16 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER2, 2019
D E A R LYD EPARTED
FIVEFRIENDS
O
ne recent Wednesday, the lunch-
time patrons of Marea, on Cen-
tral Park South, had the opportunity
to do four double takes in a row, as
Cynthia Nixon, Christine Baranski,
Glenn Close, and Whoopi Goldberg
swanned in, one by one, and sat at
a corner booth. It was a reunion of
sorts, or, as Nixon called it, “a bitter-
sweet treat.” Five years ago on that day,
the four had gathered at the restau-
rant to celebrate with the director Mike
Nichols on his eighty-third birthday.
It turned out to be his last: he died
two weeks later, after a heart attack.
“We were sitting just there,” Baranski
said, pointing. “It was the four ladies
of 1984.”
She was referring to the year that
Baranski, Close, and Nixon starred in
the Tom Stoppard comedy “The Real
Thing,” which Nichols directed on
Broadway. By then, he was well into
his career as a hitmaker. “I always said
that that production was like taking
the Concorde to Paris,” Baranski said.
They traded stories of directorial
miracles. “We were having trouble with
the second act,” Close recalled, “and he
came in one morning and said, ‘I know
the problem: the furniture’s in the
wrong place.’ We rearranged the fur-
niture, and everything fell into place.”
At another rehearsal, she went on,
“Mike said, ‘If you ever get lost, drown
in each other’s eyes.’”
Nixon, who turned eighteen that
year, remembered one of Close’s scenes
in “The Real Thing,” in which her hus-
band roots out an affair that she’s been
having. “Mike had her eat a candy bar,”
Nixon said, “so that by the time she re-
alizes she’s caught she’s got a mouth
full of chocolate. She’s trying to feel
guilty, but she’s not, really. So it’s this
great metaphor—this delicious candy.”
“He had that wonderful ability to
see what wasn’t there,” Goldberg said.
While “The Real Thing” was playing,
Goldberg, who was not then well
known, was doing a solo show in Chel-
sea, and Nichols went to see it. One of
her characters was a dope fiend who
visits the Anne Frank House. “He came
backstage, and he was weeping,” Gold-
berg recalled, then broke into a sotto-
voce Nichols impression. “He said, ‘I
was on the last boat out of Germany
when I was a child, and so this story
of yours took me to places that I hadn’t
thought about in a long time.’” H e
offered to bring Goldberg’s show to
Broadway—a gamble that would launch
her to stardom. “I said, ‘I should tell
Glenn Close, Christine Baranski,
Cynthia Nixon, and Whoopi Goldberg
to pressure Ukraine intensified, Pompeo
had failed to stand by the U.S. Ambas-
sador there, Marie Yovanovitch, whom
Trump fired in May. (Pompeo has said
that she was not fired for “a nefarious
purpose.”) Sondland provided new ev-
idence—excerpts from four e-mails that
he wrote to Pompeo and others between
July and September—which showed
that he kept Pompeo updated on the
back-channel operation. Beginning in
July, the Administration withheld hun-
dreds of millions of dollars in congres-
sionally approved military aid to Ukraine.
Several diplomats and N.S.C. officials
have testified in the inquiry that the
suspension was designed to coerce Ze-
lensky; Sondland’s e-mail excerpts sug-
gest that Pompeo may have been briefed
on this part of the pressure campaign.
(A State Department spokesperson said
that it was “flat-out false” to suggest that
Sondland had told Pompeo that Trump
had linked the aid to investigations.)
Sondland also testified about Pence’s
role—in particular, about a meeting that
he and Pence had with Zelensky on
September 1st, in Warsaw. At the time,
Pence told reporters that the aid was
being held up because of “great con-
cerns” that he and Trump had about “is-
sues of corruption,” but he offered no
specifics. Pence had denied publicly that
the delay had anything to do with
Trump’s reëlection bid. Sondland’s tes-
timony undercuts that assertion; he re-
called that he “mentioned” to Pence in
Warsaw that he “had concerns that the
delay in aid had become tied to the issue
of investigations” into Trump’s domes-
tic opponents. Pence’s chief of staff has
denied that this conversation took place.
Pence and Pompeo are hardly alone
in having forged Faustian bargains with
Donald Trump, or in having gambled
that they will somehow survive his heed-
lessness and serial disloyalty. Clever
and ambitious politicians do occasion-
ally outlast complicity in Presidential
scandals. In late 1986, George Shultz
warned George H.W. Bush to stop
misleading the public about Iran-Con-
tra before he destroyed his chance to
succeed Reagan as President. Bush bris-
tled, but took the advice and lay low;
he won the White House in 1988. These
are darker times. The Republican Party,
because of its capitulation to Trump,
is headed for a moral and political ac-
counting. The President’s racketeering
scheme in Ukraine is likely to inflict
lasting damage on the reputations of
all those at high levels of his Admin-
istration who have participated or stood
by mutely.
Witness by witness, the case for
Trump’s impeachment is strengthen-
ing. Yet the political equation in Wash-
ington remains at a stalemate. If the
Democratic-controlled House does im-
peach the President, the Republican-
controlled Senate still looks set to ac-
quit him. The Ukraine dossier—and all
that it continues to reveal about Trump’s
indifference to the Constitution—seems
headed for the voters. A year from now,
we’ll know their verdict.
—Steve Coll
