The result was a historic test for America’s institutions and the very durability of its democracy.
Trump came into office uncertain about how to operate the machinery of government and tolerated to some degree the efforts of his top advisers to influence him. John Kelly, Jim Mattis, Don McGahn, Rex Tillerson, and others tried to tutor him about the three branches of government and the constitutional balance of powers. They tried to temper his rash impulses. They tried to coach him about his sacred duty as leader of the world’s most powerful nation to always put country first.
Over time, however, Trump had systematically dispensed with these human guardrails. And by the time Trump deputized Giuliani to be his political avenger by running a shadow foreign policy with the Ukrainians, the adults were no longer there to stop or even to warn the president about the dangers of doing so, for they had been replaced by willing enablers. Trump had grown increasingly emboldened to make his own decisions and to enforce them. “It’s very easy actually to work with me. You know why it’s easy? Because I make all the decisions,” Trump quipped on September 12, reflecting on John Bolton’s abrupt exit as national security adviser.
Trump appeared to head into a tailspin of volatility as the impeachment probe gained traction. In early October, he suddenly decided, against the counsel of his national security team, to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, abandoning America’s Kurdish allies. The commander in chief’s decision may have distracted the public from his conduct, but it was calamitous. It eased the way for Turkey to launch a deadly offensive that empowered Bashar al-Assad’s regime, thrust the Middle East into turmoil, and raised grave new doubts about America’s leadership around the world.
Former senior administration officials and many Republican lawmakers watched with horror. Earlier in Trump’s term, one of these officials explained, “There was more of an ethos in the place of trying to help the institution and to help enlighten him rather than simply to execute his marching orders.” Now, this official said, “I’m not sure there are many, if any, left who view as their responsibility trying to help educate, moderate, enlighten and persuade—or even advise in many cases.
“There’s a new ethos: This is a presidency of one,” this official added. “It’s Trump unleashed, unchained, unhinged.”
Indeed, Trump seemed unmoored at the bipartisan revolt over his callous abandonment of Kurdish allies in Syria and the U.S. military’s strategic presence in the region. He spoke illogically and inconsistently, calling Syria a place where warring factions could “play with a lot of sand,” threatening to torpedo Turkey’s economy if he so chose, and boasting of his “great and unmatched wisdom.”
Trump’s solipsism threatened to become his undoing. In Ukraine, the president’s determination to pursue his personal benefit even at the expense of the nation, coupled with his egocentric obsession with winning and exacting revenge on his enemies, led him into trouble.
By the fall of 2019, Trump was acting as if he were convinced of his own invincibility, believing that he could wield the vast powers of his office in pursuit of his personal and political goals without accountability. He genuinely believed that his interests came first and that, as president, he was above the law. Trump had good reason to think so, having sidestepped any legal punishment after the Mueller investigation produced extensive evidence that he had worked to block and thwart the Russia probe. Trump skirted penalties for a battery of other offenses, ranging from past racist, misogynistic, or otherwise bigoted comments to accusations of self-dealing in violation of the emoluments provision of the Constitution to blocking Congress’s ability to conduct oversight.
As the legislative branch scrutinized his actions, Trump looked in the mirror and saw no wrongdoing. Rather, he nursed a deep and inescapable sense of persecution and self-pity, casting himself as a victim in a warped reality and alleging that Democrats and the media were conspiring to perpetuate hoaxes, defraud the public, and stage a coup. This mind-set followed the historical pattern of authoritarian leaders creating a cult of victimization to hold on to power and to justify their repressive agendas.
“We haven’t seen anything like this in my lifetime. He appears to be daring the rest of the political system to stop him—and if it doesn’t, he’ll go further,” William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution, told The Washington Post’s Robert Costa.
“What we’re discovering is that the Constitution is not a mechanism that runs by itself,” Galston added. “Ultimately, we are a government of men and not law. The law has no force without people who are willing to enforce it.”
As autumn bore on, the question facing the Congress and indeed the country was not whether Trump had done anything wrong. The emerging fact pattern plainly showed a quid pro quo with Ukraine and a White House scheme to cover it up. The question was who might enforce the Constitution.
When Alexander Hamilton wrote the two essays in The Federalist devoted to the idea of impeachment, Trump was the kind of president he had in mind—a populist demagogue who would foment frenzy, pander to prejudices, feed off chaos, and secretly betray the American people in the accumulation of power—according to Hamilton’s biographer Ron Chernow.
Two hundred thirty-two years after Hamilton put pen to paper, Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine forced a reckoning. Would the system the Founding Fathers imagined withstand the pressures of this moment? Or would Trump prevail yet again, another pursuit of justice stymied by his sheer political force and the fealty of his followers?
As Congress considered impeaching President Richard Nixon in 1974, most Republicans defended their president’s claim that he was the victim of a political witch hunt. But the decision of one Republican congressman marked a turning point. Maryland’s Lawrence J. Hogan became the first Republican to side with the Democrats and vote for all three articles of impeachment against Nixon. He said he wished “with all my heart” he could say the president had not committed impeachable offenses, but he knew the truth was that Nixon had. He was chastened by history.
Republicans now faced the same choice Hogan did forty-five years before. They had held their tongues in fear after so many Trump transgressions. They, too, had called the investigations into the president witch hunts. They had made quiet calculations about when, if ever, they might take a stand. Yet the time was nearing to consider not merely the judgment of their party or the punishment from their president, but the fate of history.
Acknowledgments
We first acknowledge the people who were willing to share their experiences from this period. We cannot name them here, but each aided us immeasurably in telling the full story of this presidency. We thank them. Some struggled with a difficult choice: to honor the duty they felt from government service to keep confidences and show respect for a sitting president, or to follow an internal compass urging them to help document these episodes to the public for the benefit of history.