Plotted together on a timeline, the Ukraine and Russia stories are even more intimately connected than they might seem. In late March, Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued his report, which found no evidence of the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russia. Throughout the spring of 2019, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, made several foreign trips in pursuit of two unproven allegations: first, that Ukraine was the site of the DNC hacks, and second, that former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden were guilty of self-dealing in Ukraine.

By the end of the day on July 24, the day that Mueller testified to two House committees, it was clear there was no appetite for impeachment among Democratic leaders. If there was ever a moment for the White House to declare victory and move on, this was it. Instead, Trump called Zelensky the next day, and pressured him to investigate both the hacking and the Bidens. A few weeks later, according to The New York Times, he pushed Australia’s prime minister for information he hoped would discredit the Mueller probe.

Gilad Edelman: Authenticity just means faking it well

Trump’s troubles stem from a temperamental aversion to displeasing information, and an inability to sort reliable sources from bad ones. He shows notable lack of interest in his official briefing materials, which have been shrunk down to minimal form. He eagerly consumes conspiracy theories and humbug, though. Former Chief of Staff John Kelly attempted to keep bogus information away from Trump, but his successor, Mick Mulvaney, wants to let Trump be Trump—even, apparently, if that includes taking up debunked nonsense.

Trump has at his command the full information-gathering capabilities of the U.S. government, perhaps the most powerful data operation in world history. The intelligence community is not infallible, with several notable failures in recent memory, but it’s far better than the alternative: Giuliani’s credulous, harebrained solo investigations. Because Trump never accepted the reality of Russian interference despite the unanimous judgment of his own experts, he was also unable to grasp the danger in asking Zelensky to do him a “favor.” Nor did the Mueller experience teach him the dangers of attempting a cover-up.

The paradox is that the stubbornness Trump shows when he refuses to grapple with new information is tightly related to his success as a politician. During the 2016 presidential race, the search by some pundits for a “Trump pivot,” when the candidate would drop his bigoted and wild-eyed rhetoric and adopt a more somber tone, became a running joke. Trump never pivoted, because he was constitutionally incapable of it. But his consistency contributed to an appearance of authenticity that his supporters love, even though, as Gilad Edelman recently wrote, he is “an inveterate fabricator born to fabulous wealth who poses as the self-made tribune of the working class.” Obstinacy helped Trump succeed in 2016, but it threatens to cut him down in 2019.