Trump impeachment: the battle to control the narrative

Donald Trump has continued to escalate his attack on the impeachment inquiry into his relations with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky launched last week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Washington has been engulfed in a cacophony of denouncement and counter-denouncement, as both sides battle to control the narrative of the scandal. Trump and his allies are determined to undermine the legitimacy of the investigation, while Democrats are working hard to frame the inquiry as non-partisan and rooted in the US constitution.

Trump fightback

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The Trump administration has drawn once again from the playbook established during the Mueller inquiry, denouncing the unnamed intelligence operative whose complaints sparked the inquiry: “I think it’s unfortunate that the media continues to describe this individual as a ‘whistleblower’, an honorific [they] most certainly do not deserve,” said Trump adviser Stephen Miller on Fox News. “A partisan hit job does not make you a whistleblower just because you do it through the Whistleblower Protection Act.”

In a flurry of tweets yesterday morning, Trump went further, suggesting that the chairman of the Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff be arrested for Treason.

“Rep. Adam B. Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to Congress and the American people,” Trump tweeted. “It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?”

On Sunday, in a move that has proved particularly controversial, Trump raised the spectre of civil war.

“If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal,” he tweeted.

In a polarised political landscape, one public reprimand which stood out was that of Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger. “I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. @realDonaldTrump I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President,” Kinzinger wrote in a tweet. “This is beyond repugnant.”

Democratic caution

In contrast, the Democrats’ approach to the impeachment has been measured. However, as The New York Times warns, Democrats’ “carefully coordinated messaging campaign may be upended before it starts. Liberals are reveling in news of an inquiry that they believe should have been opened long ago… And on the presidential campaign trail, Democrats are talking up impeachment, which poses a danger that the public will think the party is prejudging the outcome of the inquiry and politicising a solemn task that has grave implications for the future of the nation.”

“Impeachment has infinite gravity and immense destructive power,” writes Matt Bennett, who worked for the Clinton administration during the Monica Lewinsky impeachment process. “It is a political black hole.”

During a private conference call with fellow party representatives, Pelosi cautioned: “Our tone must be prayerful, respectful, solemn, worthy of the Constitution.”

“This isn't about politics. It's not about partisanship. It's about patriotism,” she said during the call. “The idea that this has anything to do with whether you like (Trump) or not - forget that. That's about the election. This is about the Constitution.”

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Who is winning the battle?

“When impeachment was a theoretical concept that Democrats might undertake, it wasn’t a popular concept, even as the Ukraine allegations were coming out. A Quinnipiac University poll found that 57% of Americans didn’t think President Trump should be impeached and removed from office,” reports Amber Phillips in the Washington Post.

However, a new CBS News-YouGov poll has found that “more than half of Americans - and an overwhelming number of Democrats - say they approve of the fact that Congress has opened an impeachment inquiry into President Trump.”

While this data seems to indicate Democrats are on board with initiating impeachment proceedings, that is arguably to be expected. However, a poll released yesterday by CNN, has some limited evidence of a change of heart among those in the center of the political divide.

The poll found that overall, opposition to impeachment among Americans had dropped from 54% in May, to 45%t today. Crucially, though, “the change since May has largely come among independents and Republicans,” CNN reports. “About three-quarters of Democrats favour impeaching Trump and removing him from office, roughly the same as in May, while among independents, support for impeachment and removal has risen 11 points to 46% among independents and eight points to 14% among Republicans.”

Concerns over whistleblower’s safety

In a letter to Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, Andrew Bakaj, the lead attorney for the anonymous intelligence official who filed official complaints over Trump’s conduct during a call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, raised concerns over his client’s safety.

“Unfortunately, we expect this situation to worsen, and to become even more dangerous for our client and any other whistleblowers, as Congress seeks to investigate this matter,” Bakaj wrote.

The lawyer also said that “certain individuals” have issued a $50,000 “bounty” for “any information” relating to his client’s identity.

The warnings over the whistleblower’s safety come after Trump spoke to an audience of staff members at the United States Mission to the United Nations last week. “I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information because that’s close to a spy,” Trump said. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”