Come And Get Me

THE “ULTIMATE COUNTERPUNCHER,” TRUMP PREPARES FOR THE FIGHT OF HIS LIFE. WILL HIS LONGTIME PLAYBOOK FAIL HIM THIS TIME?

- Bill Powell

ON THE DAY HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI SAID she would allow an impeachment investigation to commence, Donald Trump at first was “gleefully defiant,” say two of his aides. He would release a transcript of his controversial phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, showing—as he put it in a press conference at the United Nations on September 25—that there was “no pressure” and no quid pro quo. He just wanted dirt from Ukraine about one of his main political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, but didn’t offer anything in return. What could be wrong with that?

When it became clear that the Ukraine controversy would become the centrepiece of an impeachment effort, his glee turned to anger, the aides say. And those who know Trump best know what that means: Here comes the counterattack. As Roger Stone, his longtime political consigliere—who now faces indictment as a result of the Robert Mueller probe—put it during the 2016 campaign: “He’s the ultimate counterpuncher. If you hit him, he’ll hit back and hit back hard. He doesn’t necessarily like starting fights, but if you pick a fight with him, he will fight back. Always.”

Trump as a “fighter” is one of the things that endeared him to his core supporters in 2016. It’s an image that has, for the most part, served him well politically: fighting the Chinese on trade, fighting to “drain the swamp” of the “Deep State” in Washington, fighting to limit illegal immigration. Those pugnacious instincts were long a trademark of Trump’s litigious business career. “I love to have enemies. I fight my enemies. I like beating my enemies to the ground,” he once said. Those instincts were egged on in the White House by some of his aides including former campaign chief Steve Bannon, and now domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller.