Defending Trump

Donald Trump has a defense. There is a case to be made that the discussions he initiated with people in Ukraine should not lead to impeachment. Let’s imagine that defense. Maybe there is another phone call, shortly after July 25, where Trump tells Zelensky that there is no link between our relationship to Ukraine and their investigating Biden. Maybe there is evidence that what looks plainly like efforts coerce Ukraine’s gas system for personal gain by Trump’s envoys to Ukraine didn’t happen that way.

Maybe one could argue that Trump didn’t mean what he said to Zelensky. That would hard, though, given that he also said it to the Australian Prime Minister and to all of China. Or better, that he was completely ignorant of this law, because of his only distant contact with the rules of his office. Trump has demonstrated ignorance of many important aspects of his job, but to call this an honest mistake requires one to ignore everything that happened afterward. Maybe there were conversations in the White House about how to correct this mistake. We don’t know of any.

Right now that case is entirely theoretical, because the evidence we already have does point to impeachment. Many important people in the White House were appalled by the whole process around the fateful phone call, which seem to contain clear evidence of a crime. We know the major task of numerous White House officials was to hide evidence of the contents of this call.

Such plausible and implausible defenses are possible. It is striking that no Republicans are making them.

The Washington Post has usefully published statements from every Republican Senator who would say anything. Zero support the impeachment inquiry. Perhaps the best clue to Republican thinking about Trump is that none of them are offering any evidence, any argument, any reason. Instead, we hear two versions of the same non-defense, that there is no evidence of anything like a crime.

The first version is that what Trump said on the phone with Zelensky was fine, or as Trump says, “perfect”. Sen. Thom Tillis from North Carolina: “The transcript debunks the Democrats’ false claims against President @realDonaldTrump and demonstrates that their call to impeach him is a total farce.” Sen. John Cornyn from Texas: “We have the transcript of the call which doesn’t live up to the complaintant’s fevered accusations.”

Another version of this defense is that it was unfortunate that Trump said what he said, but not very serious. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota: “I’m not a fan of the way in many cases the president goes about this and I would prefer he would not raise an issue like that with a foreign leader.” Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio: “He should not have brought up the Joe Biden issue, but again, there was no quid pro quo and I think the Democrats’ rush to impeachment is totally unwarranted.” This qualifies as courage among Republicans.

Usually this line is combined with attacks on Democrats and the media for even considering the issue. Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma: “I think they’ve been looking for a way to impeach the president for years. I think they’re upset with him politically.” Sen. Todd Young of Indiana: “One thing is clear, the far-left has been desperate to get rid of President Trump since day one.” Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas: “Democrats have long sought to weaken the president, appease their base and further divide the country through impeachment. This latest action demonstrates their willingness to blindly follow this obsession regardless of the facts.”

The most radical formulation attacks the whistleblower personally. Trump leads this “defense”. He said, “I think a whistleblower should be protected, if the whistleblower is legitimate.” He labelled the “so-called whistleblower” part of a “political hack job.” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said the whistleblower's identity should be revealed.

A second version was displayed by Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa. When a CNN reporter asked her whether it’s appropriate for a president to solicit campaign assistance from a foreign power, she responded, “We’ll have to wait. We don’t have the facts in front of us. And what we see pushed out through the media, we don’t know what is accurate at this point.” A questioner at a meeting in her home state said, “When are you guys going to say, “Enough”? You stand there in silence.” She responded helpfully, “Whistle-blowers should be protected. Corruption wherever it is should be ferreted out.”

This “we don’t know yet” version says that what we do know about the call and Trump’s other actions is not enough. Sen. Tim Scott from South Carolina: “He’s not really a whistleblower, so it’s really more hearsay.” Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho: “I will wait for further information regarding the facts of this matter and refrain from speculating.” Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado: “I joined my Senate colleagues in unanimously supporting the release of the whistleblower report, and I support the Senate Intelligence Committee’s on-going bipartisan review to gather all of the facts. Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry to appease the far-left isn’t something the majority of Americans support and will sharply divide the country.” But Gardner’s wrong: a majority of Americans do now support the inquiry. A poll from a week ago found 55% supported an impeachment inquiry.

