1. Jelani Cobb: Why Trump, Facing Impeachment, Warns of Civil War

Trump’s problems are self-inflicted. He brought the freewheeling amorality with which he led the Trump Organization—an enterprise he continues to profit from—to the White House. From the loftiest perch in American politics, Trump has spewed vitriol, trampled norms, provoked violence, nurtured racism and misogyny, invited foreign intervention into an American election, befriended adversaries, and alienated allies. He followed up his civil-war threat on Tuesday, tweeting, “I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of the United States of America!” It was a breathtakingly irresponsible and foolish comment that could reasonably provoke violence among his most devout followers. As the blog Lawfare noted this week, far-right militias are taking Trump’s language about war and the possibility of a Democratic coup d’état seriously. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-trump-facing-impeachment-warns-of-civil-war

2. Ashley Parker: The ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue’ presidency: Trump turns to schoolyard taunts in impeachment battle

After House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, the Oval Office occupant countered with a creative offer of his own: Impeach me? No, impeach you!

And so it was that Trump suggested, in a series of tweets, that perhaps the two California Democrats leading the effort against him — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam B. Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee — should be impeached instead.

“Must all be immediately Impeached!” wrote Trump, who, in a separate missive, also debuted an “#IMPEACH­­MITT­ROMNEY” hashtag, after Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) criticized him for calling on both Ukraine and China to investigate a political rival.

Left unsaid was the pesky fact for the president that lawmakers cannot, in fact, be impeached. But the schoolyard taunt offered another window into Trump’s “I’m rubber, you’re glue” approach to the impeachment inquiry now consuming his administration.

Though the White House has yet to launch an official war room to fight the Democratic investigation, it is putting forth something of a one-man platoon in the form of the president himself — in the role of playground bully, wielding his shamelessness like a weaponized rubber kickball, ready to pummel into the mud anyone who dares to level a charge against him.

The tactic epitomizes Trump’s “I know you are but what am I?” presidency, a long-held strategy in which Trump turns an accusation back forcefully on his accuser, regardless of how outlandish or fallacious the countercharge may be. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-im-rubber-youre-glue-presidency-trump-turns-to-schoolyard-taunts-in-impeachment-battle/2019/10/09/a609ba8c-eaab-11e9-85c0-85a098e47b37_story.html

3. George Will: The spiraling president adds self-impeachment to his repertoire

Trump’s gross and comprehensive incompetence now increasingly impinges upon the core presidential responsibility. This should, but will not, cause congressional Republicans to value their own and their institution’s dignity and exercise its powers more vigorously than they profess fealty to Trump. He has issued a categorical refusal to supply witnesses and documents pertinent to the House investigation of whether he committed an impeachable offense regarding Ukraine. This refusal, which is analogous to an invocation of the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, justifies an inference of guilt. Worse, this refusal attacks our constitutional regime. So, the refusal is itself an impeachable offense.

The canine loyalty of Senate Republicans will keep Trump in office. But until he complies with House committee subpoenas, the House must not limply hope federal judges will enforce their oversight powers. Instead, the House should wield its fundamental power, that of the purse, to impose excruciating costs on executive branch noncompliance. This can be done.

In 13 months, all congressional Republicans who have not defended Congress by exercising “the constitutional rights of the place” should be defeated. If congressional Republicans continue their genuflections at Trump’s altar, the appropriate 2020 outcome will be a Republican thrashing so severe — losing the House, the Senate and the electoral votes of, say, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and even Texas — that even this party of slow-learning careerists might notice the hazards of tethering their careers to a downward-spiraling scofflaw.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-spiraling-president-adds-self-impeachment-to-his-repertoire/2019/10/10/8c1a739c-eb7c-11e9-9c6d-436a0df4f31d_story.html

4. Richard L. Hasen: The Arrest of Giuliani’s Ukraine Associates Shows How Much Trump Has Already Corrupted Our Elections

The news of Thursday’s indictments of two associates of Rudy Giuliani’s, who according to their lawyer (and former Trump lawyer) John Dowd, assisted Giuliani “in connection with his representation of President Trump” shows that foreign interference in American elections is a feature and not a bug of the Trump campaign and presidency. And the connections to the emerging Ukraine scandal show that the corruption runs deep in this administration.

