Saturday, November 23, 2019

What did Donald Trump do today?

He whistled past the graveyard of impeachment.

As usual for a Saturday (for him), Trump had nothing on his work schedule and spent most of the day tweeting and visiting one of his properties

Recently, his social media strategy on his likely impeachment has been to insist that he looks forward to it. According to people close to him, this is a lie, and he's alternately angry and depressed by the stigma of being impeached, even if he's likely to be acquitted by Republicans in the Senate.

Nevertheless, it makes political sense for Trump to pretend he's not worried, which may account for this tweet from this morning:


In reality, polls continue to show a majority of Americans in favor of the inquiry, and more in favor of Trump's removal than who think he should be allowed to stay in office. Every single independent national poll taken in the last month has showed net support for the investigation, and 26 out of 30 polls taken in the last 30 days show net support for Trump's removal.

As for Trump's claim that he will "compel" the testimony of Rep. Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee Chair who is leading the impeachment committee, it's at least theoretically possible for him to be called as a witness. The problem for Trump is that Schiff has no reason not to answer questions. Trump has claimed to be deeply offended by Schiff paraphrasing the Trump-Zelensky call to call attention to the extortion aspect of it, which may say as much about the effectiveness as about Trump's emotional stability. But it's not clear what Trump thinks he would gain by more theatrics on the subject.

So what?

  • Once you leave grade school, lying about being popular doesn't make you popular.
  • The work of the presidency demands a certain degree of emotional stability.