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The time bomb inside the Trump administration is now going off
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/15/time-bomb-inside-trump-administration-is-now-going-off/
By Paul Waldman Opinion writer
Oct. 15, 2019 at 12:42 p.m. EDT
There was a telling moment in President Trump’s fateful call this summer with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when Trump said, “The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news.” Trump didn’t even know Marie Yovanovitch’s name; all he knew was that Rudy Giuliani wanted her gone, so he recalled her from her post.
Trump probably knows Yovanovitch’s name now. She’s one of a parade of government officials testifying before the impeachment inquiry, officials who simply by telling the truth may doom Trump to be a one-term president even if he survives impeachment. So the best way to understand how Trump is besieged may be by looking at the different kinds of people who have either had enough of him or are being forced by subpoena to share what they’ve seen.
The non-partisan professionals. While every president gets to appoint a few thousand officials (often called political appointees), they also inherit many times that number of civil servants, people who stay through Republican and Democratic administrations performing all the tasks of government. Some of these are so distant from the Oval Office that Trump probably doesn’t even know they exist (a crop yield analyst at the Department of Agriculture, say) but some of them are much closer to him, even working in the White House.
It’s these professionals who have been the most appalled at what they have seen Trump do. The most important of them is the whistleblower who sounded the alarm on the Ukraine scandal. Yovanovitch is another; she apparently lost her job because her efforts to help Ukraine overcome corruption drew the ire of Rudy Giuliani and his associates, who were seeking to make the country more corrupt so they could cash in.
William Taylor, who has been running U.S. diplomacy in Ukraine since Yovanovitch’s departure, is another career Foreign Service officer who has done immense damage to Trump. “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor said in a text that has now become key evidence in establishing the quid pro quo Trump set for Ukraine.
There are other career professionals whose names we’re now learning, since they will likely be called to testify. Michael McKinley, who recently resigned as a top adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. George Kent, the State Department official in charge of Ukraine, who testified Tuesday. And there may be more to come.
</snip>
By Paul Waldman Opinion writer
Oct. 15, 2019 at 12:42 p.m. EDT
There was a telling moment in President Trump’s fateful call this summer with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when Trump said, “The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news.” Trump didn’t even know Marie Yovanovitch’s name; all he knew was that Rudy Giuliani wanted her gone, so he recalled her from her post.
Trump probably knows Yovanovitch’s name now. She’s one of a parade of government officials testifying before the impeachment inquiry, officials who simply by telling the truth may doom Trump to be a one-term president even if he survives impeachment. So the best way to understand how Trump is besieged may be by looking at the different kinds of people who have either had enough of him or are being forced by subpoena to share what they’ve seen.
The non-partisan professionals. While every president gets to appoint a few thousand officials (often called political appointees), they also inherit many times that number of civil servants, people who stay through Republican and Democratic administrations performing all the tasks of government. Some of these are so distant from the Oval Office that Trump probably doesn’t even know they exist (a crop yield analyst at the Department of Agriculture, say) but some of them are much closer to him, even working in the White House.
It’s these professionals who have been the most appalled at what they have seen Trump do. The most important of them is the whistleblower who sounded the alarm on the Ukraine scandal. Yovanovitch is another; she apparently lost her job because her efforts to help Ukraine overcome corruption drew the ire of Rudy Giuliani and his associates, who were seeking to make the country more corrupt so they could cash in.
William Taylor, who has been running U.S. diplomacy in Ukraine since Yovanovitch’s departure, is another career Foreign Service officer who has done immense damage to Trump. “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor said in a text that has now become key evidence in establishing the quid pro quo Trump set for Ukraine.
There are other career professionals whose names we’re now learning, since they will likely be called to testify. Michael McKinley, who recently resigned as a top adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. George Kent, the State Department official in charge of Ukraine, who testified Tuesday. And there may be more to come.
</snip>
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