Let’s just start at the beginning: Yesterday was super-duper crazy. I know you were watching because literally every human who gives a shit about the future of democracy and possibly the earth was watching. But it was overwhelming. It was hard to wait for 5 PM EST, it was hard to tell if an “inquiry” is something big, and it was hard to watch that interview between Chuck Todd and Senator John Kennedy.
That middle question is on people’s minds now, though, and it’s an important one: What really happened yesterday? Was it something materially different than what, say, Jerry Nadler has been doing for the last few weeks?
The answer is yes, it is different, yes it was the beginning of the actual impeachment process, and yes, we are TOTALLY still excited today. Now, your humble author is a bit of a wonk, so when in the background I saw Mitch McConnell employing a seldom-used procedure to hurry Chuck Schumer’s request for unanimous consent to obtain the whistleblower complaint through the Senate, I admittedly got excited.
But that’s politics nerd stuff. Here’s what YOU need to know, to really feel like this is happening: Donald Trump is terrified.
The President called Nancy earlier in the day, to try and nip this in the bud. Now, if you want to take a moment and savor the irony of realizing that Trump really does think this is all a show, and that Nancy Fucking Pelosi was going to just accommodate him when he realized how bad he was about to look, that’s up to you. I took several moments doing just that yesterday. But according to NBC reporter Heidi Przybyla, the call between the President and Pelosi included Trump telling the Speaker that he would like “to figure this out,” the “this” being the whistleblower complaint.
Nancy swatted down the attempt at a deal, telling the President, “Tell your people to obey the law.” The obvious reference is to the fact that Trump directed people who had a hand in dealing with the whistleblower to break the law by not delivering the complaint to Congress.
But really, Nancy was telling him that going forward, any sliver of hope he has of not going to prison for a long time rests entirely on him just taking a deep breath and stopping with the constant, daily, HOURLY law-breaking.
According to CNN, Trump was apoplectic. Their sources tell them that Trump’s offer to release the transcript of the phone call between himself and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came after the call with Nancy. And when that didn’t work, Trump quickly realized he was out of bargaining chips.
That’s where Wednesday morning leaves us: In true Trump form, he tried to cut a deal and failed.
Now we watch what the six Congressional committees come up with in their investigations.
Featured image via screen capture
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