If Trump wants to "testify," force him to take the chair where he can't control the narrative

Donald Trump has offered to either present written answers or testify personally before the Congressional impeachment hearings, following Rep. Peter Welch’s half-joking retort to Rep. Jim Jordan’s desire to have the “guy who started it all” to come forward. Jordan was referring to the original whistleblower on Trump’s July 25 call in which he “asked” Ukraine’s President Zelensky to do him a “favor” and investigate the Bidens. It has been reported that Zelensky was going to announce the “quid pro quo” in a scheduled interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, but backed out when the whistleblower complaint erupted. Welch suggested that Trump was “welcome to take a seat right there,” referring to the witness table. 

It is of course just a bunch of braggadocio for Trump to make such an offer, since he seems to think he can talk his way out of anything. The trial of Roger Stone ended in his conviction on seven counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and witness tampering, and one of the revelations of the trial is that Trump lied to the Mueller investigation about his foreknowledge of the WikiLeaks dumps and his “interest” in when they would be released for maximum political benefit, information in which Stone seemed to be in a position to know. Democrats on the impeachment panel obviously would be “happy” to have Trump come around and “explain” how everyone is a “liar” except him. 

It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that is certainly true of Trump, who answered to no one in his corrupt dealings as a “businessman.” Let us not forget that his principle familiar, Stephen Miller, has said repeatedly on news shows that Trump’s “power” will not be “questioned.” William Barr, for another, claims that he isn’t worried about his “legacy” because “everyone dies” and he won’t have to worry about how history judges him; he clearly is not “worried,” because in a recent speech before the Federalist Society he, like Miller, defended Trump’s “right” to absolute power unfettered even by annoying court rulings. Trump’s immorality and criminality has of course filtered-down the ranks, with current and former staffers seemingly thinking they are “bulletproof” from any long-term consequences for their crimes. 

Take for example former Trump campaign assistant George Papadopoulus, who served just 12 days in jail for perjury; he plans to run for the California House seat vacated by Katie Hill (who received some unwanted attention for her bizarre “love life”), and he seems to think that voters will be quite happy to have a convicted felon and liar representing them. No doubt he is banking on Trump eventually pardoning him anyways, just like Trump did three members of the military who were either convicted of or awaiting trial for war crimes. And although the ADL is finally admitting that the evidence is there to “convict” Miller of being a racist white nationalist after another “dump” of his emails to the far-right media outlet Breitbart—even calling for his resignation—there is still some “upside” for the White House to still claim that Miller is not a racist, and the attacks on him are “anti-Semitic”: even now there are far-right Jewish groups who see nothing wrong with Miller’s racism and see him as a “mensch,” meaning a man of “honor” and “integrity.” I’ll get into that next week. 

Given this total absence of ethics and morality in Trump World, this is what I say about Trump’s “offer” to give testimony: Democrats should not accept anything from him in “writing,” because it will all be attorney-crafted lies anyways. Trump should be forced to prove that he isn’t the coward we all know he is and sit in the witness chair and be forced to answer questions put to him. He has told, what, 14,000 lies and falsehoods since he has taken office? That won’t change if he “takes the stand,” but this won’t be tweeting, this will be him not in control of the “narrative.” We all have seen and heard Trump when he is obliged to “explain” himself and his “decision-making” process: the mispronunciations, the made-up words, the incomprehensible sentences, the on-the-fly streams of alternate fact consciousness, the crudeness and vulgarity, the appealing to the worst in people. Let that be the lasting video image people have of this pathetic man while he takes his Republican defenders down with him into the abyss of history.