But more interesting than the details of the petty influence-peddling efforts are the allegations in the complaint that the purpose was to further the bigger political goals of the co-conspirators. According to the Wall Street Journal, the defendants funneled $325,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC. They then worked with the president’s personal attorney, Giuliani, to remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. (They further allegedly sought to lobby an unnamed congressman to seek the ambassador’s removal.) The apparent goal was to move her out of the way so Giuliani, on Trump’s behalf, could pressure Ukraine prosecutors to dig up or fabricate dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter. All of this is at the center of Congress’ impeachment inquiry of the president, and House Democrats were reportedly due to seek to depose the two men as critical witnesses prior to their arrest.

All of this holds vast implications for the House’s impeachment probe and the picture is only starting to come together. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/giuliani-ukraine-associates-arrested-sdny-trump-corrupt-elections.amp

5. Barbara McQuade: Trump’s Impeachment Strategy: Trick Americans Into Blaming Congress

The White House responded to the impeachment inquiry into President Trump on Tuesday with a letter arguing that the administration has no obligation to comply with congressional demands for testimony and documents. The letter is remarkable for a number of reasons, including the cynicism displayed by its author.

Cipollone contends that the real culprit here is Congress, arguing that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff mischaracterized the Trump-Zelensky call during a House hearing, and that the whistle-blower sought guidance from the Intelligence Committee before filing his complaint, contrary to a statement by Schiff that “we have not spoken directly to the whistle-blower.” Schiff explained that he was paraphrasing Trump’s phone call to help people understand its gravity. Additionally, there is no prohibition on a whistle-blower’s seeking procedural guidance from the congressional intelligence committees. If Schiff has behaved inappropriately, then he should be subject to sanctions. But none of this excuses the president’s betrayal of his duty to the public.

And here is where the cynicism should alarm and disgust us. This is one of President Trump’s favorite gaslighting moves — to not only deny the accusations, but to suggest that it is actually his opponent who is the wrongdoer. Trump demonstrated this tactic during a debate with Hillary Clinton: When she accused him of being a puppet for Russian president Vladimir Putin, he responded by calling her a puppet (his memorable phrase: “No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet!”). No matter that the accusation was a complete non sequitur.

Cipollone does the same here when he argues about procedural rights such as “due process.” His argument may sound persuasive to people who have only a passing familiarity with such terms, and are unaware that these rights do not apply at this investigative stage. The administration’s blanket invocation of absolute executive privilege puts the executive branch beyond the reach of congressional oversight, an outcome that is completely at odds with our system of government. And if the call was “completely appropriate,” then there is no need to hide the facts.

The reality is that this stonewalling to prevent the discovery of the truth is a gross deviation from our constitutional values, and is itself grounds for impeachment. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/trumps-impeachment-plan-fool-americans-blame-congress.html

6. Jonathan Chait: Trump’s Watergate Burglars, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Just Got Arrested

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were carrying out President Trump’s scheme to pressure Ukraine to investigate his domestic rivals. This morning, the two men were arrested on campaign-finance charges as they attempted to leave the country.

Ultimately, the campaign-finance violations are a small part of their overall plot. Parnas and Fruman were the rough equivalent of the Watergate burglars. A July profile of the two, by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, creates the distinct impression that both men are goons. Not violent goons, but people who specialize in highly unethical or illegal activity that may involve organized crime.

Parnas and Fruman were working with Giuliani, who represents the two as their lawyer, to encourage various Ukrainians to investigate Trump’s opponents in Ukraine. Their work initially focused on discrediting the Mueller investigation, and later evolved to include pursuing unsubstantiated allegations against the Biden family. At the same time they were advancing Trump’s agenda, they were working on a side hustle in which they tried to push Ukraine’s state-controlled energy sector to sign them up to export liquid natural gas. The gas proposal appears to be their payoff: They could let Ukraine know they represented Trump, and Ukraine would therefore have an incentive to throw some business their way, despite their lack of expertise in the inner workings of the energy business. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/parnas-and-fruman-trumps-ukraine-fixers-just-got-arrested.html

7. Washington Post Editorial: Trump’s blunder in Syria is irreparable

Mr. Trump — with no consideration, no warning, no consultation with allies, no regard for the other nations that have fought alongside the United States and risked their men and women in the fight — has turned tail. In the past two years, courageous U.S. troops cooperated with our Kurdish allies to defeat the deadly Islamic State caliphate. These allies lost more than 11,000 men and women killed; the United States, a dozen. It was a rare U.S. success in the Middle East.

