On Wednesday, to his credit, President Trump released a rough transcript of his July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He says it exonerates him of any wrongdoing. Democrats say, rather, that it reveals impeachable offenses, and they are pressing ahead with impeachment.
In truth, the only thing the transcript reveals clearly is that Trump doesn’t understand the necessary proprieties of his job. He is still treating the presidency as if it were his own business, dwelling on minor matters and wielding power to advance his own interests, rather than attending first to the national interest. That is regrettable, which is a long way from saying it should lead to impeachment.
In the phone call, he pressed Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s involvement in the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor at a time Biden’s son had a lucrative job at a Ukrainian company tied to oligarchs — a $50,000 per month stipend explicable only as a way of currying favor with, and enriching, the Biden family.
A hundred relevant and difficult questions arise. Was the Ukrainian prosecutor corrupt or was he a “very fair prosecutor” who was “treated very badly” as Trump suggested? Were Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine corrupt? Was Biden being corrupt when, as he boasted, he predicated $1 billion of U.S. aid on Ukraine firing the prosecutor? Does the whole mess deserve further investigation?
Certainly, Trump does not look good in the transcript. But since impeachment is a political process (merely dressed up to look like a judicial one), there can be a wide range of opinions as to the gravity of his offenses, if such they be. Democrats think they finally have their smoking gun, key evidence with which to convict Trump and remove him from office. But that’s been their goal all along. Their myopic destination has never been in doubt; only the route they’d take was in question. Should they go via impeachment or by the way of the 2020 election? Should they transit through Russia? Now they think it is best to go via Ukraine.
Our view is that what they have now is what they’ve always had — not a smoking gun but a loose cannon in the Oval Office. Trump is reckless and gives ammo to his opponents. He shouldn’t have spoken as he did, but that doesn’t mean what he said is obviously something for which he should be removed from office. Impeachment will stretch lugubriously into next year and the height of the election season, bespattering both the president and many others including, perhaps, the Democratic nominee. Isn’t it best to let voters decide who they want as their leader rather than ousting the one they chose in 2016?
But back to Trump’s call. He spent half the call pushing Zelensky to investigate what on Wednesday he characterized as an inquiry into “where did this witch hunt … start?” The second-biggest issue to Trump was the Biden matter, including the supposedly lamentable dismissal of Viktor Shokin, prosecutor-general, who may or may not have been closing in on Biden’s corruption. These are mostly matters important not to America but to Trump personally.
When the president is on the phone with a foreign leader, he should not speak as the head of the Republican Party. Nor as the owner of hotels. Nor yet on his own behalf at all. He should speak for the nation he leads and advance the national interest.
Trump has difficulty distinguishing between his own interests and those of the country. Different presidents will differ on what exactly best advances the national interest. But Trump didn’t even try in this Zelensky call. He instead deployed the United States’ diplomatic capital to advance a partisan political agenda.
It was always clear that Trump would have to learn on the job. The call suggests there are some things he isn’t learning at all.