Only a very few Republican Senators have taken the evidence we all have seen seriously. Mitt Romney of Utah appears to be leading those who are most anxious: “It remains troubling in the extreme. It’s deeply troubling.” Susan Collins of Maine remains true to her pretense at independence: “I thought the president made a big mistake by asking China to get involved in investigating a political opponent. It’s completely inappropriate.” What about Ukraine?

Republicans have been running away from evidence about Donald Trump since 2016. Evidence about his business dealings, evidence about his lying, evidence about his sexual attacks on many unwilling women, evidence about the climate, evidence from the Mueller probe. They and Trump together are trying to achieve a new normal, in which evidence doesn’t matter at all, only what side you are on.

The last time a Republican was impeached for trying to tamper with a presidential election and then covering it up, that strategy didn’t work.

Before anyone can make a good judgment about breaking rules, we have to know the rules. Does a certain behavior fall outside of the law? It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the rules. Ignorance of the law is no defense, says the Bible, Greek philosophers, and Roman law. Republicans are following a different motto: “I’ll tell you what is legal and what is not legal later, when I find out more about what Trump did.”

That’s not leadership. That’s not responsibility. That’s not supporting the Constitution. That’s corruption.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

October 15, 2019

Trump Impeachment

It’s useless to try not to talk about impeachment. It’s nearly impossible to avoid bringing it up. Running away from impeachment conversations doesn’t mean the conversation in your head will stop. So I’ll join in.

First, the national conversation is about Trump, and that’s not an accident. For a while, we heard and thought and talked about the Democratic candidates for President. They all talked about Trump, but that was only a small part of their message. Trump demands to be the lead in every news report, and now he is and will be for weeks, if not all the way to November 2020. He didn’t impeach himself just to top the news, but it’s a welcome outcome for him.

The impeachment inquiry came about because Trump cannot distinguish between his own personal interests and the interests of the US. He never had a job where he had to think about anything but his own welfare. As a businessman, he was a constant public disservice, forcing people to sue him because he discriminated against black renters, stiffed the construction workers who built his buildings, and cheated the students who enrolled in “Trump University”. His narcissistic personality makes it difficult for him to think about anything but himself in any situation. So it made sense for him to subordinate American foreign policy towards Ukraine, Australia, and China to his worries about his electoral chances against Joe Biden.

His thinking is dominated by certain fixed ideas, which reason, evidence, and argument cannot budge. He enlisted the Vice President, the Secretary of State and the Attorney General in his pursuit of a Ukraine conspiracy theory, which hardly anyone has heard of outside of radical right media, because it has no substance. Thomas Bossert, Trump’s first homeland security adviser, told him it was nonsense, but no person or group of persons can talk him out of these obsessions. Long after it was definitively proven that Obama was born in Hawaii, Trump continued to say he believed in his own lies.

The obsessions are about his exaggerated beliefs in his success and refusal to believe in any failure. He can’t stand the fact that he lost the popular vote to Clinton by 3 million votes. So he embraces one explanation after another, not based on anything more than his wishful thinking – first millions of undocumented people illegally voted for Clinton, now Ukraine plus the “deep state” secretly helped Clinton’s campaign and tried to pretend that Russia was helping Trump.

His political opinions are not convictions but malleable positions, depending on his interests and the moment. He has no fundamental beliefs except himself. That is evident from his changing positions on abortion, Democrats, and gay rights. Who jumps to the opposite side on every major issue of political culture?

He has no empathy or respect for people outside of his family. His family might be able to impress him with reasoned criticism, but they don’t because they are like him, putting self before any principle. More than any other group of people, their future is tied to his success or failure.