The president has thrown it all away. His surrender is so hasty that U.S. forces could not execute a long-standing plan to take dozens of high-profile Islamic State detainees with them; we can expect to hear from those terrorists before long, in the region, in Europe or in the United States. The Islamic State is likely to exert its malign force again. The allies who fought alongside of us are being slaughtered, and noncombatant women and children, too. Iran is strengthened, which threatens Israel. The murderous Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is strengthened, too. Russia is taking charge. America’s adversaries could not have scripted a better outcome.

Mr. Trump likes to preen and posture as a champion of American fighters. But what more bitter medicine could any commander in chief administer to U.S. troops than ordering them to abandon the comrades who fought alongside them? He likes to preen, too, as a great enemy of Iran, and even as he runs from Syria he is ordering 1,800 American troops to Saudi Arabia, ostensibly to deter Iran. But that deployment, while proving the utter incoherence of his claim of “ending wars in the Middle East,” will have far less effect on Iran than the U.S. pullout from Syria, which opens the door for it to swell its influence there, on Israel’s border. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-had-one-foreign-policy-success-he-just-threw-it-away/2019/10/14/165c96cc-ee87-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html

8. Dana Milbank: Donald Trump, absolutely corrupted

President Trump has proved to the 21st century that Lord Acton’s 19th-century maxim still holds: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Trump began staking his title to absolute power in his first weeks in office. “The whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned,” White House adviser Stephen Miller announced. He wasn’t kidding.

Trump soon stated that “I have the absolute right” to fire FBI Director James Comey. He subsequently proclaimed the “absolute right” to provide Russia with an ally’s highly classified intelligence; the “absolute right” to pardon himself; the “absolute right” to shut down the southern border; the “absolute right” to fire special counsel Robert Mueller; the “absolute right” to sign an executive order removing the Constitution’s birthright-citizenship provision; the “absolute right” to contrive a national emergency to deny Congress the power of the purse; the “absolute right” to order U.S. businesses out of China; the “absolute right” to release apparent spy-satellite imagery of Iran; and, most recently, the “absolute right” to ask other countries to furnish evidence that Joe Biden is corrupt.

Kellyanne Conway asserted Trump’s “absolute right” to give his son-in-law a security clearance over security professionals’ objections. White House counsel Pat Cipollone said current and former White House officials are “absolutely immune” from testifying before Congress. As others have noted, Trump has repeatedly said the Constitution’s Article II empowers him “to do whatever I want” and bestows on him “all of these rights at a level nobody has ever seen before.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-corrupted-absolutely/2019/10/11/92b0c720-ec34-11e9-85c0-85a098e47b37_story.html

9. Dan Balz: Impeachment has put Trump in a different place. He’s showing it every day

President Trump delivered a characteristic performance Thursday night in Minneapolis. His 100-minute rally speech was complete with scattered vulgarities, caustic attacks on political opponents, including former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and an accusation that Democrats who have begun an impeachment inquiry are carrying out “a brazen attempt to overthrow our government.”

For the president it was all in a day’s work. And ever since the first stories broke three weeks ago about Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to help find damaging information about the Bidens and about Hillary Clinton, there has been some version of the Minnesota performance virtually every day.

Many Americans have become inured to the president’s volatile behavior. Yet even by the standards of this presidency, Trump has been operating beyond his often-untethered bounds. His Twitter feed has been more frantic, his public comments angrier and more abusive, his sense of victimhood more visible than ever. Including his attacks on the investigation by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, there may be no period in the entirety of Trump’s presidency comparable to the behavior now on display.

