Last night, on a major US TV network there was a Trump ad about the "Witch Hunt" and ongoing impeachment proceedings.
It was unclear from the ad, if Trump's position is that he didn't take the actions reported by the whistle blower, or if he did but those actions were not illegal.
Can anyone clarify, the official Trump position on this?
I think the only sensible answer is "yes": he both denies that he did those actions and denies that they are illegal. At least from my reading of the news, he seems to be doing both at different times, depending on his audience and whims of the moment.
Given the quick release of the transcript of the phone call, it seems the official White House position is that the call happened as per the released transcript (Which the Ukrainian President has gone on the record as saying that he did not think anything was significantly altered on the released document) and the whistle blower's knowledge of the call and topics does line up. The disagreement is that the President's reason to withhold aid money was out of concern was with American involvement in Ukrainian Corruption, largely with respect to the 2016 election-meddling by foreign governments and the Bidens' connections to the Ukrainian Corruption.
So the actions described by the whistle blower happened, but they were not illegal as they were not motivated out of leveraging the Ukrainian government to dig dirt up on a political opponent, but in ensuring Ukrainian assistance in determining if any U.S. citizens were engaged in corrupt acts in the Ukrainian government, and that being a political opponent of the president does not grant you immunity from being investigated for a Federal Crime.
Please note that this is generalization of multiple different individuals working in the White House and for the President, and not the President himself specifically. The President is reliably capable of making poorly-worded statements that are limited to 140 characters at a time and can often be read with one of two meanings and often during moments of frustration. To attempt to keep it neutral (and cause I don't want to go through mountains of tweets) I will not discuss specific statements from Trump or the inevitable contradictory statements that later surfaced.
Trump uses the term "witch hunt" as a rhetorical device to refer to any investigations of him or the people around him. According to a Vox.com article:
Since assuming office, Trump has tweeted some variant of the phrase “WITCH HUNT!” more than 120 times in response to the Mueller investigation and critics including the “Fake News,” congressional Democrats, Hillary Clinton, various intelligence agencies, former President Obama, and “leakers” within the administration itself.
This was written a year ago, before the Mueller report was released or the current impeachment investigation. I wouldn't be surprised if his uses have more than doubled since then.
The article goes on to say
These tweets reflect the modern usage of the term — as a metaphor that delegitimizes an investigation by calling out the partisan biases and ideological motives underlying accusations of wrongdoing.
Trump's actual claims about what he's being accused of are very inconsistent. Sometimes he'll say that he didn't do it, other times he'll say that it isn't illegal or wrong. One of his spokesmen said about the Ukraine issue that it's done all the time in politics. And sometimes he just flat-out lies, like saying that the Mueller Report totally exonerated him.
The term "witch hunt" for political investigations entered the lexicon in reference to the McCarthy anti-communist hearings. Trump is trying to equate the narrow investigations into his activities to the sweeping accusations against thousands of government employees and public figures with liberal viewpoints.
Trump doesn't have a "position" on these allegations as such.
He is applying advice he received many years ago:
The whistleblower has alleged a serious wrongdoing by the president. Trump is applying the above advice by:
He is responding to the allegations by alternately:
As new information rises to the surface, his messaging to his base shifts focus to address it in an attempt to get out in front of the story. The White House formulates or reformulates its official position accordingly.
His "go-to" claim of a "witch hunt" is a claim that his political opponents have fabricated a case as a personal attack against him. It implies a lack of any substantive evidence, a partisan political motive, and that he, personally, is being made a victim.
The point of the impeachment proceedings is to expose the truth and, if the evidence leads there, right a wrong.
Usually (which is to say often but not always and certainly not without exception) when Trump talks about "the witch hunt", he is referring to the actions of the Democrats in the House of Representatives.
This link gives a cursory view of such statements.
So the way to understand this ad is to view it as the President's interpretation of how the House Democrats are treating this witness' testimony rather than as a statement about the content of the testimony itself.
