Just How Far Will Republicans Go for Trump?
The House’s public impeachment hearings will test whether Donald Trump was right when he declared that his political support is so rock-solid that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without consequence—and what it means for a bitterly divided nation if he was.
Even some Republican political professionals privately acknowledge that the coming weeks of testimony, which began with a devastatingly detailed account yesterday from William Taylor, Trump’s own acting ambassador to Ukraine, are likely to present an unflattering picture of the president. They’ll bring to a potentially large television audience the testimony from a sober procession of national-security officials in Trump’s own government, who’ll describe how the administration tried to manipulate Ukraine.
And yet most observers (and participants) are dubious that the proceedings will significantly alter the balance of public opinion over Trump and impeachment. “I don’t think we are going to have this monumental shift,” Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, the chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, told me. In several recent national polls, including those from and , just under half of Americans said they already support Trump’s impeachment and removal.