Along the political spectrum, there is a shared sense that the country has entered into a new and more worrisome phase of Trump’s presidency. To some who have long been critical of the president, Trump’s actions with regard to Ukraine and his call to China to launch its own investigation of Biden and his son have brought a heightened sense of alarm. Others, who have been more measured in their assessments of the president over time, see the country in a period of crisis that will test the strength of American constitutional democracy and institutions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/impeachment-has-put-trump-in-a-different-place-hes-showing-it-every-day/2019/10/12/b3cfe8d4-ecfa-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html

10. Bess Levin: Rudy Giuliani: Those Witches In Salem Got A Fairer Shake Than Me And Trump

If you’ve ever pictured Rudy Giuliani flying through a New England town on a broomstick, snatching up small children to drop in a cauldron as his cloak billows in the wind, you’re not alone. The former mayor of New York City has also been thinking a lot about himself and witches. Specifically, that the 14 women and 5 men who were found guilty of witchcraft and executed by hanging in Salem circa 1692 were treated to a fairer justice system than him and his buddy Donald Trump, a grievous turn of events he ranted about via Twitter on Tuesday.

Seemingly referring to the news that House Democrats are considering having the original Ukraine whistle-blower testify “from a remote location and obscuring the individual’s appearance and voice,” in order to keep the person’s identity shielded from those who would potentially seek to harm him, Giuliani fumed:

Even Salem witch trials didn’t use anonymous testimony. The accused had to be confronted by a witness willing to put their name and reputation behind the charges and then had to be available for cross examination. Rudy Giuliani @RudyGiuliani

In what is unlikely to come as a shock, Big Rudy’s understanding of the Salem witch trials appears somewhat lacking. For one thing, most of the accused probably wouldn’t attest to the fairness of the proceedings, considering much of the “testimony” provided by witnesses was spectral evidence, i.e. testimony that the accused’s spirit had visited the witness in a vision or dream. For another, refusing to go to trial led to death by crushing. Also, and this is where Giuliani’s legal degree really comes into question, the House isn’t holding a trial! This is part of an investigation which, incidentally, he was invited to participate in and declined, adding that other key players involved in the Ukraine scandal are unlikely to cooperate, as well, because Donald Trump’s got a fever and the only prescription is more obstruction of justice. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/rudy-giuliani-salem-witch-trials

11. Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker: ’I sort of thrive on it’: The impeachment crisis shines a spotlight on Trump’s state of mind

Five days after the impeachment inquiry began — on Sunday Sept. 29 — Trump sent forth a torrent four dozen tweets and retweets, making it at the time the third most prolific day of tweeting of his entire presidency. Over nearly 16 hours on Twitter, he suggested that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) be questioned for “Fraud & Treason” and quoted an Evangelical pastor who warned that the impeachment of Trump would “cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation.”

Then on Friday, Trump passed that previous milestone with 59 total tweets, including 33 in just 20 minutes. All told, in the week before the launch of the inquiry, Trump averaged 18 tweets per day. In the two weeks following the launch, that doubled: On average, Trump was tweeting three dozen times a day.

His behavior during a news conference with the Finnish president appeared so erratic to some viewers that a hashtag — #TrumpMeltdown — began trending on Twitter. Commentary about the president’s mental fitness ensued.

Staring down impeachment, Trump has seemed to play the role of the nation’s Shakespearean monarch. At a rally Thursday night in Minneapolis, Trump boasted about his own fortitude in surviving so many scandals.

Raising his hand and twirling his fingers to point to his right temple, the president mused, “Maybe I’m a little different up here. I don’t know.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/i-sort-of-thrive-on-it-the-impeachment-crisis-shines-a-spotlight-on-trumps-state-of-mind/2019/10/14/10fb345e-eb9e-11e9-85c0-85a098e47b37_story.html

12. E.J. Dionne Jr.: Trump is the culmination of all that has gone wrong in our politics

Trump’s words and actions suggest he really does believe he can get away with anything. It is a supreme irony that Trump triumphed by exploiting public disaffection with a political system so many Americans see as infested with sleaze and controlled by forces operating entirely for their own benefit.

Rather than being the cure for such maladies, he is their apotheosis, the culmination of all that has gone wrong in our politics. The task of the impeachment inquiry is to use his Ukrainian misadventure to bring home the breadth of the president’s venality and self-dealing. The goal should be not only to rid the country of a dangerous leader but also to show how desperately our system needs repair. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-the-culmination-of-all-that-has-gone-wrong-in-our-politics/2019/10/13/17de18c4-ed2c-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html

13. Jonathan Chait: The (Full) Case for Impeachment A menu of high crimes and misdemeanors.

The crimes for which impeachment is the prescribed punishment are notoriously undefined. And that’s for a reason: Presidential powers are vast, and it’s impossible to design laws to cover every possible abuse of the office’s authority. House Democrats have calculated that an impeachment focused narrowly on the Ukraine scandal will make the strongest legal case against President Trump. But that’s not Trump’s only impeachable offense. A full accounting would include a wide array of dangerous and authoritarian acts — 82, to be precise. His violations fall into seven broad categories of potentially impeachable misconduct that should be weighed, if not by the House, then at least by history.

