On a recent Thursday morning, more than a dozen Trump administration officials watching television in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House spontaneously stood up and applauded.
President Trump had just yelled to reporters on the South Lawn, “I want nothing. I want nothing.” He had read from notes written in Sharpie in a small notebook, selectively quoting his own comments in a call with his ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, who had described the conversation in otherwise damning testimony to the House Intelligence Committee.
The clip played on a loop for the rest of the afternoon on cable news channels. It provided cause for celebration for the group of Trump staffers, who are part of a rapid-response operation set up just weeks ago to bend opinion against the effort to impeach the president.