HEAR NO EVIL

Finnish president Sauli Niinistö and Trump at a joint news conference at the White House on October 2. Photograph by Chris Somodevilla/Getty Images.

For all his short-circuiting, though, for all the evidence that the last remaining synapse in his brain, tangled up in ground beef and stolen office supplies, is flashing a warning signal that he’s in peril, it’s still obvious that Trump believes he’s done nothing wrong. We know this because not only is he not trying to cover up his crimes—only panicked White House staffers tried to do that—he’s providing investigators with evidence—and continuing to openly commit the same crimes that got him here in the first place. Believing it would clear his name, he released a rough transcript of his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and continues to labor under the assumption that it proves his innocence, despite the fact that it’s a less subtle version of O.J. Simpson’s If I Did It, if If I Did It included Polaroids of Simpson standing over the bodies holding the murder weapon. One day after Democrats launched an official impeachment inquiry, he sat next to Zelensky at the United Nations and told reporters the Ukrainian president must do “whatever he can do in terms of corruption,” and then laid out all the (thoroughly debunked) reasons why Biden is corrupt. A week later, he stood on the South Lawn of the White House and told the press that not only should Zelensky investigate the Bidens, but China should too. Driving home that Beijing’s efforts would be rewarded, in one of those nifty quid pro quo-type deals, his call for China to help smear one of his rivals came literal seconds after commenting, of trade war negotiations: “I have a lot of options on China, but if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.” (Making it abundantly clear what Trump was getting at, an ally informed Chinese government officials, “Investigating corruption is an easy way to earn goodwill with Trump.”) Then there was the night he just came out and said it, tweeting “As the President of the United States, I have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, CORRUPTION, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other Countries to help us out!”

He believes these things because he’s two parts crazy, one part stupid, but also because he’s been engaging in corruption his entire life, to the point that it’s second nature. It’s not so much that he doesn’t understand the difference between right and wrong, it’s that corruption is his first instinct, and the only course of action in his mind. His brain, like a compromised immune system, was defenseless against the infection that is Rudy Giuliani and the bottom-feeding, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about the Bidens. The other issue is that, having run for office basically as a ratings play, Trump moved into the White House with a toddler’s idea of what it actually means to be president, just like he had a toddler’s idea of what it meant to be a rich person (gold everything) and played that out. Of course he was going to use the full weight of the federal government to go after insane rumors about his political rival that his personal lawyer came across on a 4chan message board. Of course he thinks he can ask other governments to investigate his enemies. He will never not think this. He wasn’t joking when he asked Russia to meddle in the U.S. election, or when he scoffed at George Stephanopoulos, asking if he’d inform the FBI if another country came to him with dirt on an opponent. One, because he has the sense of humor of a litter box, and two, the part about him being not smart, not sane, and having the morals of Don Jr.’s undercarriage. Likely, he believes it’s his “right” as president to have people killed if he thought it’d help his chances in Ohio and will probably tell a fictional story about this at his next rally. (“They came to me and they said, ‘Sir, would you like us to take him out?’ ”)

It’s not so much that he doesn’t understand the difference between right and wrong, it’s that corruption is his first instinct, and the only course of action in his mind.

What comes next? As the White House made clear in early October, the administration has zero plans to cooperate with the House investigation, instructing key witnesses not to appear for interviews and calling the whole thing an “illegitimate” and “partisan” attempt to “overturn the results of the 2016 election.” (It feels beside the point to note that the White House seems to believe an inquiry is the same thing as being impeached and removed from office, or that the latter would result in Hillary Clinton becoming president.) Democrats responded by warning that failure to comply with their requests for information will be “regarded as further evidence of obstruction,” which itself could be the basis for an article of impeachment, but it’s clear that Trump and Co. don’t care. While we’d never accuse the presidential brain trust of having a plan—Jared “You should totally fire James Comey, Dems will love it!” Kushner is, after all, advising his father-in-law on the matter—the strategy sure sounds like it boils down to stonewalling Congress and stepping up the rantings, ravings, and deranged gibberish of a man whose title should probably be changed from commander in chief to chairman and CEO of the Shithouse Mouse Brigade. One day he suggested that Big Pharma might be behind the impeachment push; next month, it’ll be the cast of Morning Joe, working together with the New York Times and Rosie O’Donnell, underwritten by Denmark. “I wasn’t going to talk about the obstructionist Dems who are trying to illegally seize the White House,” he’ll tell the crowd at a rally in Florida or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. “They said, ‘Talk about the best economy ever. Don’t talk about Schifty Schiff and Nervous Nancy.’ How about it folks? Do you think the kids watching at home should hear about how Schiff paid a migrant caravan to infiltrate the CIA and file a whistle-blower complaint against me?”

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