NOTHING LEFT BUT TO DESTROY THE INSTITUTIONS:

President Trump's substantive defense against the ongoing impeachment inquiry has crumbled entirely--not just eroded or weakened, but been flattened like a sandcastle hit with a large wave.

It was never a strong defense. After all, Trump himself released the smoking gun early in L'Affaire Ukrainienne when the White House published its memo of Trump's call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That document erased any question as to whether Trump had asked a foreign head of state to "investigate"--a euphemism for digging up dirt on--his political opponents. There was no longer any doubt that he had asked a foreign country to violate the civil liberties of American citizens by way of interfering in the coming presidential campaign. That much we have known for certain for weeks.

The clarity of the evidence did not stop the president's allies from trying to fashion some semblance of defense. But the past few days of damaging testimony have stripped away the remaining fig leaves. There was no quid pro quo, we were told--except that it's now clear that there was one. If there was a quid pro quo, we were told, it was the good kind of quid pro quo that happens all the time in foreign relations--except that, we now learn, it wasn't that kind at all but the very corrupt kind instead. The Ukrainians didn't even know that the president was holding up their military aid, we were told--except that, it turns out, they did know. And, the president said, it was all about anti-corruption. This was the most Orwellian inversion; describing such a corrupt demand as a request for an investigation of corruption is a bit like describing a speakeasy as an alcoholism treatment facility.

Tweet   @brothersjudd