George T. Conway: Unfit for office

When asked about his discussions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for example, he denied that he had tried to muscle Zelensky into investigating Joe Biden and his family. Then he admitted it. “The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place, was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption [sic] already in the Ukraine.”

Trump’s White House released a summary—it would be too much to call it a transcript—of his conversation with Zelensky, which did not help, since it confirmed that Trump had pressured Zelensky, even to the point of linking his request to military aid for Ukraine. (And remember, this is what the White House thought was the best version.) When a reporter later asked point-blank what Trump thought the Ukrainians should do, Trump said plainly, “They should investigate the Bidens.”

Trump could argue that the record is incomplete, or that he was misunderstood. He could argue, as he initially tried to do, that he can’t be impeached for a single phone call.

Even granting that dubious claim, however, it’s a matter of public record that there’s nothing singular about his obsession with the Bidens. (As Ian Fleming wrote in Goldfinger, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.) On the South Lawn last week, Trump said, “China should start an investigation into the Bidens.” This is not a difficult sentence to parse. The president of the United States asked an authoritarian power to investigate his political opponent. This one statement alone is impeachable.

Trump and nuance are complete strangers to each other, but that didn’t stop the president’s enablers from claiming that Trump was kidding, that he had to be kidding, because obviously, any president with a lick of sense wouldn’t incriminate himself. Trump’s courtiers argued, in effect, that it would indeed be a gross abuse of power for the president to ask China to investigate Biden, and therefore the president could not possibly have been asking China to investigate Biden. QED.

Adam Serwer: The mad king’s enablers

But what about witness intimidation, or violations of federal law that’s meant to protect whistle-blowers? How about inciting violence against the constitutional order of the United States itself? Only a fool would admit to such offenses, or even hint at thinking about committing them. And yet Trump has admitted to all of these things.

The logical conclusion is not that Trump is innocent, but that Trump is a fool.

….In addition, I want to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION, but also the person who illegally gave this information, which was largely incorrect, to the “Whistleblower.” Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 29, 2019

Here is Trump trying to out the whistle-blower while accusing anyone who provided material about the whistle-blower’s complaint of “spying” on him, and warning of “consequences.”