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Imagine a man who is accused of a crime and faces a trial. Imagine the man has connived to prevent testimony from several key witnesses, and that he has met privately with the jury foreman who promises openly that he will work hand-in-glove with the accused man during the trial. It would not be a huge deductive leap to conclude the man fears a fair trial, because he is guilty.

That is precisely what President Trump has done with the impeachment proceedings in Congress. It's yet another sign among many that he is guilty beyond any question of trying to blackmail Ukraine into subverting the 2020 election.

To review, President Trump withheld about $400 million in military aid to Ukraine until its government promised to start a fake investigation into the Biden family. We know this because the aid was indeed held back until the scheme came to light, and from testimony describing the effort from acting Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, National Security Council Ukraine specialist Alexander Vindman, and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, who actually participated in the plot. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself implicitly confirmed Trump pressured him to smear the Bidens indeed, he was going to go along with it in despair until the plot became public.

(There is also no evidence Biden actually abused his power as vice president as the conspirators allege on the contrary, his efforts to remove a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor made scrutiny of his son's business dealings there more likely, not less.)

The president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani has admitted to demanding Ukraine look into Biden, and Trump's acting White House Chief of Staff has also acknowledged the whole scheme. Trump himself has all but admitted his guilt, saying in response to accusations that he demanded Ukraine dig up dirt on Biden that "[I]t's very important to talk about corruption. if you don't talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?" The memorandum the White House released describing the call between Trump and Zelensky also contains an unmistakable veiled blackmail demand.

That is unquestionably why Trump has prevented his top officials from testifying before the House impeachment inquiry. Giuliani, Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Vice President Pence were all party to the conspiracy, while former National Security Adviser John Bolton was (oddly) dead against it, according to other testimony. Yet Trump has prevented any of them from testifying before the House and when Bolton said he would be happy to come before the Senate, Trump quickly said he would try to restrict what Bolton could say through claims of executive privilege.

Trump claims that, no, he would really like all his close associates to testify, but the welfare of future presidents prevents it. "I am fighting for future presidents and the office of the president. Other than that, I would actually like people to testify," he tweeted. This is absolutely preposterous. In addition to the gigantic conflict of interest here, and the fact that he lies pretty much every time he opens his mouth, Trump is probably the most nakedly selfish person ever to occupy the White House (and that is saying a lot). He's a guy who ran out the budget of his own bodyguard service nickel-and-diming them for staying at his own properties and renting his own golf carts. One would struggle in vain to recall a single instance in which Trump has ever taken the slightest move to benefit anyone outside himself or his immediate family.

At any rate, after a president is impeached, the Senate conducts a trial (which requires a two-thirds vote to convict and remove him from office). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised on Sean Hannity's Fox News show which is akin to Saddam Hussein's state propaganda TV except Baghdad Bob had considerably more concern for the appearance of neutrality that: "Everything I do during this, Im coordinating with the White House counsel ... There will be no difference between the presidents position and our position as to how to handle this to the extent that we can." The fix is in.

McConnell also recently met privately with Trump to discuss impeachment, and announced on January 7 that he is prepared to conduct the trial without any agreement with House Democrats about calling witnesses. He implicitly argued that it would be breaking Senate precedent to call witnesses which would be true except for the niggling detail that witnesses were called in every single one of the previous 15 Senate impeachment proceedings. (Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has refused to send over the articles of impeachment until there is such an agreement.) Any trial run by McConnell is so obviously going to be a sham that even a couple Republican senators have expressed concern about a fair process.

This is not the behavior of an innocent man who wants to clear his name. Trump whines that the impeachment is an unfair "Democrat Scam," but as we have seen, in reality the process is heavily biased towards him the Senate is controlled by Trump's shameless allies, and it is virtually impossible to imagine them voting to remove him from office no matter what came to light at the trial. No, this is what someone does when he wants to avoid any discussion of his flagrant abuses of power or Republican senators having to take embarrassing votes revealing themselves as amoral political hacks. The man is guilty.

