, the president does not hide the fact that he is hiding the facts. “We’re doing very well,” Trump boasted about the impeachment proceedings last week. “Honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material.”
Collins is upset about the phrase “cover-up.” Too bad. That is precisely what it is, and her objection to a phrase that fits the GOP’s conduct like a glove makes her look ridiculous. Evidently, in the United States Senate which Collins claims to revere, it is now permissible to block the truth and impermissible to speak it.
But it wasn’t only the apt use of “cover-up” that Coldemanded lins and colleagues find offensive. It was Schiff ’s reference to a CBS News report that Republican senators had been warned “vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.” “That’s not true,” shouted Collins, and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski complained “That’s where (Schiff) lost me.” Whether the White House used the word “pike” or “spear,” there is no doubt that the message has been delivered — forcefully and repeatedly — that if Republicans stand up to Trump, they will sleep with the fishes, politically speaking. “I talk to Republicans all the time, quietly, individually,” said Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown on Friday, echoing what his colleagues continually report. “Many of them tell me that Trump’s a liar, but they’re all afraid of him.” Republicans’ professions of outrage at a report that they are afraid of Trump are, quite simply, as phony as a three dollar bill.
Indeed, “phony” is the word that rushes to mind listening to Trump’s defenses, and one hardly knows which among them is the most laughable. One potential prize winner: Trump’s contention that he had not
a quid pro quo from Ukraine because, knowing that he was guilty of demanding a quid pro quo, he uttered the words “No quid pro quo” in a conversation in which he expressly confirmed that he was demanding a quid pro quo. This bit of idiocy would not survive scrutiny by fifth-graders. “In other words,” observes Brown University constitutional scholar Corey Brettschneider, “if the president is robbing a bank and says, ‘I am not robbing a bank,’ we should believe him.”
Despite the hokum and the fraud served up by the White House’s smoke-blowing machine, polls show that most Americans get what is going on here. Two surveys released before Schiff laid Trump out in clover found that 51% want Trump removed right now. Republican senators will no doubt succeed in preventing that. They are unlikely, however, to prevent a verdict from being rendered against them by history.