18 Time November 4, 2019
P
residenT donald Trump is supposed To
be the man who could shoot somebody in the
middle of Fifth Avenue without losing any po-
litical support. But the threat of impeachment
is constraining the President’s power in surprising ways.
As defiant witnesses provide damning testimony in the
House inquiry, Republicans are increasingly seeking
shelter from unrelated scandals. The result—a spreading
weakness in the West Wing—has driven increasingly er-
ratic behavior by Trump, according to those close to him
inside the White House and outside of government.
Examples of Trump’s diminished power aren’t hard to
find. A series of government officials have defied
the White House’s Oct. 8 edict that the Adminis-
tration would not comply with the impeachment
inquiry. Most damaging so far was the Oct. 22
testimony of acting U.S. Ambassador to Kiev
William Taylor tying Trump to the alleged quid
pro quo at the heart of the Ukraine scandal.
Amid the parade of defiance by public ser-
vants, Republican politicians are showing signs
of turning on Trump. On Oct. 19, some GOP leg-
islators sent the President a message that they
wouldn’t defend his decision to hold the next
G-7 summit at his resort in Doral, Fla., a senior
White House official says. Already angry over
Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops
from Syria, the lawmakers were taking fire on
too many fronts, they told the White House. So
Trump did what he’s rarely done as President:
he reversed himself.
It wasn’t pretty. Taking to Twitter that
night, Trump blamed “both Media & Democrat
Crazed and Irrational Hostility” for the climb
down. But it’s what he sees as a lack of Repub-
lican resolve that is really bothering him. Dur-
ing an Oct. 21 Cabinet meeting, Trump went
on a wide-ranging on-camera rant that kept
the press in the Cabinet Room for 72 minutes.
“This is a phony investigation,” Trump told
the journalists. “And Republicans have to get
tougher and fight.” After reporters were es-
corted out, Trump railed about the political
limitations he feels are being imposed on him
by those in his own party.
The exasperaTion is muTual. Many con-
gressional Republicans are tired of seeing Trump
tweet about everything except their agenda. Im-
peachment is consuming the political oxygen
in Washington, and GOP leaders are concerned
that the White House doesn’t know how to manage it, ac-
cording to several high-level Republican aides.
Trump’s own aides aren’t helping. In a jaw-dropping
press conference on Oct. 17, acting White House chief of
staff Mick Mulvaney sought to rebut Democratic accusa-
tions that Trump had improperly pressured Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch investigations
that would benefit Trump politically. Instead, Mulvaney
acknowledged that U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been
held up to press the country to cooperate with one such
probe. Mulvaney later reversed himself and denied there
was a quid pro quo.
Democrats are looking for ways to widen the rift that
such performances are opening among Republicans, and
the House inquiry is giving them plenty to work with. Tay-
lor painted a devastating portrait of U.S. foreign policy
hijacked for domestic political purposes. In a detailed 15-
page statement, he described a “highly irregular” back-
channel policy operation “guided by” Trump’s personal
lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. One member of that opera-
tion, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, told Taylor
that Trump had insisted Zelensky publicly com-
mit to investigating the Bidens and the 2016 elec-
tion before he would release $392 million in mili-
tary aid, according to Taylor’s testimony.
Taylor cited 50 years of public service, from
his time as an infantry officer with the 101st Air-
borne in Vietnam to his visit to the front lines
of Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia in July, in
welcoming the chance to comply with the House
subpoena. It was key, he said, to explain “the pro-
found importance of Ukraine” to American secu-
rity and to show why “holding up security assis-
tance for domestic political gain was ‘crazy.’ ” Four
other currently serving Trump Administration of-
ficials have complied with congressional subpoe-
nas, and more are on the way.
Will such testimony ultimately end Trump’s
hold on power? Hill Republican support for the
President may be showing signs of softness, but
20 GOP Senators would have to defect to re-
move him from office in a Senate trial. Some
93% of Republicans don’t believe Trump should
be impeached, according to an Oct. 21 poll by
the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Insti-
tute, and if those numbers hold, few if any Sen-
ate Republicans can be expected to defy their
base and likely end their political careers.
But Democrats are hoping the ongoing inquiry,
and Trump’s own missteps, will take him down,
one way or another. “Most Americans would say,
if you told a foreign leader to go investigate dirt
on my opponent, that’s bad enough,” says Repre-
sentative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat. But
with a little more than a year before the 2020 elec-
tion, voters, not Congress, may be the ones left to
limit Trump’s power. —With reporting by alana
abramson and philip ellioTT/WashingTon □TheBrief Opener
‘Holding up
security
assistance
for domestic
political gain
was “crazy.” ’
WILLIAM TAYLOR,
acting U.S. ambassador
to Ukraine, in an Oct.
statementPOLITICS
Impeachment drains
White House power
By Brian Bennett