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Donald Trump is behaving like the guiltiest man alive - The Week

Brittany GreesonGetty Images

At this point, thanks to the almighty curve on which we as a nation have decided to grade Donald Trump, American president, Thursday night's yell-fest in Toledo was just another Very Presidential Event. The world's most powerful man demonized his political opponents as enemies of the state because they want Congress to have some role in making less-and-less-theoretical war on Iran. He called members of the assembled press "sick," and again suggested the free press has no legitimate role in our democratic republic if it fails to support his version of reality. He again characterized Hispanic immigrants as violent criminals, MS-13 "animals" against whom any measures are presumably justified. He lied, and also threw out more evidence-free claims about imminent attacks that justified his assassination of Iran's second most important figure. He yelled, and not for the first time, that the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has a "pencil neck." This is all considered normal.

But there was one moment that proved particularly revealing. In the course of these explosions of, uh, patriotism, El Jefe tends to drift on and off the script provided to him by his lackeyschiefly, the Santa Monica Wormtongue Stephen Miller. In the course of one such drift last night, he railed against Democrats on-script and then jumped off to, for perhaps the first time in his life, reflect on what he's doing.

Let's just get a transcript here.

You might say he's just joking around, but the blas way he recites the "stuff" he says about Democrats points to it being a kind of bit. It's a routine. Unlike Miller and unlike the people in the crowd, Donald Trump is no true believer. He's a vector for forces that long predate him, the fear and resentment of a changing world that has long blasted out of Fox News and talk radio. He knows what people want to hear and he says it. He thinks something will help him so he says it. Democrats? Sure, call 'em vicious and horrible crime-wanters.

It's times like these that you remember Donald Trump does not actually care about any of this stuff. He does not care about illegal immigrationhe's employed undocumented immigrants at his properties and on construction projects. He does not care about these people in the crowd who support him so enthusiastically, one of whom he shouted out for booing the very mention of Central American countries. Everybody's a mark or an enemy. Do they love me, or do they not love me? The Democrats have chosen to oppose him, so now he'll say whatever's necessary to destroy them. Meanwhile, can you imagine what the Liberal Media would do if Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren called Republicans "vicious, horrible people" who want crime and chaos? The Washington Post fact-checker needles Sanders for intricate healthcare policy claims that...are true.

Is Trump's rapacious cynicism better or worse than being a true believer? I suppose we're about to find out. The run-up to the 2018 elections, where Trump himself was not even on the ballot, were incredibly ugly. Imagine what's about to come over the next 11 months.

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Another Insane Trump Rant, But This One Had a Revealing Moment - Esquire.com

Columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused President Donald Trump of raping her two decades ago, won a key victory on Thursday in her defamation suit against the president.

The judge presiding over the case rejected Trump's argument that Carroll can't sue him in New York because he lives in Washington and denied Trump's motion to delay discovery.

"There is not even a tweet, much less an affidavit by defendant Trump in support of his motion," the judge wrote.

Carroll's lawyer, Roberta "Robbie" Kaplan, said she was "pleased, yet unsurprised" by the decision.

"We look forward to moving ahead and proving that Donald Trump lied when he told the world that he did not rape our client and had not even met her," Kaplan said in a statement.

Carroll, who went public with her rape allegation against Trump last June, celebrated the development on Thursday, tweeting, "WE MOVE AHEAD!!"

The longtime advice columnist accused Trump of violently sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. She accused him of "lunging" at her, forcibly kissing her, and forcing his penis inside her.

Trump has aggressively denied the allegation and claimed never to have even met Carroll, though a photo shows the two chatting at a party a few years before the alleged assault. The president accused Carroll of using the story to sell her memoir and insulted her by saying she wasn't his "type."

Carroll's suit alleges that Trump hurt her reputation with tweets and other statements accusing her of lying and otherwise attacking her.

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham previously told Insider that "the lawsuit is frivolous and the story is a fraud just like the author."

