The core of the impeachment question has always rested on a quid pro quo: Did President Trump threaten to withhold congressionally approved aid to a foreign government to harm his domestic political foe? Instead, the Democrats attempted to shift their rhetoric to christen the crime as “bribery,” and the pivot bombed fantastically.
For starters, the term “quid pro quo” is the more accurate shorthand for the allegation involved, but, more importantly, that’s the exact term that Trump used to deny such an arrangement, according to besieged Ambassador Gordon Sondland. It’s the term that Trump and his entire team have spent weeks using in their public denials, even as the evidence belies them, and it’s the term the public has on alert.
Impeachment proceedings require ample public support to result in removal from office and at least modest backing to not entirely backfire on the prosecuting party. In the constant chaos of the Trump era, the difficulty of capturing the public’s attention is only surpassed by keeping it. Given the immediate spike in public support for impeachment after the release of the July 25 call transcript between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spurred debate over a quid pro quo, clearly the term stuck, at least more than any point of two years of Mueller mania.
But the Democrats decided to rebrand to “bribery,” and Tuesday’s open-door impeachment testimony illustrated just how much the pivot weakened their case.
The term “quid pro quo” arises 16 times in the transcript of Sondland’s closed-door testimony and 20 times in Ambassador William Taylor’s. “Bribery” does not appear in one. Republicans leveraged this to their advantage.
What an image.
Ratcliffe stacks piles of testimony on his desk in the impeachment inquiry noting that nowhere in the testimony was the word “bribery” mentioned – even though that is what Dems will try to impeach Trump on.
Total savage move pic.twitter.com/N4nryUK23E
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) November 19, 2019
Witnesses are called to provide objective testimony, not their legal analysis, and even if the central allegation did fit the definition of bribery (it doesn’t really, though), it wouldn’t undermine the Democrats’ argument if witnesses didn’t brand the allegation as such. But Ratcliffe’s stunt was politically effective, and Democrats still need to gain public support if they want their proceedings to go down as more than an embarrassing footnote in history. Furthermore, the public won’t remain patient for long, and if they lose the “quid pro quo” question, they’ve lost those who they’re trying to win over with their legalese.
Keep “bribery,” and lose the narrative, Dems.
