Trump's shout-it-out-loud strategy
Illustration: Alex Wong/Getty Images; Aïda Amer/Axios
The Trump administration is testing a novel strategy for dealing with controversy and possible illegalities: Pretend you have nothing to hide by blurting it out loud.
Why it matters: President Trump and his aides and allies seem to think that by being unapologetic and admitting things that would have touched off blazing scandals just a few years ago, they can move the goalposts of what's acceptable to Republicans and the public.
We had two doozies yesterday:
1) Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney just said it out loud at a White House briefing, connecting Trump's release of Ukraine aid with an investigation of corruption that included U.S. Democrats.
- ABC's Jonathan Karl pressed: "[T]o be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo. It is: Funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happens as well."
- Mulvaney replied: "We do that all the time with foreign policy."
- This, of course, pulverized Trump's "no quid pro quo" mantra.
- The subtext of the pivot was: Own it. So what? He's allowed. He's the president. There's no coverup.
- Republicans on the Hill couldn't believe it. A House GOP committee source to Axios' Alayna Treene: Mulvaney's "diatribe has blown up the [Gordon] Sondland interview — Democrats are referring to the transcript mid-interview. WTF."
- After headlines like "White House admits quid pro quo over Ukraine aid," Mulvaney tried to walk back the admission with a statement blaming the press: "Once again, the media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump. Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election."
2) Amid rising charges of cronyism, Trump awarded one of his own resorts, Trump National Doral near Miami, the lucrative contract for next June's G7 summit.
- The Miami Herald calls it "a surge of off-season business for the lagging property."
- Republicans would have howled "self-dealing" if a Democrat did anything like that.
We've seen the shout-it-out-loud strategy before:
- Trump released the rough transcript of the Ukraine call, the very event that touched off the formal impeachment investigation, and called it "perfect."
- Trump, accused of asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, went on camera and asked Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens.
- Trump says he doesn’t care if Russia and Syrian President Bashar Assad move in and take America’s place in northern Syria.
Between the lines ... Last week's gambit was: "There is no whistleblower. There is no impeachment." From nothing to everything. Welcome to "The Trump Show."
Go deeper: Trump’s playbook for planting suspicion