And So it Begins

Dreading it had to be done and facing the horror of what it may become, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the kraken Tuesday night.

Rather than the legendary cephalopod sea creature, this kraken took the form of two words Democrats and Republicans equally dread: “impeachment inquiry.”

Pelosi had little choice after President Donald Trump’s latest foray into dirty politics. To recap: At the beginning of the week a whistleblower came forward voicing concerns about the president using his office in multiple instances to communicate with a foreign leader for his own private gain. In a story whose plotline evolves every time Trump speaks about it, he withheld congressionally approved aid to Ukraine either because he wanted to make sure Europe paid its fair share—which makes no sense—or, more likely, because he was trying to intimidate the Ukrainian government into providing damaging information on perceived 2020 presidential rival Joe Biden.

On Wednesday, the White House released information about the telephone call at the center of the maelstrom. Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, whose own fidelity to truth is virtually nonexistent, claimed the White House was releasing a “transcript” of the call between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump that was supposed to exonerate our president. There were, of course, several problems with the press secretary’s statement. The White House didn’t release a transcript, but a five-page memo condensed from a 30-minute conversation. In fact, the front page of the memo cautions against calling it a transcript. But even this document shows in alarming detail how Trump said, “I would like you to do us a favor…”

It’s as if Trump were Don Corleone claiming he’d make Zelensky an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Congressman Adam Schiff, paraphrasing the transcript in a tweet, pointed out that it “reads like a classic mob shakedown: We do a lot for Ukraine… There’s not much reciprocity… I have a favor to ask… Investigate my opponent… My people will be in touch…” Trump even said he’d send his consigliere Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine if needed and offered the assistance of the U.S. Attorney General to investigate Biden. You had to wonder if Giuliani was going to carry a severed horse head with him and stick it in Zelensky’s bed.

It’s hard to believe any presidential administration would release information that made them look this bad, but the Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight wasn’t done. By Wednesday mid-morning the White House had emailed its talking points on the latest scandal—not to the Republicans, but to Democrats, who promptly tweeted it all out. The White House compounded their stupidity by demanding the email be recalled.

Trump’s latest fiasco shows the world, again, what a fool we have for a president. More important, the memo shows how incredibly bad he is at covering his tracks.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” Trump told Zelensky, according to the memo. Trump also said, “I would like to have the attorney general call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

The Republicans are hoping they can fashion an albatross around Biden’s neck as they did with Hillary Clinton and her emails. (His fixation on Biden is interesting since many Democrats are beginning to think the aging Octogenarian might not be the Democratic nominee after all.) Whether it does the same to his own is questionable. Trump has the survival instincts of a New York City sewer rat, and he is just as nasty and diseased.

Two scenarios: Pelosi’s call for an impeachment inquiry brings all of the rats following the Donald out into the open, where they may be easily rounded up—or the impeachment inquiry blows up in her face and costs the Democrats the 2020 election. At this point, either is possible.

Michael Zeldin, the CNN legal and political analyst who served in the DOJ for many years, notes that an impeachment inquiry gives Congress broader powers and a stronger hand for investigating Trump, though he also says it may not mean we’ll get answers any time soon. “Donald Trump’s instincts are to fight, so this could be very protracted,” he cautioned. A lengthy legal battle—the Watergate hearings were also protracted—is a double-edged sword for both sides.

The president’s base will surely be energized to support him, but the same could be said for those who oppose him. In a country so deeply divided, the only sure bet is that an impeachment inquiry will not bring the country together, holding hands and singing “Kumbaya.”

By Wednesday afternoon Trump was in full froth, calling those who dared to question him “corrupt” and vowing vengeance against those who fail to show him fealty. Late in the afternoon he showed up for a news conference at the United Nations in New York, where he tried to turn the tables on the “so-called” whistle blower and claimed the Democrats were engaged in a new “witch hunt.” It was here that reporters saw a different Trump, and it perhaps offered us the first glimpse of a crack in Trump’s armor and how the impeachment inquiry will progress.

He was subdued.

Trump repeated many of the talking points the White House accidentally sent to the Democrats, which made his arguments seem more feeble.

But make no mistake about it: Trump couldn’t hide. He couldn’t disguise it. He couldn’t fake it. He couldn’t bluster his way beyond it. He couldn’t even garner enough energy to fight it. Donald Trump is scared.

His whining against the Democrats and the new “hoax” couldn’t keep the kraken from his door.
He waved his hands and asked, “Impeachment for what?” In that moment his soul was laid bare. His inability to comprehend the sea in which he is drowning was never more clear.

Trump really doesn’t know why the impeachment inquiry is taking place. His moves, his actions and his words continue to drown him and he doesn’t get it. Perhaps he never did.

To him, he had a “perfect” phone conversation, and he released the memo from the phone call with Zelensky because the memo showed his greatness and his innocence. He stood before reporters befuddled, spending 20 minutes reciting his greatest hits about immigration, the economy and China, begging the press corps for questions on the economy and his actions at the United Nations.

He then made the mistake of calling on Eamon Javers from CNBC to ask the first question. Javers hit Trump square in the jaw with a question about Ukraine, his telephone call and the prospect of a US president calling a foreign leader to ask for help in digging up dirt on a political rival.

Trump couldn’t answer it and turned the podium over to Mike Pompeo and Steve Mnuchin before taking a business question he also couldn’t answer from a Fox business reporter and finishing up with a question from a Venezuelan reporter. Then he left the stage—not with a bang but with a whimper.

He continues to push a fake scandal regarding Biden, his son and the Democrats, but make no mistake: Trump sees the writing on the wall. He pushed hard against an impeachment inquiry because he was alive during the Nixon and Clinton eras and knows how consuming those efforts were—and the broad range of powers Congress will have in trying to seek answers.

Late in the afternoon, Manu Raju from CNN reported that Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley said the whistleblower complaint “reinforces our concerns” about Trump and that the complaint was very well done. A majority of the House backed the impeachment proceeding.

And now the country must face the fact our long national nightmare is far from over. You can argue about when it began, but there is no doubt we are suffering through night terrors.

Trump may or may not have crippled Biden. He may or may not have crippled himself and everyone else around him or in this country. But he will not go gentle into that good night. His instinct is to dig in and, like the old fighter who doesn’t know when to quit, he’ll keep swinging even as he’s brought to his knees.

Thursday morning, Trump tried to lie low while Pelosi tried to slow her roll, limiting the impeachment inquiry to the whistleblower incident, which was released before Joseph Maguire, acting director of National Intelligence, testified at a public hearing before the House Intelligence Committee.

Then Trump returned to the White House in his typical circus fashion. We dutifully waited on the South Lawn outside of the Oval Office. Trump departed the helicopter and made his way to well-wishers outside of the residence, and half the press corps ran the 30 yards to the other end of the rope line while half of us stayed put and wranglers said, “He’s coming back, don’t worry.”

Trump spent about five minutes with glad-handers, including one teary-eyed woman, before ducking through the residence, walking around to the Oval Office and completely avoiding the press.

I shouted as I blew him a kiss, “Hey, come on over, you know how much we love you!” He frowned.

As he walked off, thwarting any effort to respond to repeated questions about the legality of his Ukrainian telephone call, one of the wranglers looked at us and smiled. “Thanks for playing…”

“Yes, thanks for playing POTUS roulette,” John Bennett from Roll Call chuckled.

Meanwhile, the kraken unleashed by Pelosi is just getting started.