The complete list of Trump's potentially impeachable misconduct is at http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/the-full-case-for-trump-impeachment.html

14. James Hohmann: Trump hands Putin another win with Syria pullout

Vladimir Putin has won so much these past three years that he may get tired of winning.

The U.S. intelligence community’s January 2017 report on Russian interference in the previous year’s presidential campaign sought to explain why Donald Trump was so attractive to Moscow. This sentence has fresh salience: ‘Pro-Kremlin proxy Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, proclaimed just before the election that if Trump won, Russia would ‘drink champagne’ in anticipation of being able to advance its positions on Syria and Ukraine.

Coming on the heels of Trump holding up assistance for Ukraine as his administration urged its new president to investigate a Democratic challenger, Trump’s order on Saturday to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria has given the Russians a new reason to reach for the bubbly. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2019/10/14/daily-202-trump-hands-putin-another-win-with-syria-pullout/5da403d6602ff1408391445f/

15. Bess Levin: Trump: Mexicans Are A Bigger Threat Than The Isis Prisoners I Let Escape In Northern Syria

Donald Trump has made a lot of exceedingly stupid decisions in the 78,000 dog years he’s been in office, but few compare, in impact and the speed with which they blew up in his face, than the one to withdraw troops from northern Syria, paving the way for Turkey to invade the region and kill our Kurdish allies, leading to one (completely predictable) consequence after the next. Roughly 785 people affiliated with ISIS have escaped; an estimated 100,000 people have been displaced; at least 81 Kurdish fighters and 60 civilians have been killed; the American-allied Syrian Democratic Forces, abandoned by Trump and under attack by Turkey, have teamed up with Bashar al-Assad’s Russian- and Iranian-backed government, giving Vladimir Putin major influence over the region; and approximately 50 nuclear weapons that the the U.S. has stored in the area have now effectively become Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s hostages, which isn’t a great turn of events considering the Turkish president has said as recently as last month that he would like to acquire such ammunition. To be clear, all of this was anticipated; Trump was warned by advisers for months that such disastrous outcomes would result if he followed his vaunted “instincts”—the ones he thinks tell him more than any dumb intelligence memos or briefing books can—and pulled out of Syria, telling the Kurds, who helped us defeat ISIS, that they were on their own because they sat out D-Day like a bunch of bone spur victims. And on Monday, perhaps the most predictable outcome occurred when Trump announced that he would punish Turkey for the bloody mess he created.

Now that the situation has descended into unstoppable chaos, Trump is naturally acting as though no one could have predicted any of this, and threatening retribution that experts say will do little to stop the unmitigated disaster he set into motion. “I think the likelihood of Turkey invading Northern Syria with U.S. troops there was zero,” Senator Tim Kaine told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Monday. “And with the U.S. pulling out now, they feel like they have a green light and they're doing exactly what everybody told President Trump that they would do.” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/donald-trump-turkey-syria-sanctions

16. Olivia Nuzzi: Among the Witches Inside the Republicans’ bunker.

It’s hard to be worried when you don’t really like the guy.” That’s what one senior Republican Senate aide had to say when I asked how concerned conservatives are about Donald Trump’s fate.

The truth is, Trump fatigue is a condition that knows no party, and many Republicans are as tired of this shit as anybody else. That’s not to say they’re outraged, or motivated to Make a Difference. They’re just tired. You can live inside the right-wing bubble in a state of depression, resigned to the fact that, yeah, every five minutes or so, the president is probably going to do something norm-shattering or potentially impeachable, and no, you probably won’t or can’t do anything to change that. Sad!