Trump is facing another defamation suit from an ex-Apprentice contestant, Summer Zervos, who was one of several women to accuse him of sexual misconductin the days leading up to the 2016 election, saying he groped her twiceduring a business meeting in 2007. Trump denied the allegation,calling her claims "fake news."

Ashley Collman contributed reporting.

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Trump suffered a key loss in a defamation case brought by the columnist who accused him of rape - Business Insider

He's pro-Brexit, but President Donald Trump is anti-Megxit.

The president on Friday weighed in on the decision by Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, to "step back" from Buckingham Palace, telling Fox News' Laura Ingraham, "I think it's sad."

Trump then sang the praises of Queen Elizabeth II, who was reportedly "hurt" by the couple's stunning surprise announcement.

Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.

"She's a great woman. She's never made a mistake, if you look. She's had like a flawless time," Trump said.

Asked if her grandson Harry should return to the royal fold, Trump said, "I don't want to go into the whole thing. I just have such respect for the queen. I don't think this should be happening to her."

While Trump has praised the queen in the past, he's also been critical of the Duchess.

During an interview with a British paper last year, Trump called Meghan "nasty" because of comments she'd made about him during the 2016 election. The then-Meghan Markle had called Trump "misogynistic" and "divisive."

"She said she would move to Canada if you got elected. It turned out she moved to Britain," the interviewer told Trump during a visit to the United Kingdom last June.

"There are a lot of people moving here. So, what can I say? No, I didn't know that she was nasty," Trump said.

Asked if it was "good" that there was now an American in the royal family, Trump said, "I think it's nice, and I'm sure she'll do excellently." "She'll be very good," he said.

Meghan was on maternity leave during Trump's visit, and did not attend the state banquet in his honor at Buckingham Palace.

Dareh Gregorian is a politics reporter for NBC News.

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Trump weighs in on Harry and Meghan royal split, defends the queen: 'I think it's sad' - NBC News

On October 6, 1980 Donald Trump was interviewed by Rona Barrett, one of Americas most famous gossip columnists, on NBC. It was several weeks before Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the presidential election and near the end of the Iran hostage crisis in which the Iranian regime took 52 American diplomats and citizens prisoner after the embassy was stormed and then held them for 444 days.

It was a long and meandering interview about Trumps story to date (he was then 34). About half way though, Barrett asked Trump if he could make America perfect how would he do it. Trump replied that America should really be a country that gets the respect of other countries. The exchange continued:

Donald Trump: .The Iranian situation is a case in point. That they hold our hostages is just absolutely, and totally ridiculous. That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror, and I dont think theyd do it with other countries. I honestly dont think theyd do it with other countries.

Rona Barrett: Obviously youre advocating that we should have gone in there with troops, et cetera, and brought our boys out like Vietnam.

Donald Trump: I absolutely feel that, yes. I dont think theres any question, and there is no question in my mind. I think right now wed be an oil-rich nation, and I believe that we should have done it, and Im very disappointed that we didnt do it, and I dont think anybody would have held us in abeyance.

As historians Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman have observed, this interview is the first known comment by Trump on U.S. foreign policy.

Fast forward to January 4, 2020, a day after the U.S. drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani. Trump tweeted:

One of the puzzles about Trumps strike on Soleimani is why he did it and what he will do next. His administration has pursued a very hawkish policy on Iran beginning with the travel ban, tough new sanctions, walking away from the Iran nuclear deal, and ratcheting up pressure in the year that followed. But, in recent months Trump tacked in a different direction. He did not fire back after the September attacks on Saudi oil facilities. He has professed not to care about the Middle East beyond the oil and ISIS. He seems to want to avoid war, particularly in an election year. And, he was desperate for talks with the Iranian leadership, going so far as to try to surprise the Iranians by dialing into a meeting between President Rouhani and President Macron on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

The historical record offers an answer. The Iranian revolution, which led to the hostage crisis and an energy crisis, was one of Trumps formative experiences in thinking about Americas role in the world. In the years that followed, he became obsessed with the symbolism of respect (and the acquisition of oil). He was furious that allies did not pay fealty to the United States. He was outraged when foreign leaders did not meet the American president at their plane. The only time he became frustrated with Vladimir Putin in office was when he looked as if he was disrespecting Trumps military strength such as when Russian planes buzzed Americas ships or when the Russians produced a map showing Mar-a-Lago within range of their nuclear weapons. Trump does not hate Iran per se his desire for talks is evidence of that but he does have an obsession with avoiding a humiliation. For Trump, the embassy protests looked like a mash-up of 1979 with Benghazi the ultimate challenge to his own perception of himself as a strongman.

