Trump attacks the facts to survive the political trial against him

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Washington (CNN) - Donald Trump seeks to survive the impeachment in the same way he built his powerful presidency: attacking the facts and seeking to expand the limitations of the office accused of abusing him.

The day the Democrats proposed two articles of political judgment against him, the president and his flatterers threw a new fog to hide the evidence that incriminates him.

The president also issued a mocking defense of his conduct at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday night, arguing that the charges he abused power and obstructed Congress "are not even a crime."

“Everyone said this is a political trial. It is the lightest political trial in the history of our country, by far. It's not even a political trial, ”said Trump.

Meanwhile, the secretary of Justice, William Barr, repeated his role taking out his chief of problems, dismissing the surveillance report of his own department that discredited Trump's repeated claim that a "deep" coup d'etat tried to overthrow him. Barr also gave new life to another of Trump's conspiracy theories: that the FBI's investigation in Russia was unjustified and rooted in political prejudices by Obama administration officials.

"I think our nation turned on its head for three years, I think, based on a completely false narrative that was largely promoted and promoted by an irresponsible press," Barr said Tuesday in an interview with NBC News.

• Donald Trump, fourth president in US history who are charged for political trial

The comments reflected the Trump government's tendency to divert condemnatory facts and create new narratives that the president and his fans find more attractive.

Trump's never-ending stream of misinformation, half-truths and conspiracy theories seems designed to confuse voters and create ambiguity and uncertainty about the outcome of the investigations in a way that leaves even the nearest observer insecure about the facts.

An expert in the work of such propagandists is the former world chess champion and Russian political dissident Garry Kasparov.

"They know they can exhaust people, deplete critical thinking," Kasparov told Anderson Cooper of CNN last week.

“I always call Putin a trader of doubts. But now that I see what is happening in the United States, it is when only the Republicans managed to transform the entire political process into this alternative reality. It's like a world after the truth. ”

Avalanche of Attacks

For Trump, it all started in the early hours of his government when he then sent press secretary Sean Spicer on a mission to fool journalists about the size of the crowd that attended his oath.

According to the latest count of The Washington Post, Trump has made more than 13,400 false or misleading claims during his presidency.

Trump's relentless torrent of attacks, on Twitter and on camera, amplified by conservative media, has helped isolate him from the consequences of his actions.

Although former special prosecutor Robert Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia, he did find alarming evidence that the president expected to benefit from meddling in the Russian elections. But Trump's verbal flood politicized the once-impeccable public reputation of the former FBI director and helped blur his findings and sting his final impact.

The president is using the same tactic in the investigation of political trial and has had partial success in drowning out the consequences of condemning testimony about his pressure on Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden.

The relentless wave of misinformation complicates the task of Democrats seeking to build a public case against the president. And it shapes a new narrative that Trump supporters and media cheerleaders can buy and decorate.

That is what happens when Republicans like Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Louisiana Senator John Kennedy spread conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference in U.S. elections in 2016. They not only reflect Trump's strength of Republican control over Republican voters and the ability to get legislators who obey the rules, but are erasing the public record.

Given such a falsification of the head, the failure of the Democrats to convince Republicans of Trump's mistakes does not seem surprising.

• House Democrats will present two charges of political trial against Trump

Barr and the almighty presidency

Another parallel between the climax of the Mueller report and the findings published by the inspector general of the Department of Justice Michael Horowitz in the FBI investigation in Russia is in Barr's role.

In both cases, the attorney general downplayed the most damaging aspects of the report for Trump and highlighted the highlights that best fit the political narrative of the president.

And with the Horowitz report, Barr went one step further, stating that his own investigation, conducted by federal prosecutor John Durham, will offer a more definitive version of the decisions taken by the FBI in the Russian investigation.

“(Horowitz) is definitely not deciding that there was no bias. I think that's why we have Durham, ”Barr said Tuesday.

His comments raise doubts about his independence and that of Durham and could lead him to the claim that he is relying on the investigation to provide a more acceptable finding for the president.

Barr's return to the spotlight throws an idea of ​​a more subtle tactic that the president is using to avoid political judgment: his concept that there are few limits to his allowed actions.

The secretary of justice is enthusiastic about the concept of an almighty presidency. He effectively auditioned for work in an unsolicited memo to the White House that attacked Mueller's theory about the obstruction of justice.

On Tuesday, Barr rejected the second political trial article drafted by the Democrats, arguing that Trump was in his power to reject multiple witnesses and document requests based on a claim of "absolute immunity."

"I don't think it's the case where someone, including a branch of government, is asserting a legal privilege that they have under the law that constitutes an obstruction," Barr said.

In many cases, Trump and his defenders do not present a detailed account of the facts of the political trial case. They simply argue that everything Trump did was within his rights.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, for example, said on Tuesday: "The president will address these false charges in the Senate and expects to be completely exonerated, because he did nothing wrong."

It should be noted that this version of a hyper-powerful executive who destroyed the power structures of the Washington establishment was what helped Trump win at the White House and retains a strong appeal to his followers.

The call at the center of the political trial

Trump's double-edged tactic to fight political judgment with falsehoods and hoarding power is best illustrated with the key evidence of the case: the approximate transcription of the call to the White House with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

By boasting that the conversation is "perfect," Trump is persuading Americans about what is in the transcript.

Democrats in the political trial investigation point out that Trump asks Zelensky for a "favor" after he mentions future US arms purchases. Trump also asks the Ukrainian president to talk with Barr and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani about investigations into conspiracy theories about Ukraine's participation in the 2016 elections and his potential 2020 rival Biden and his son Hunter's business in Kiev

Several officials testified before the televised hearings of the Intelligence Commission that they were concerned about the call and its constitutional implications.

But in describing the call as "perfect," Trump also implicitly argues that he is perfectly within his rights as president to pressure a foreign leader for a political favor.

Such an interpretation of the role of the presidency suggests that there are few limits to the authority of the office, and that such behavior is beyond the power of Congress to request accounts from a commander in chief.

"He has obstructed Congress at every stage," said Democratic representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who is part of the House Judicial Commission.

“He said that Article Two (of the Constitution) gives him the power to do what he wants. We can't let that happen, ”Jayapal told Jake Tapper of CNN in“ The Lead. ”

Political judgment