The White House’s impeachment strategy seems to be a kind of political “Because I said so!” Hesitant to explain the details of President Trump’s questionable Ukraine dealings, the administration is demanding we trust his judgment first and ask questions later.
No wonder the White House can’t get its story straight.
First, the White House said Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect” and that there was no quid pro quo. But yesterday, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said that the administration did in fact withhold congressionally approved funding from Ukraine to force Zelensky to investigate “the corruption related to the DNC servers” during the 2016 election. When a reporter pointed out that what Mulvaney had just described was the textbook definition of quid pro quo, Mulvaney responded, “We do that all the time with foreign policy.”
Then Mulvaney walked back his statement, blaming the media for “misconstruing” his comments to “advance a biased and political witch-hunt against President Trump” and declaring that there was “absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.”
What the White House would like us to do is sit back and trust that these kinds of shady negotiations are standard practice. But politics is not parenting, and as a self-governing people, it’s our job to demand answers from the men and women we’ve elected. Has Trump forgotten who he works for?
To his credit, Trump did release the transcript of his phone call with Zelensky. But he’s doing his best to stonewall Congress’s investigation, and even his top administration officials are tying themselves in knots trying to explain the president’s behavior. This isn’t a strategy; it’s the absence of one.
Mulvaney’s self-defeating blunder probably won’t change anything, but it did expose how little the White House has thought through its approach. The Justice Department has already disavowed Mulvaney’s comments, which means there’s an obvious lack of coordination within the administration on how to move forward.
This kind of incoherence won’t help Trump in the days ahead. Impeachment isn’t going away, and if he wants to stay in office, he needs to be transparent and consistent.