There are contradictory reports of the decisionmaking process around the Soleimani strike. Some reports say that the Pentagon added the option as a throw-away to make the other option seem more reasonable. A report in the Washington Post says Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper had been trying to get Trump to sign on for some time. The Post report may be an attempt by Pompeo and Esper to claim credit and defuse charges of incompetence, but in any event, a consistent element of all reports is that Trump did not sign on to the strike until after the Iranian backed protests outside the embassy.

Trump often lashes out at people after he thinks they criticized him, even if a fight does not serve his interests think about his attack on the parents of the fallen U.S. soldier Humayun Khan or his cruel comment about Debbie Dingel. He has the same reaction to actions that undermine his own image of America as a strong and unrivaled nation while he is at the helm. He would almost certainly not have responded the same way if Iran had continued to hit U.S. allies or to make strategic gains in Iraq.

The killing of Soleimani is a strategic error. It provides short-term gratification upon the demise of a man responsible for the deaths of many Americans, but it damages U.S. interests in the region and beyond. However, many of the downsides mean very little to Trump. He does not care that Iraq might kick U.S. troops out as long as they pay him back for the base. Likewise for Iran abrogating elements of the nuclear deal. He does not mind that this undermines the protest movement in Iraq or in Iran. He cannot envisage the return of ISIS. He couldnt care less that that the Saudis now feel in imminent danger and want a de-escalation. As for international law and creating a precedent for targeted killings of government officials, forget it.

And yet, having killed the second most important person in Iran, Trump now finds himself in a bind. If Iran reacts by attacking Americans, Trump will feel compelled to respond, but that runs the risk of the wider war that he wants to avoid. So he is trying to put the genie back in the bottle by threatening fire and fury if Iran retaliates, just as he is bombastic domestically when in a tight spot. It is unlikely to succeed and, paradoxically, makes all-out war with Iran more likely. In the Barrett interview, Trump spoke about a sparkle of war in the Middle East. The phrase is an apt one to sum up Trumps approach to foreign policy he likes the sparkle and hopes others will be scared into submission. But bluster does not always work.

All-out war between the United States and Iran is unlikely, primarily because it would not serve Irans interests. Iran may bide its time, target U.S. allies instead of Americans, or press the United States in other ways (such as by forcing it out of Iraq). If it does directly attack Americans, Trump might try to wriggle off the hook he has hoisted himself upon.

However, its easy to imagine how the situation could easily spiral into a war. There is little doubt that Trump is uniquely ill-suited to be a commander-in-chief during war time. He has no attention span, does not process information normally, is particularly prone to bad advice, and is deeply insecure. He has one of the weakest and least experienced national security teams since the United States became a global power. He will be fighting this war without many allies. Even the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was careful to distance himself from Trumps drone strike. Given his demonstrated proclivity for war crimes, if he were to decisively win the war, he would very likely do so in a way that would leave a permanent stain on the nations honor.

Trumps Iran crisis fits perfectly within his narrative arc. His administration has had three identifiable phases. The first was the age of constraint, as the so-called Axis of Adults shaped and limited Trumps options. The second was the age of hubris as Trump got rid of anyone who stood up to him so he could act as he wished this came in two variants, maximum pressure and deal-making. The third is the reckoning as Trump is forced to face the consequences and contradictions of his own actions. There have been inklings of this third phase for some time. It has now well and truly arrived.

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How Donald Trump thinks about Iran - Brookings Institution