Ukraine is Simple. That’s Good.
This April, Special Counsel Robert Mueller released his final report detailing the findings of his investigation into President Trump’s possible (probable) connections to the Russian government and the ways in which they (probably) worked together to sway the results of the 2016 presidential election.
Democrats had been waiting on this for months. It was going to be the smoking gun. They would use it to successfully impeach the president with their newfound House majority. And then everyone read it. While it still detailed potential wrongdoing by the president, it left just enough grey area for the President to claim that it vindicated him (something that, coincidentally, it definitively did not do). And it didn’t seem quite damning enough for swing district Democrats, many of whom won their House seats after Trump carried their constituency just two years prior, to come out in favor of impeaching the president.
Some did, of course. Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren was the first major national Democrat to call for Trump’s impeachment just days later, claiming she read the report and decided that it detailed misconduct by the President severe enough to warrant an impeachment inquiry.
Over the next few weeks, impeachment became a common talking point for some of the most liberal members of the House Democratic caucus, and for many progressives outside of Washington and progressive action groups. But established Democratic leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi stayed far away from the topic, and so did the public.
Public support for impeachment remained relatively low — only about forty percent in favor compared to over fifty percent opposed, according to FiveThirtyEight’s impeachment poll tracker. Public opinion was remarkably consistent, as well. It wasn’t swayed by the release of the Mueller Report in April, nor did it change after Mueller publicly testified before Congress in July. I’ve argued for months that Mueller and his investigation didn’t matter. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think Democrats should impeach the president.
Russia isn’t the only thing the president has done wrong. He’s violated the law on several occasions, with a plethora of Emoluments Clause violations related to his business dealings with the Trump Organization, Hatch Act violations by himself and members of his administration, and more. My only argument is that Russia was never a good hill to fight and die on. Ukraine, however, is.
Public opinion regarding impeachment, which, remember, had been basically static for months, dramatically shifted in the past two weeks. Since details about the phone call were revealed, the call summary (not a transcript) was released, and DNI Joseph Maguire testified before Congress, the public has had a markedly more favorable view of impeachment.
Part of that is why Speaker Pelosi was finally willing to open an “official impeachment inquiry” instead of continuing to dance around the term like she’s been doing all year. Trump-district Democrats aren’t afraid of impeachment anymore, as they signed a letter detailing why they thought it was necessary as Trump becomes more of a national security risk.
So what about Ukraine is different from Russia (well, other than Crimea, depending on who you ask)? Ukraine is simple. We have the information. It’s straightforward and easy to understand. It’s not shrouded in layers of potential uncertainty or ambiguity.
Regarding Ukraine, we have the (partial) transcript of the phone call in question. Even in this edited-down version of the phone call, we can see that Trump explicitly asked a foreign leader to investigate one of his political rivals. Additionally, it’s implied that this involves a contingency regarding US military aid for Ukraine.
For Russia, we had some emails from this, some reporting about that, some of which involved the president only tangentially, giving him plausible room for denial. Even if it was pretty obvious what was really going on, it would be hard to prove it definitively.
With Ukraine, we have a credible whistleblower report detailing this call accurately, in addition to other illegal activities by the President (and now, apparently, a second whistleblower). With Russia, we had Mueller’s “did he or didn’t he” report with some pretty serious implications levied against the president, but again, nothing easily definitive.
Almost as an afterthought (though a very important one), this time, we also have Rudy Giuliani. Trump referred to Giuliani by name during the phone call at least three times, in addition to Attorney General Bill Bar. Remember, Giuliani does not have an official government position. He’s a private citizen. Yet he’s still part of this shadow foreign policy, and lately, he’s been doing the rounds on cable news making the situation worse for himself and everyone else involved. Between telling Chris Cuomo that he told Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, or bringing his iPad on Fox News to read aloud his text messages with the very people he shouldn’t be in contact with, he’s also implicating the entire State Department in the scandal, saying that he talked to Ukraine, but only because they told him to.
Trump has admitted to seemingly everything on Twitter or TV, also implicating Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, and again, we have all the evidence. Everything is pointing towards impeaching the president. The scandal is simple for the public to understand and quite clearly directly involves the president, which is probably why public support for impeachment has increased drastically since the Ukraine story broke. According to the aforementioned impeachment support tracker, since the story began, public support for impeachment has gone from 39 percent for and 51 percent against to 47 percent for and only 45 percent against, for a net swing of fourteen points, more than support for impeachment, or, for that matter, Trump’s overall approval rating, has ever fluctuated.
Democrats have everything they need to impeach the president now: a House majority, a blatant, impeachable abuse of power, and the support of the public. I know it’s been said before about Trump’s scandals, but this time, it really does seem like it’s different. I won’t say it, but I’ll borrow from freshman Representative Rashida Tlaib. So let’s do it:
