For once, the often-brash and always-combative Trump White House played it safe.
On day one of House Democrats’ public impeachment hearings, President Donald Trump and his top aides opted against firing back to sometimes-damning testimony by two administration witnesses and allegations of corrupt intent from House Intelligence Committee Democrats.
In short, the president — a frequent golfer — and his team went with the three wood over the driver. Rather than blasting harsh rhetoric and allegations as far as they could down the political fairway, they opted to take a safer shot by mostly relying on the arguments and attack lines they have employed for weeks — leaving it to committee Republicans to try to undermine the senior diplomats answering questions and the Democratic members asking them.
“You talking about the witch hunt?” Trump asked a reporter who had asked him if House Democrats had made a convincing case during the lengthy hearing.
“It’s a joke,” a clearly annoyed commander in chief said during a joint news conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “I haven’t watched.”
Trump did offer perhaps his clearest assertion yet that acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent — as well as other witnesses — offered nothing but “all thirdhand information, nothing direct at all.”
That means neither career diplomat offered in their private or public testimony any anecdotes they personally heard Trump say he would not lift a freeze on a nearly $400 million military aid package or grant Volodymyr Zelenskiy a White House meeting unless the new Ukrainian leader took steps toward investigating the Bidens and the Democratic National Committee.
That was a message Intelligence Committee Republicans sounded all day while questioning both Taylor and Kent.
There was one new line from the West Wing on Wednesday, however. Some senior aides seemed unimpressed by what quickly became a hearing thick on diplomatic protocol and the inner workings of Washington policymaking.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called the impeachment inquiry’s entry into public “boring.”
“There is nothing new here,” she added.
Only there was. And most of it came from Taylor.
He told the committee that diplomats concluded Trump told aides he was much more focused on Zelenskiy launching the probes of Democrats he wanted than their efforts to work with what they determined was a new Eastern European leader sincere about weeding out corruption. Trump has claimed in recent weeks that those broader corruption issues were his main concern in holding up a nearly $400 million military aid package Zelenskiy wanted for his country’s conflict with Russia.
The acting ambassador also described a “regular” policy process within the Trump administration to set and implement Ukraine policies, as well as an “irregular” one run by Giuliani. The latter, Taylor said, hindered what he described as career diplomats’ efforts to conduct foreign policy as it had been conducted under previous presidents, Republican and Democratic.
What’s more, Taylor explained in clear terms why some U.S. officials and House Democrats view Trump’s alleged request that Zelenskiy comply as a major problem.
“It’s one thing to leverage a meeting in the White House,” Taylor told lawmakers. “It’s another thing to leverage the military aid,” noting it was meant for an American ally “at war” with Russia. Holding up the aid package in the alleged pursuit of Trump’s personal political benefit was “much more alarming,” Taylor said.
