22 newyork| november25–december8, 2019
Sondland and his fellow plane landers insist that they
never gave credence to the conspiracy theories Giuliani and
Trump had pumped into each other’s brains and that when
they failed to disabuse their boss, they decided to placate
him. Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine,
told the House he believed the charges against Joe Biden
had “no credibility.” Still, failing to budge Giuliani or Trump,
he “therefore faced a choice: do nothing and allow this situ-
ation to fester, or try to fix it. I tried to fix it.”
A more colorful account came via a July phone call
between Sondland and Trump. Sondland held the phone
away from his ear to accommodate the president’s
famously high volume, allowing two of the staffers at his
tabletoheartheconversationinwhichTrumpdemanded
investigations. After the call, Sondland explained that
Trump “doesn’t give a shit about Ukraine” and cares only
about investigating Biden. And since Sondland did give a
shit about Ukraine, he tried to fix it—by coaxing the
Ukrainians to produce the investigations.
The testimony of figures like Volker and Sondland
makes it easy to see how their complicity came to feel, to
them, like something close to idealism. The value that was
being sacrificed (the sanctity of American domestic poli-
tics) was distant, while the value being honored (Ukraine’s
security) was near. The president’s paranoia was fixed;
working around it was the only choice. What they seem
loath to acknowledge, to others or even to themselves, is
that their cooperation may have constrained Trump’s
abuses of power but, more important, enabled those
abuses. Trump is an amateur who needs experts to help
him consolidate control of a party and a government that
initially resisted him. If nobody were there to land the
planes for him, Trump’s presidency might have already
crashed and burned. Instead, it is quite possibly on course
to continue for another five years.
Yet the hearings have produced another category of
bureaucrat, who neither relished Trump’s abnormal style
nor worked around it. These are the conscientious objec-
tors. Marie Yovanovitch, a veteran diplomat, was smeared
by Giuliani and his Ukrainian allies for having pushed
reform in the country. She asked Sondland what to do. His
advice, according to Yovanovitch, was unsurprising for any-
body familiar with his thought patterns: He urged her to
tweet fulsome praise for Trump. Yovanovitch demurred,
later explaining that such an act would have compromised
the nonpartisanship that is drilled into her profession.
Trump fired her shortly thereafter.
Diplomacy is a field in which Yovanovitch invested her
life, while Sondland was a tourist on hiatus from a lucrative
business to which he could return anytime. Still, despite
having so much more to lose, Yovanovitch was willing to
risk her post over principle, an option Sondland appears to
have never considered.
Yovanovitch is not alone. The bureaucracy has pro-
duced a handful of other conscientious objectors who
refused to carry out Trump’s corruption of institutions
they had labored to sustain—like Fiona Hill, David
Holmes, and Alexander Vindman. Impeachment has
pushed out into the open a struggle that has been ongoing
within the government at every level for three years, a
divide along lines of character as much as ideology.
Impeachment is a moral X-ray of the U.S. government.
We are now seeing who facilitates Trump’s abuses of
power and who will stand up to stop them. ■articulating an ethos that has played an outsize role in the
Trump era: that of the functionary who approves of neither
Trump’s goals nor his methods but accommodates them in
the name of staving off chaos. This type’s sole objective is
to “land the plane,” to use a metaphor employed by former
deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, perhaps the pur-
est emblem of the bureaucratic tribe. (Pleading with
Trump last year to let him oversee the Mueller investiga-
tion to its end, Rosenstein promised, “I give the investiga-
tion credibility. I can land the plane.”)
Plane landers tend to have conventionally conservative
beliefs. Sondland is typical. Initially, he supported pre-
sumptive front-runner Jeb Bush in the primary, and, dur-
ingthegeneralelectionwhenTrumpappeareddoomed,
he registered his opposition to Trump’s attack on the Gold
Star parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan by refusing to take
part in a fund-raiser. Trump’s victory seemed to alleviate
Sondland’s ethical objections, though. He donated $1 mil-
lion to Trump’s inaugural committee and in return
secured an ambassadorship to the E.U. While Ukraine lay
outside his formal portfolio, his pliability made him an
ideal vessel for Trump.
It’snotasthoughSondlandlikedtheideaofshaking
downUkrainefordirt onJoeBidenandhisfamily. Plane
landersingeneral wouldprefernottobreaklawsorinflict
gratuitoussufferingoncivilians,thoughthey sometimes
findit necessary to doso,andwhilethey are frequenttargets
ofthepresident’s most unhingeddiatribes,they uniformly
re fusetorespondinkind.Trumptweetedanimage of
Rosenstein(amongmany others)behindbars.He berated
HomelandSecuritySecretaryKirstjenNielseninfrontof
theCabinetforroughlyhalfanhour. He screamedat chief
ofstaff JohnKellysoloudlyhecouldbeheard throughthe
closeddoorsof theOvalOffice.HoweverunhingedTrump’s
behavior, it seemsonlytodeepentheplanelanders’convic-
tionthatthey must continueworkingfromtheinside.
Thediligent,grimacingfunctionariescomplementthe
coreoftrue-believingfanaticsTrumphasalsoattracted.
Intheirownways,StephenMiller,RudyGiuliani,Michael
Anton,andWilliamBarrareexamplesofcore Trumpists.
Whetherthey respectTrumppersonallyornot,theirethos
canbeemblematizedwithanotheraviationmetaphor:the
“Flight 93 election,” a phraseformernational-security
adviserAntonusedina widelyread 2016 essay. Theplane
wasthecountry, thehijackerswere theDemocrats,and
conservativesfacedthechoiceoflaunchinga risky fightto
thedeathbyelectingTrumporacceptingcertaindestruc-
tionintheformofa Hillary Clintonpresidency.
Barr,whowaswidelyconsidereda pallidEstablishmen-
tarianwhennominatedforattorneygeneral,is themost
surprisinglygenuineTrumpistintheadministration.In a
pairofrecentspeeches,oneat NotreDameandtheotherto
theFederalistSociety,BarrdepictedTrumpasa bulwark
againsta totalitarianoppositionthat is “engagedinthesys-
tematicshreddingof normsandtheunderminingof therule
of law” andinspiredbya “holymission... tousethecoercive
poweroftheStatetoremakemanandsocietyintheirown
image,accordingtoanabstractidealofperfection.”And
Giuliani,themayorturned“cybersecurityconsultant,” was
drawnintothemurky worldof Rus conspiracytheo-
riesthatcast Trumpasthevictim ernationalcabal
ofJusticeDepartmentdeepstatersandUkrainianreform-
erswhowereplottingtoframeRussiaforstealingthe 2016
electionandhandHunterBidena no-showjob.
intelligencer
The Trump
TallyAfter five
days of
hearings,
Trump had
posted
“fake”
8 times
“witch
hunt”
6 times
“hoax”
5 times
“corrupt”
4 times
“phony”
2 times