Skip to content

The stress is getting to him

Published by digby on November 21, 2019

The stress is getting to him

by digby

Trump has been incoherently screaming “I want nothing! I want nothing! There’s no quid pro quo!”  which is what Sondland quoted him saying in a text to former Ambassador Bill Taylor on September, 9th, 2019.  This supposedly exonerated him.

Unfortunately, he seems to think no one will notice one salient fact about that quote:

This really is “Stupid-Watergate.”

By the way, he’s losing it:

One day, he’s up. One day, he’s down. Other days he’s just angry.

President Donald Trump has gone through a range of emotions since House Democrats started their public impeachment hearings last week about whether he threatened to withhold Ukrainian security aid unless the country opened politically advantageous investigations, according to more than half a dozen people who have spoken to Trump in the last several days.

On Wednesday, Trump was frustrated, defiant and uncharacteristically terse.

Running more than an hour late, the president emerged from the White House shortly before noon, carrying a few notes he jotted down on White House stationary. For once, he stuck his talking points.

“I want nothing! I want nothing!” Trump told reporters, responding to the eye-opening testimony of Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, who had just told lawmakers that everyone understood there to be a quid pro quo regarding Ukraine, even if the president had never told him directly.

“I want no quid pro quo,” he reiterated. “This is the final word from the president of the United States. I want nothing.”

With that, Trump got in the waiting helicopter and lifted off.

It was the latest in a series of ever-shifting Trump reactions — which can change by the hour — to the public portion of the impeachment inquiry.

“Sometimes he’s super calm and cheery and other times he’s pissed when he sees something,” a White House official said. “His reactions are human.”

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham has repeatedly insisted the president is busy working and doesn’t have time to watch the testimony. Other people around Trump say he has watched some of the witnesses, while getting a readout on those he doesn’t watch before responding the way America has come to expect — via Twitter.
[…]
Instead of merely tweeting, Trump decided to speak to reporters after watching a slice of Sondland’s testimony in the White House residence. Before meeting the press, he worked with Grisham and the counsel’s office on a few notes, essentially writing down Sondland’s own recollection of a phone call with Trump, during which the EU ambassador said the president insisted he didn’t want a quid pro quo, just for Zelensky to “do the right thing.”

A senior administration official said Trump latched on to the language because it was a recollection of his own communications.

Trump’s language mimicked a talking point Trump’s team was circulating on Wednesday. The bullet points were developed in war rooms across Washington that brought together staffers from the White House, Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee.

“Ambassador Sondland said in his opening remarks that he followed President Trump’s direction,” read one bullet point. “This would include, by Sondland’s own testimony, the President’s insistence on no quid pro quo.”

Pathetic. As you can see from the tweets above, this is an absurd line of defense. I guess it’s the best they can do.

But it speaks to Trump’s current flailing that he’s reduced to standing before a group of reporters with a paper in front of him full of (gigantic) notes screaming “I want nothing!” over and over again.

He’s losing faith in his ability to get through this on his own.

A person close to the president said Trump is unsure if Democrats or Republicans are winning the public perception battle over the last two weeks.

“I think he’s in a decent mood under the circumstances,” the person said. “He’s frustrated and irritated but he’s not overly frustrated and irritated given the situation he’s in.”

Trump had been privately and publicly fuming for weeks that Republicans weren’t doing enough to defend him. But that changed last week when the hearings started and he could watch the full-tilt defenses from allies on Capitol Hill, including Reps. Devin Nunes (Calif.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio).

“I think when you’re trying to issue somebody the death sentence politically, even a guy with a constitution as strong as his … that’s got to bother anyone,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.). “But mostly they’re building the case for why he’s going to get re-elected because the American public doesn’t like it either.”

Still, Trump’s feelings have risen and fallen based on the story of the moment.

On the first day of public hearings last week, Trump was feeling more optimistic because he thought William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, was a weak opening witness, given that he had little firsthand knowledge of the situation, said two people with knowledge of the president’s thinking.

But on Friday, the second day of hearings, he felt frustrated after multiple people inside and outside the White House told him he made a mistake by criticizing a Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, as she was testifying. Democrats immediately accused him of trying to intimidate a witness.

House Democrats expect to wrap up their public Ukraine hearings on Thursday.

“There are good days. There are bad days,” said a former Trump campaign adviser. “He fully expects that. He knows in a big rolling production like this there are going to be both.”

On Wednesday, Trump’s production was all about the notes. After touring an Apple plant in Texas, the president pulled them out again when he got another question on the subject.

“I want nothing,” he said.

He’s losing his mind, I’m sorry. This was weird even for him:

.

Published inUncategorized