Oct 7, 2019 4 min read

The plot thickens.

It can’t get much thicker, but President Trump is a plot-thickening machine.

He’s not only admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to do his dirty political work for him, but he’s also asked China to perform the same skullduggery.

But at the same time, he’s denying he’s done anything wrong.

He’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. There are pictures of him with his hand in the cookie jar. He’s admitting it might be his hand, but he’s swearing the rest of him wasn’t in town that day.

To make matters worse, he wants everybody to believe that it was really Joe Biden’s hand, not his, that was in that cookie jar.

Trump has gotten so good at blaming everybody for his own, obvious shortcomings – that his fellow Republicans believe anything he says.

Not only that, there’s a revealing Monmouth University poll that seems to indicate that Republicans are so invested in Trump’s innocence, they’ll even believe he’s done nothing wrong, even when he openly admits he’s done something wrong.

The pollster asked Republicans only, did they think Trump asked the president of Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

For the record, Trump has admitted he’s done that. And the transcript of the call with the president of Ukraine says it, too.

Yet, 29% of the Republicans polled said he probably didn’t ask, and 31% of them answered they “don’t know” that he did.

In recent days, Trump has gone far beyond his usual irritability, to becoming a full-fledged man-child – seeking vengeance.

He’s blaming the news media, all Democrats (especially Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff) -, and everybody, everywhere for his current problems.

An impeachment (inquiry) doesn’t look good on him.

The source of his latest aggravation, of course, is that whistleblower who tipped off Congress about his desires to out Joe Biden and his son.

He may loathe whistleblowers now, but back in September of 2017, he held them in the highest regard.

“The United Nations must hold every level of management accountable; protect whistleblowers and focus on results rather than on process,” he said during a session at the U.N.

But nowadays, he feels that a whistleblower (the one that outed him) should be made to confront him in person.

He doesn’t understand that the law protects whistleblowers, so they don’t have to be made to appear before the people they accuse of engaging in wrongdoing.

Trump has railed against the anonymous sources of news reports the same way.

He doesn’t like the fact that there are people who wish to sound the alarm about his behaviors, but don’t want to become the targets of his highly personal attacks.

The news has always functioned that way.

It’s not clear that Trump understands that.

If he doesn’t, you can squeeze that into the boatload full of things he doesn’t understand.

It’s a never-ending, free-flowing, geyser of faulty logic.

He claims that all of the whistleblower’s information is “secondhand.”

In the whistleblower’s complaint, it clearly states that he or she did have information from a half dozen officials that informed them, but they did have firsthand knowledge of some of the information.

Last Wednesday, Trump showed he’d had enough of the serious questions he’s ill-equipped to answer.

He went on a daylong tirade, in which reporters became the victims of his bad temper.

I’ve seen this stuff before.

At bedtime.

With 5-year-olds not wanting to go night-night.

We could be in for months of this.

We can expect all manner of ill-manners coming from the chief occupant of the White House.

And if you think there’s upheaval now, watch as the 2020 election season heats up.

Especially since there’s an ever-increasing number of polls that indicate the public is in full support of impeaching, and even removing Trump from office.

Hardly any of those polls reflected that before Pelosi’s announcement to commence an impeachment inquiry on September 24th.

We can expect lots of Trump tirades.

Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.