Mixed impeachment messages

Freelancing leads to uneven Republican defenses of president

WASHINGTON — Republicans have no unified argument in the impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump, in large part because they can’t agree on how best to defend the president.

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney says the president’s actions toward Ukraine are “troubling.” Other Republicans say the behavior may raise concerns, but it’s not impeachable. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham calls the whole inquiry “BS.”

The result is a mishmash of GOP commentary spilling from Capitol Hill as impeachment hearings push into the public realm this coming week.

“It’s not good,” said veteran GOP strategist Alex Conant. “Normally you want to establish the facts, get them out on their own terms and build a message around that strategy. They’re not doing any of that.”

As far back as mid-October, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., gathered his GOP colleagues in private and offered them advice on the impeachment inquiry.

McConnell told Republican senators their best bet was to calibrate their own message about the inquiry to fit their political situation, according to two people familiar with the private meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door session.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. says the president did nothing wrong on his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnkiy, and Trump’s top allies in the House, including Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on a committee conducting the impeachment inquiry, are leading the daily arguments against

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the Democrats.

Jordan is seen as the “chief messenger” for Republicans, said one senior House GOP aide who was not authorized to publicly discuss the strategy and spoke on condition of anonymity.

According to a White House rough transcript of the call, Trump was withholding military aid because he wanted Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.

Few Republicans lawmakers are willing to say that the call was “perfect” or that there was “no quid pro quo,” as Trump insists.

“There are perfectly appropriate quid pro quos and there are inappropriate quid pro quos,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “Just saying that there is a quid pro quo, at least based on my analysis of the evidence that I’ve seen so far, is a red herring.”