Impeachment Week 2: Our Stable Genius is Sinking

Donald Trump must go.

It became painfully apparent this week that Trump is no longer, if he ever was, qualified for office when he insinuated that, should he be removed through impeachment, a Civil War would follow. In his words…

“…If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Pastor Robert Jeffress, @FoxNews”

He also tweeted, “As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP…”

Clearly the president doesn’t understand that impeachment is a process allowed under our Constitution for situations exactly like this. He is a despot who doesn’t understand or care about the United States Constitution. He believes he is the state and that it is treasonous to say otherwise.

Trump doesn’t even understand it isn’t the Democrats who control his fate. Should he be removed from office, the Democrats won’t actually pull that trigger; the Democrats could indict him, but the trial would be held in the Senate with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding. The Republican-dominated Senate would vote on whether to remove him. So the tweets show a fundamental misunderstanding of how our process works—while displaying misplaced anger toward the process.

Trump’s tweets reveal something fundamentally unsound about him: He would declare war on Republicans and Democrats if removed from office. That would make him the enemy of the people, and on that basis alone he should be removed from office.

But Donald Trump will not go gently into that good night. He resembles a trumpeting mammoth that’s slowly sinking into the depths of the Le Brea Tar Pits.

Thus we enter the second week of the impeachment inquiry. The more the tar consumes him, the more Trump screams, summoning others of his species who are trying to save him without jumping into the muck themselves.

As Monday rolled around Newt Gingrich, the man who led the impeachment of Bill Clinton over an affair while he himself was having one, called the impeachment inquiry a “legislative coup d’etat.” Sycophantic Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Lindsey Graham fell in line. Kellyanne Conway, in a horrendous shitshow that was an abomination even by her standards, had appeared last Friday on the White House driveway to defend the president. She told one reporter he didn’t know how to read, ignored others, told us all that Trump was laughing at the impeachment and claimed Nancy Pelosi was intimidated by the men in Congress into asking for the impeachment inquiry. Conway’s scorched-earth policy angered some, but as she left an obsequious reporter thanked her for spending time with the press.

As Chip says in Animal House, “Thank you, sir. May I have another?”

To recap: Trump raised the spectre of Civil War, condemned the Democrats for an impeachment that hasn’t occurred yet—oh, and suggest that Congressman Adam Schiff is a treasonous fraud—before lunch on Monday. Some of us hadn’t finished our morning coffee.

By the afternoon, we all knew Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It also came to light that Trump had urged Australia’s Prime Minister to help Attorney General William Barr review the origins of the Russia Investigation. House Democrats subpoenaed Rudy Giuliani while cries for disbarring him grew louder. And Rep. Chris Collins of New York, the first sitting congressman to back Trump’s bid for the White House, resigned ahead of pleading guilty in a federal insider trading case.

This isn’t a presidential administration so much as it is a band of snot-nosed kindergarten criminals who like to eat paste and urinate in their pull-ups.

Yesterday, after a couple of days of marinating in the impeachment inquiry, Trump opened up in a pool spray, threatening all hell on those who opposed him. He blamed the impeachment inquiry for the tumbling stock market, tweeted out how the “Do Nothing Democrats” are wasting time and energy on “BULLSHIT” and again tried to accuse Congressman Adam Schiff of treason. He also compared Schiff to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and said “that guy couldn’t carry his blank strap.”

He had no problem tweeting a curse word but didn’t want to say the word jockstrap.

“He went off like a roman candle,” one reporter said upon seeing video of the pool spray. Many of the press poolers left the Oval Office shaking their heads. No wonder: The president was scheduled for a “two-by-two” press conference with the president of Finland at 2 o’clock p.m., and no one knew what to expect.

President Sauli Niinisto opened by saying he’d spent some down time in D.C. visiting local museums. He was overwhelmed by the history of our democracy, he said, and hoped Trump would keep it going. Trump looked askance at the Finnish president with a smirk and brushed it off. After that, we were off to the races.

The usual protocol for such events is that a reporter from the U.S. gets to ask a question of each president and then a Finnish reporter does the same. A second U.S. reporter then steps up and the presidents end with a foreign reporter. That didn’t happen yesterday because Donald Trump picked Jeff Mason from Reuters to ask a question. It was a simple question. Mason just wanted to know what Trump had in mind when he called the Ukraine: “Mr. President, can you just make clear right now what did you or what do you want President Zelensky to do regarding Joe and Hunter Biden?”

That was all it took. Trump mentioned Rudy Giuliani. He mentioned delaying aide to Ukraine because “why are we the only ones that give the big money to the Ukraine?” He accused Schiff of having a mental breakdown. He said treason was lying before the U.S. great institutions. He called Biden corrupt. He called the press corrupt. He called the press fake.

He became insistent that Mason ask a question of the Finnish president.

He said Biden and his son were “stone cold crooked.”

No one could decipher what in the hell Trump was actually trying to say. But there was no doubt the question hadn’t been answered.

Trump stormed off the stage after his exchange with Mason. I had my hand up most of the afternoon and shouted, “Will you fire the whistleblower if you find out who it is?” He sneered at me, but he didn’t answer. Then he was gone.

In short, the entire event was chaos in a blender set on puree.

Afterward Jonathan Karl from ABC, Mason, Jim Acosta and myself found each other trying to exit the East Room.

“Which one of us is corrupt and which one of us is fake?” Karl mused.

Mason, a quiet but determined man, merely smiled. “I am really surprised he didn’t have an answer to that question,” He said.

There was no senior White House communications staff at the afternoon press conference. Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham is rarely seen at all in the White House these days. Deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley was out on the driveway for the Kellyanne Conway Friday afternoon circus—but he’s been missing in action as well.

The truth is this administration is frightened. And by bringing up Civil War, calling his opponents crooked without any evidence, attacking the press even more viciously than before and calling an impeachment a coup, Trump has done more damage to himself than the hapless Democrats could ever do.

It’s obvious that he is trying to get Attorney General William Barr to look into the Mueller investigation and punish those who spent their time investigating what happened in the 2016 election. Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Pompeo, A.G. Barr, Giuliani and Trump have all been mentioned in the latest scandal. Where this leads is still very much up in the air—but as this week has shown, it will not be an easy journey, or a peaceful one.

Today Trump, after saying he’d spoken with Sen. McConnell, gave another of his chopper talks before heading to Florida for an appearance. He seemed more chipper than he had all week. Perhaps McConnell had told him not to worry, because for about 15 minutes he spoke with reporters, not answering my question about whether he’d resign or addressing whether he’d like to see the whistleblower fired. He did tell me that he can continue to work with Congress, but didn’t say how.

But the bombshell came when he said China should be investigating Biden too. In Trump’s mind, this might have mitigated his attempts to ask Ukraine for help. But it struck a different chord outside of the White House.

“You should just ask him which countries he didn’t ask to help him investigate Biden,” I was told by a fellow reporter.

In speaking with GOP staffers and representatives on the Hill, one said that “The Civil War tweet is a tipping point for some, but not all.” While several GOP senators may actually vote to remove Trump, most believe that it will be Mitch McConnell who could decide Trump’s fate. “If McConnell votes for removal,” I was told, “then it’s over.”

The question remains if McConnell will try to pull the president out of the political tar pit of his own making or let him sink.

Either way, it’s going to get messy.