Not much is funny these days as the American republic trudges towards the gallows, prodded along by a half-mad president. Just yesterday, he suggested it's perfectly fine to abandon the Kurds because "they didn't help us with Normandy." He also brushed aside concerns that the 11,000 ISIS fighters the Kurds have detained might escape when they're attacked by Turkey: "Well, they're going to be escaping to Europe," said the United States president. It almost sounds like a plan. He called for a member of the House of Representatives to be impeached, which is not a thing. He also boasted about stopping the Obama administration's "ridiculous attack" on incandescent lightbulbs, which they tried to phase out in favor of more energy-efficient options. "You do look better with incandescent," he said, talking about himself.

But Donald Trump's main offenses in recent times have been against the Constitution. His White House is stonewalling the lawful functions of Congress, which is charged with providing oversight of the Executive Branch in our system. They are refusing to comply with subpoenas and blocking witnesses from testifying in Trump's latest assault on the separation of powers. More than that, though, he has now taken to inviting foreign governments to interfere in an American presidential election—yet another case in which he has subjugated the national interest to his personal political (and financial) ones. There's China, but more pressingly, there is Ukraine.



Our president made a Beautiful, Perfect Call to the President of Ukraine. Win McNamee Getty Images

Thanks to texts between diplomats involved in the fiasco which one participant dropped off for Congress—and now the public—to examine, we know the Trumpists made the quid pro quo quite clear: in order for Ukraine to get what it needed (a bilateral meeting with the American president and military aid for its struggle against Russian aggression), they'd need to give Trump what he personally wanted (investigations into Joe Biden and the 2016 election). This is the established record, even if Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky came out today with a sad denial that he was strong-armed and, in a strange coincidence, an announcement that he'd be doing exactly what Trump wants and opening an investigation into whether it was actually Ukraine that interfered in 2016. You'll notice this is an outcome Russia might like.



Anyway, the fun part of all this is the president's habit of occasionally trying to very ham-fistedly drag others, particularly Vice President Mike Pence, into the fiasco. Clearly, Trump wants everyone around him to be deeply invested in getting him off. The best way to ensure that is to make it so that getting themselves off means getting him off. (That is, until he inevitably backstabs them to save himself.) At one point, Trump just out and said, "I think you should ask for Vice President Pence’s conversation, because he had a couple of conversations also." This is hilarious because they all deserve each other. It's also hilarious because this has forced Pence to do some very inept dodging, like when he was pressed by NBC reporter Vaughn Hillyard Wednesday.

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Pence is trying as hard as he can not to go down with the ship. pic.twitter.com/jrA8aoQSfb — Matt Rogers 🗳 (@Politidope) October 10, 2019

Wow! This guy sounds pretty gosh darned innocent! This is like one of those videos where a dog owner comes home to some disaster in the kitchen and questions the dog on-camera about who did it. "I never discussed, uh, the issue of, uh, the issue of the Bidens with President Zelensky, and, uh..." This comes off a lot like that interview Paul Manafort did during the campaign, another bit of telegraphed corruption that seems to have vanished down the memory hole, buried by 10,000 subsequent scandals.

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Wow! I'm sure convinced that Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with Russian oligarchs. As a reminder, Manafort was Trump's campaign chairman. Now he is in prison for a slate of crimes related to his shady work on behalf of pro-Russian interests in Ukraine. Oh, and here's a New York Times headline from May 2018: "Ukraine, Seeking U.S. Missiles, Halted Cooperation With Mueller Investigation." The missiles in question are the same Javelin anti-tank weapons that Zelensky again asked for in that infamous phone call this July, only for Trump to respond that he needed a "favor."

And then we just learned that in 2017, Trump tried to get a top aide—then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—to lean on the Department of Justice to drop a case against one of Rudy Giuliani's clients. It's almost like the president has no respect for the rule of law or an independent system of justice. No wonder he tried to force Ukraine to investigate a political opponent. He believes the powers of his public office are to be used for the personal benefit of himself and, when it's convenient, his associates who participate in his enterprise. He will continue to flout the law until we as a people rise to the moment and use the legal and political processes still at our disposal to stop him. Otherwise, we are set to venture to a very dark and dangerous place indeed.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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