Confronted by impeachment, Trump adds to the chaos

The impeachment investigation into President Donald
Trump has thrust Washington into a political crisis. And Trump keeps adding to
the chaos.
In the four weeks since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
D-Calif., launched the investigation, Trump has taken steps that have drawn
more criticism, not less, repeatedly testing the loyalty of his stalwart
Republican allies. His actions have both intensified the questions at the
center of the inquiry and opened new areas of concern.
Trump angered GOP leaders and U.S. allies by
clearing the way for Turkish attacks on Syrian Kurdish fighters, key American
partners in the fight against the Islamic State group. He brazenly announced
plans to hold next year’s Group of Seven summit at one of his own Florida
properties, prompting an outcry from ethics experts and members of both parties
that led him to reverse course late Saturday. And Trump and his advisers have
repeatedly muddied their defense on the Democratic-led impeachment, initially
denying some of the central allegations against the president only to acknowledge
them, out loud and on camera.
“It is his
persona to surround himself with chaos,” said Alice Stewart, a Republican
strategist who advised Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Chaos has indeed been a hallmark of Trump’s
presidency. Each controversy bleeds into the next — often so fast that the
public doesn’t have time to absorb the details of any one issue. Whether that
is a deliberate Trump strategy or simply the consequence of Americans electing
a highly unconventional, nonpolitician as commander in chief remains one of the
fundamental questions of his presidency.
The most pressing question now is how the cascading
controversies will impact Trump at one of his most vulnerable moments since
taking office.
Already saddled by low approval ratings, he could
face reelection with the dubious distinction of being just the third American
president ever impeached. Though conviction and removal from office by the
Republican-controlled Senate seems virtually impossible, Trump’s handling of
the coming weeks could linger with some of the voters he needs to hold in order
to win in 2020.
His response thus far has been pulled from the
standard Trump playbook : hurling deeply personal, sometimes vulgar, insults at
his opponents, questioning the legitimacy of the investigations into his
actions and distracting with other jarring decisions.
For example, there was his public call for China to
investigate baseless corruption claims against Democrat Joe Biden just days
after Democrats launched impeachment proceedings to probe Trump’s similar
request of Ukraine.
There are some signs that Trump’s words and actions
are being received differently, both in Washington and across the country, from
other points in his presidency.
Polls now show more Americans in favor of opening
the impeachment inquiry than those who are opposed, a shift since earlier this
year. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 54% of Americans approved of
the House decision to conduct an inquiry, while 44% disapproved. In a Pew poll
conducted a few weeks earlier, the public was evenly divided on the question.
A few prominent Republicans have moved in favor of
the investigation, which centers in part on whether Trump used his office for
personal political gain by asking Ukraine to investigate the unfounded
accusations against former Vice President Biden.
John Kasich, the former Republican governor of Ohio,
is among the Republicans who now back an impeachment inquiry, though he told
The Associated Press in an interview that he isn’t ready to call for Trump’s
removal from office.
“This is an extremely serious matter,” Kasich said.
“I wrestled with it for a very long time.”
Kasich was persuaded by the White House’s shifting
story on why Trump withheld $400 million in military aid for Ukraine, one of
the issues under investigation by the House.
After insisting there was no quid pro quo at play —
and allowing Republicans to use that as a rationale for opposing the
impeachment inquiry — acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said
Thursday that one of the reasons the aid was held up was that Trump wanted
Ukrainian officials to investigate a debunked conspiracy involving the
Democratic National Committee. Mulvaney later tried to back away from that
statement.
His televised news conference left some Republicans
flabbergasted. Many in the party were already reeling from Trump’s decision to
withdraw American troops from Syria, allowing Turkey to move into the country
and attack Kurdish forces aligned with Washington. Reliable Trump allies such
as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Lindsey Graham,
R-S.C., panned the president’s move as dangerous and deeply flawed.
And Mulvaney opened his news conference by
announcing another controversial decision: Trump plans to host world leaders
next year at his golf resort near Miami, putting him in position to personally
profit from his office. Some Republicans found the move difficult to defend as
well.
“I am not surprised at all that the president wanted
to hold the G-7 at Doral. Never occurred to me that he would want to do
anything different,” Stewart said. “I am surprised there’s no one in there who
would advise him against doing that.”
After two days of intense criticism for his choice
of Doral, the president tweeted late Saturday that he would begin the search
for a new site “based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational
Hostility.” In fact, the criticism had been bipartisan.
For now, the Republican frustration with Trump’s
actions over the past few weeks isn’t affecting the party’s views on the
impeachment investigation, which is opposed by the majority of GOP lawmakers
and voters.
“Republicans have already shown that they’re
compartmentalizing this,” said Brendan Buck, an adviser to former House Speaker
Paul Ryan, R-Wis. “They’re able to be very upset about Syria in the morning and
rationalize the other issues in the afternoon.”