"Deny. Deflect. Deflate." Trump's Strategy To Avoid Impeachment

"Deny. Deflect. Deflate." Trump's Strategy To Avoid Impeachment

By David Leonhardt Opinion Columnist

The Trump administration’s impeachment strategy is becoming clearer: Deny, deflect and deflate.

Deny. Step one for President Trump and his allies is to deny the obvious reality that he was putting pressure on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to help the Trump campaign smear Joe Biden.

You can see this when Trump repeatedly describes his phone call with Zelensky as “perfect.” You can see it when White House aides and congressional Republicans try to discredit the whistle-blower, even though his central allegation — the phone call — has already been confirmed. And you can see it when Republicans keep claiming that there was not an explicit “quid pro quo” with Zelensky, despite the clear signals Trump was sending: “I would like you to do us a favor though.”

Deflect. Step two involves trying to get Americans to focus on anything other than Trump’s behavior.

On Tuesday, Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, tried to change the subject by complaining that House Democrats did not want State Department lawyers to be present when State Department officials were questioned. Yesterday, Trump and his defenders seized on a Times report that Adam Schiff, the House Democrat leading the inquiry, had heard about the whistle-blower’s concerns before a formal complaint was filed — which merely confirmed the whistle-blower’s (appropriate) level of alarm.

Trump also threw a small temper tantrum in the East Room of the White House yesterday after a Reuters reporter had respectfully asked him what he was trying to achieve on the phone call. Trump refused to answer, giving a rambling soliloquy instead, and when the reported re-asked the question (complete with a “sir”), Trump replied: “Did you hear me? Did you hear me? … Don’t be rude … Much of the media in this country is not just fake, it’s corrupt.”

Expect these deflections to continue. They’re all meant to get people to stop thinking about what Trump did: Used American foreign policy for his personal gain.

Deflate. Trump and his allies seem to believe that time is their friend. If they can drag out the investigation for long enough, it may come to seem like not such a big deal — just another so-called outrage among so many Trump outrages. Sure, Trump seems sketchy, but is he so different from other politicians?

That’s one reason the White House is fighting almost every request for information from House Democrats. If these requests end up in court, to be litigated over weeks or months, it helps deflate the story.

I think Schiff is right to see this strategy for what it is and to refuse to accept it. House Democrats said they would issue a subpoena if the White House did not comply with its document requests by Friday. But they’re not going to wait forever. If the administration continues to stonewall, the House will take that as evidence of obstruction of justice. “If they are going to prevent witnesses from coming forward to testify on the allegations in the whistle-blower complaint, that will create an adverse inference that those allegations are in fact correct,” Schiff said yesterday.

I also think the Democrats are right to pursue a narrow impeachment inquiry that’s easily understandable and mostly avoids the morass of the Mueller investigation.