Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan: The evidence against Trump is overwhelming

When people ask me what the mood is in DC these days, the only word I can come up with is ‘surreal’. Everyone in this town — including almost all the Republican senators — knows Trump is guilty as charged over Ukraine, and then some. The evidence is overwhelming. And seeking to get a foreign power’s help in a domestic election is such a textbook case for impeachment — the Founding Fathers were obsessed with foreign meddling — it really should be over by Christmas. It won’t be because of Roy Cohn.

That legendary lawyer had a simple technique whenever his clients, Fred and Donald Trump, were sued. He would sue back. And Trump has a simple technique when accused of anything: immediately accuse the accuser of the exact same thing. His response to Hillary Clinton accusing him of being a puppet for Putin in the last debate in 2016 was an instinctual and reflexive ‘you’re the puppet’. When that fails, he simply instructs others not to believe what they see with their own eyes.

So when it emerged that the FBI had investigated the Russian operatives close to the Trump campaign in 2016, Trump described it as a deep-state Democratic ‘coup’. When the independent report came out last week exonerating the FBI from the partisan charge, Trump declared the report actually confirmed it. I mean, why not? When the edited transcript of his call to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, showed a direct quid pro quo, Trump described the call as ‘perfect’. Again, why not? When an impeachment inquiry revealed Trump’s obstruction of justice, Trump in response barred any of his associates from testifying, thereby obstructing justice. After a while, it all becomes bleary. Which is, of course, the point. Shamelessness is a hell of a drug.

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