By Denny Gulino
THE WHITE HOUSE (MaceNews) – The rain finally arrived Tuesday afternoon, making the threatened evening appearance of a White House adviser on the driveway a pain in the neck for photographers and reporters who were already given the formal “lid” announcement by the press staff at 4:52 p.m., an “all clear” that meant nothing important is going to happen.
Will the official be welcomed by lights and cameras despite the approaching darkness and downpour? Will he be ignored? Will he even show up? We’ll have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, there were metaphorical raindrops falling on the heads of White House aides, none of them soothing.
There was that appearance by the Senate Majority Leader over on Capitol Hill. For a White House still coming to grips with the approaching impeachment, it was another message from beyond the moat that one more time foreshadowed difficult times ahead.
McConnell had already surprised last week when he told fellow Republicans of the intricacies of an impeachment trial that could last weeks. That dashed the lingering hope that he could finesse the trial, perhaps wind it up after a couple of days of pro-forma deliberations.
Now he’s saying, ““Unlike other processes in the Senate, the majority leader does not really have ball control here.” If not him. Who? The chief justice of the Supreme Court presides over the trial. Justice John Roberts, not a Trump nominee. “It wouldn’t be up to me,” McConnell said.
How long will the trial last? No one knows. When will it start? Ditto. House Democrats seem to be far from the stage of public hearings that will precede the impeachment vote, still interviewing behind closed doors.
The key interviewee Tuesday was the acting ambassador to Ukraine whose opening statement took an hour to read. He said he understood there was a quid pro quo, that delivery of the military assistance package as well as a visit with President Trump hinged on a public promise from the Ukraine president to investigate the firm that hired Joe Biden’s son.
Back to McConnell. He also said that President Trump’s oft-repeated account of the majority leader’s endorsement of that telephone call with Ukraine’s new president as perfectly proper was news to him. McConnell said he doesn’t remember saying anything like that. Was Trump lying? “You’ll have to ask him. I don’t recall any such conversation.”
Then there’s that Senate resolution opposing the president’s moves in Syria and asking him to rescind his invitation to Recep Tayyip Erdogan to visit the White House later in the year.
McConnell took to the Senate floor to support the resolution. “If not arrested, withdrawing from Syria will invite more of the chaos that breeds terrorism and creates a vacuum our adversaries will certainly fill.”
The House last week passed its version of the resolution with 129 Republican votes, 354-60, after which Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met, briefly, and then accused each other of a “meltdown.”
McConnell also cautioned that Turkey is a NATO ally, and can’t be treated like some terrorist state. Yet Erdogan should not have been given the opportunity to turn to Russia for help carving out that buffer zone from Kurdish-held territory, was the message.
So how did that meeting earlier in the day between Erdogan and Russia President Vladimir Putin turn out? Apparently Turkey and Russia forces will jointly patrol that buffer zone after making sure all the Kurdish fighters have left, which they reluctantly but non-violently seemed to be doing now that they have no choice.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley in the morning had said, “We expect that temporary ceasefire, that temporary de-escalation to transition into permanent by the end of the afternoon.”
So if the cease-fire becomes permanent, with the help of Russia, no problem? For McConnell and for a lot of other Senate Republicans, problem.
Spokesman Gidley was pressed into duty primarily to follow up President Trump’s tweet in which he said, “So someday, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights.”
The final line is what triggered Gidley’s follow-up: “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!”
As the day wore on, it seemed “lynching” was a bit of vitriol too much, even for some Republicans like Rep. Kevin McCarthy. He sympathized with Trump’s frustration but said he would not have used that word.
Trump himself, with no public appearances during the day, did not revisit his tweet.
“That’s not the language I would use,” the House minority leader said. “I don’t agree with that language. It’s pretty simple.” McConnell called it “an unfortunate choice of words.” South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, though, said he thought the word was perfectly appropriate.
Another tweet, the almost reflex kerfuffle that followed, seemed not nearly as significant as the larger question that by several accounts, the White House is wrestling with. Is a daily presidential tweet storm, castigating “Nervous Nancy” and “Shifty Schiff” and retweets like “I want to know about Hillary Clinton with the Dossier” going to be the only White House approach to the deepening impeachment effort?
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Reach this reporter at: denny@macenews.com