“Syria isn’t that much different than the other crazy shit he’s done in the last three years,” the senior Republican Senate aide said. “In some ways, people are both pissed off about it but then it’s also like, Are we gonna go crazy over this incident when we’ve seen so much other stuff? Not to minimize the seriousness here, but what came out in the call transcript is not exactly shocking. If I were to describe Republicans one way, it would be weary.

Weary and numb. It’s been a long three years for Republicans on the Hill. Not to say we’re the real victims — Yeah, start passing around the collection plate for us!” http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/trump-impeachment-inside-the-republicans-bunker.html

17. Kevin Drum: How To Blow Up the Middle East In One Week

Is it possible to overstate how insane the Syria situation is? On Sunday President Trump talks to the Turkish president and tells him to go ahead and invade northern Syria. He is then informed that our allies the Kurds occupy this territory and will be in big trouble if the Turks roll across the border. Trump doesn’t care. He follows up this warning with a tweetstorm that basically boils down to, who cares about the Kurds anyway? Then he withdraws all US troops. Any ten-year-old could predict that this would be viewed by the Turks as a green light to do whatever they wanted, and that’s exactly what happened: the Turks began massacring Kurds and eventually the Kurds teamed up with the Russians in an act of self-preservation. Now, having made a colossal mess out of everything, Trump plans to sanction the Turks and broker a cease-fire. You betcha.

And this happened in the span of a week!

It’s easy to pretend that a president doesn’t really need to know much. After all, that’s what aides are for. But it’s really not true. Everyone makes mistakes, as Obama did when he talked about a “red line” in Syria. But Trump’s unfathomable ignorance and bloated ego is light years beyond that. A lot of us figured from the start that Trump probably wouldn’t deliberately start a war, but that he might start one by accident. As it turns out, that was exactly right. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/10/how-to-blow-up-the-middle-east-in-one-week/

18. Jonathan Chait: Trump Is Being Impeached Because He Keeps Doing What Russia Wants

Pro-Kremlin proxy Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, proclaimed just before the election that "if President-elect Trump won, Russia would ‘drink champagne’ in anticipation of being able to advance its positions on Syria and Ukraine,” noted the U.S. intelligence community’s official assessment of Russian intervention in the presidential election. Vladimir Putin’s regime had developed a clear preference for Donald Trump, including and perhaps especially “his Russia-friendly positions on Syria and Ukraine.”

It is exactly those two issues that are playing out at the forefront of American politics right now. Trump is facing impeachment over his campaign to withhold diplomatic recognition and military aid from Ukraine while working covertly in an alliance with pro-Russian political actors in that country. Meanwhile, Trump suddenly and impulsively engineered a U-turn in American policy toward Syria to the direct benefit of Russia and its regional proxies.

The mystery of Russia’s influence over Trump has largely disappeared from public attention since the publication of the Mueller report. Yet now, as thousands of ISIS terrorists go free and a humanitarian crisis unfolds, whatever illicit or corrupt backchannel or leverage Russia may have still poses a great danger to American security. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/trump-impeachment-ukraine-syria-turkey-russia-putin.html

19. Max Boot: Can you take four more years of this?

Trump added to the chaos on Sunday night, Oct. 6, by impetuously giving Turkey a green light to invade northern Syria, thereby allowing Islamic State prisoners to escape and the United States’ Kurdish allies to be slaughtered. In one week, Trump undid five years of work to defeat Islamic State and foster a moderate, secular zone in Syria.

Seemingly unperturbed by the ethical and geopolitical disasters in his wake, Trump continued with his usual routine: golfing, watching TV (he urged his Twitter followers to vote for his former press secretary Sean Spicer on “Dancing With the Stars”), wallowing in maudlin self-pity (“Serial killers,” he tweeted, “get more Due Process than the Democrats give to the President”), and of course spewing bombastic insults. At a campaign rally in Minneapolis, Trump reviled not only Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) but also other Somali refugees who have found haven in Minnesota. Racist and xenophobic comments are Trump’s go-to moves when he’s feeling the political heat.

Note that this is an incomplete chronicle of only one week — albeit a week that is a strong contender (against some stiff competition) for the worst week of Trump’s entire presidency. Commentator Charlie Sykes notes that in 1980 the question was: “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?” In 2020 it will be: “Can you take another four years of this?” I can’t even take another week like last week — much less four more years. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/15/can-you-take-four-more-years-this/