The American President presents the dangerous combination of absolute confidence that he is always right and always knows best, and a brain filled with nonsensical ideas. He commits impeachable offenses every day.

I don’t think that impeachment will get Trump out of the White House. There are not 20 Republican Senators who have the courage and patriotism to enforce the national interest when it might mean they lose an election. They share Trump’s ranking of their own political fortunes over any constitutional duty.

I think what matters is whether some Republicans in the House vote to impeach and some Republicans in the Senate vote to convict. In recent days, the first Republican dissenters have spoken out, led by Mitt Romney. Thus far, Senators Romney, Ben Sasse, and Susan Collins have openly criticized Trump. Republicans Will Hurd from Texas, Fred Upton of Michigan, and Mark Amodei of Nevada in the House have expressed support for investigating Trump, but are still wary of impeachment. Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle says that “two dozen” of his Republican colleagues in the House are deeply concerned about Trump’s impeachable actions, although few have said anything. The defections from Trump worship may bring out others. This is history, and what each Republican politician does or doesn’t do, says or doesn’t say, will define their legacies.

Unless more Republicans than the few so far show that they believe that he is a menace to our country, the impeachment inquiry will have little effect on the 2020 election. And that is the vote that matters.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

October 8, 2019

We Don’t Know What We Are Doing

We don’t know what we are doing about poverty. The Great Society programs reduced the poverty rate during the 1960s from 22% to 12%, but since 1970, rates of poverty in the US have remained between 10% and 15%. The proportion of children living in poverty is higher, perhaps as high as 21%. The poverty rate in the US is higher than nearly all other highly developed countries, and about twice as high as most countries in western Europe. The wide variety of federal and state programs for the poor have simply managed to maintain poverty rates at the same level for 50 years. Our policy-makers, Democrat and Republican, have been tinkering around the edges of poverty, but have not found a set of policies which can make an impact. Raising the minimum wage significantly, say to $15 an hour, would slightly reduce poverty, but not eliminate it.

We don’t know what we are doing about homelessness. Since the great recession of 2008, homelessness has dropped slightly in the US from about 650,000 to 550,000 in 2016, as poverty levels, the main cause of homelessness, fell. Since 2016, homelessness has again risen.

We don’t know what we are doing about the invasion of our lives by the internet. Misinformation and disinformation, transferred to us instantaneously and constantly, pollute our brains. Young people are not only addicted to their phones, for too many their ambitions are entirely tied up in hopes of becoming “influencers” in virtual space. Impenetrable corporations demand to know our private information, and then collect, exploit and sell it.

We don’t know what we are doing about climate change. Scientific experts warn us about how much damage we have already done to the environment by lifestyles that few people are willing to change. Rising temperatures in the earth’s oceans have already caused irreparable damage to aquatic life and to the human lives that depend on it. No nation has put into place policies that are sufficient to eliminate further warming. No scientific warning has been able to move enough people to demand the changes that are necessary. Nearly half of Americans continue to vote for a party which officially denies that climate change is a problem.

We don’t know what we are doing about the corruption of our society and our politics by money. This is nothing new. Despite centuries of agonizing about how to prevent those with money from amassing the power to suck up more money through illegitimate means, in democratic and authoritarian societies, we are no closer to a solution.

We don’t know what we are doing about the widening social chasms, the hollowing out of the middle, the growing anger, not just at the system or “the man”, but at each other.

We don’t know what we are doing about the linkage among all these problems. For the millennia that humans have walked the earth, it didn’t matter if we didn’t know what we were doing. The carefully balanced global natural systems that supported an incredible variety of life were impervious to the local activities of bands of humans. But now, with nearly 8 billion people digging up the earth, consuming everything we can get our hands on, spewing waste in every direction, and accelerating the speeds of these processes every day, we have thrown the earth out of balance. As our world apparently hurtles toward ecological, political, and social disaster, we have created problems for which there are no solutions in sight.

Now is the tipping point. And we don’t know what we are doing.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

October 1, 2019